Books in the Architectural Design series

There is a newfound interest in architectural drawing. Some of the most forward-looking architects worldwide are reinventing it to discover the radical possibilities of contemporary architecture as a rich mix of the virtual and the actual. Architectural drawing is adapting to compensate for these new changes to the discipline, and is being used to speculate on new paradigms of space and representation. This AD seeks to showcase the architects who are pushing the envelope of drawing in extraordinary ways, and their insights into architecture's future spatial dexterity. The issue is built around an international group of architects involved in an ongoing KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture international drawing research project, who are creating new drawing methodologies in new and exciting realms. Their projects are written about from the perspective of architectural representation by critics and commentators from across the globe, illustrating a cornucopia of graphic verve and talent in this highly contemporary and thought-provoking issue. Contributors: Aaron Betsky, Penelope Haralambidou, Ulrika Karlsson, Michael McGarry, Nicholas de Monchaux, Ricardo de Ostos, Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Peter Salter, Chris L Smith, Wolfgang Tschapeller, Sarah de Villiers, Robin Wilson, and Jason Young. Drawings by: Bryan Cantley, Nat Chard, Peter Cook, Riet Eeckhout, CJ Lim, Perry Kulper, Metis (Mark Dorrian and Adrian Hawker), Shaun Murray, Smout Allen, Neil Spiller, Nada Subotincic, Michael Webb, Mark West, and Michael Young.

California has historically provided a fertile breeding ground for radical modes of architectural thinking, practice and building, which from the 1920s onwards was sparked by the presence of eminent émigré architects. It was also central to the birth of 'cool' mid-century Modernism - all in parallel with the intense concentration of design and experimentation in the film, aerospace and tech industries. This AD issue explores the influential formal tropes generated in the nexus between Los Angeles and the Bay Area, as well as the thriving theoretical preoccupations that have brought California's architects global attention. Between Hollywood and the Silicon Valley, this unique context has nurtured and become the platform for those who not only build buildings around the world, but have also founded and directed schools and educated emergent generations of architects.Contributors: Frances Anderton, Jasmine Benyamin, Blaine Brownell, Courtney Coffman, Heather Flood and Aaron Gensler, David Freeland and Brennan Buck, Craig Hodgetts, Max Kuo, Eva Menuhin, Nicole Meyer, Jill Stoner, and Grace Mitchell Tada.Featured architects: Atelier Manferdini, Ball-Nogues Studio, Faulders Studio, FreelandBuck, Hood Design Studio, Oyler Wu Collaborative, Preliminary Research Office, Stereobot, and Synthesis Design + Architecture.

Guest-edited by Jill Stoner and Ozayr SaloojeeOver the past decade, and in a more concentrated form over the past two years, there has been increasing recognition of architecture's systemic complicity in constructing and upholding hierarchies of race and class, and privileging colonial paradigms that perpetuate spatial and economic inequity. This AD issue reveals how designers, practitioners, scholars and architects are participating in dismantling the major canons of Western architecture. The work is both literal and figural: taking buildings apart and reconstituting them, and challenging mythologies that include drawing-as-analogue, building-as object, architect-as-hero and nature-as-other.Architecture has both potential and responsibility for political agency in the public realm. The contributions to this issue foreground emancipatory spatial ideas and practices from around the world, demonstrating that refusal is no longer just absence and denial, but a constructive mode of resistance and action that needs to be approached through subversive urban works, design pedagogy and alliances across multiple disciplines.Contributors: Piper Bernbaum, Carwil Bjork-James, Thiresh Govender, Lucia Jalón Oyarzun, Jennifer Newsom and Tom Carruthers, Cong Chi Nguyen, Quilian Riano, Hannah Le Roux, Alberto de Salvatierra, Cathy Smith, Chat Travieso, and Ilze Wolff.

AI is already part of our lives even though we might not realise it. It is in our phones, filtering spam, identifying Facebook friends, and classifying our images on Instagram. It is in our homes in the form of Siri, Alexa and other AI assistants. It is in our cars and our planes. AI is literally everywhere. Artworks generated by AI have won international prizes, and have been sold at auction. But what does AI mean for the world of design?This issue of AD explores the nature of AI, and considers its potential for architecture. But this is no idle speculation. Architects have already started using AI for architectural design and fabrication. Yet - astonishingly - there has been almost no debate about AI within the discipline of architecture so far. Surely, nothing can be more important for the profession of architecture right now. The issue looks at all aspects of AI: its potential to assist architects in designing buildings so that it becomes a form of 'augmented intelligence'; its capacity to design buildings on its own; and whether AI might open up an extraordinary new chapter in architectural design.Contributors: Refik Anadol; Daniel Bolojan; Alexa Carlson; Sofia Crespo and Feileacan McCormick; Gabriel Esquivel, Jean Jaminet and Shane Bugni; Behnaz Farahi; Theodoros Galanos and Angelos Chronis; Eduard Haiman; Wanyu He; Damjan Jovanovic and Lidija Kljakovic; Immanuel Koh; Maria Kuptsova; Sandra Manninger; Lev Manovich; Achim Menges and Thomas Wortmann; Wolf dPrix, Karolin Schmidbaur and Efilena Baseta; M Casey Rehm; and Hao Zheng and Masoud Akbarzadeh.Featured architects: Alisa Andrasek, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Lifeforms.io, Nonstandardstudio,SPAN, Kyle Steinfeld, Studio Kinch and Xkool Technology.

There is a newfound interest in architectural education. This AD is a survey of some of the best contemporary architecture student work in the world. The most forward-looking architecture schools worldwide are reinventing pedagogy in the hope of developing radical syllabi that are a rich mix of the virtual and the actual. Design education is changing and adapting to compensate for the new material changes to the discipline, and is being used to disentangle old, outmoded spatial practices and replace them with new paradigms of space and representation. This issue showcases the students and teachers who are pushing the envelope of architecture in extraordinary ways, offering their insights into its future materiality and spatial dexterity. It premieres a new young generation of architects who are likely to become names in the architectural profession and possibly important teachers themselves. Their work has been selected by their own influential teachers of architecture who describe the studio methodologies - and reasons for them - that prompted the work.Contributors: Daniel K Brown, Jane Burry, Nat Chard, Odile Decq, Evan Douglis, Riet Eeckhout, Mark Garcia, Nicolas Hannequin, Perry Kulper, Elena Manferdini, Mark Morris, Hani Rashid, and Michael Young.Featured institutions: A Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan; Architectural Association, London; Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London; Carleton University, Ottawa; CONFLUENCE Institute for Innovation and Creative Strategies in Architecture, Paris; Cooper Union, New York; University of Greenwich, London; KU Leuven, Belgium; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York; Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), Los Angeles; Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne; Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand; and the University of Applied Arts, Vienna

In light of current developments in modelling, and with the aim of reinvigorating debates around the potentiality of the architectural model - its philosophies, technologies and futures - this issue of AD examines how the model has developed to become an immersive worldbuilding machine. Worldbuilding is the creation of imaginary worlds through forms of cultural production. Although this discourse began with an analysis of imaginary places constructed in works of literature, it has evolved to encompass worlds from fields such as cinema, games, design, landscape, urbanism and architecture. Worldbuilding differs from the notion of worldmaking, which deals with how speculative thinking can influence the construction of the phenomenal world. As architects postulate ever-increasingly complex world models from which to draw inspiration and inform their practice, questions of scale, representation and collaboration emerge. Discussed through a range of articles from acclaimed international contributors in the fields of both architecture and media studies, this issue explores how the architectural model is situated between concepts of worldbuilding and worldmaking - in the creative space of worldmodelling.Contributors: Kathy Battista, Thea Brejzek and Lawrence Wallen, Pascal Bronner and Thomas Hillier, Mark Cousins, James A Craig and Matt Ozga-Lawn, Kate Davies, Ryan Dillon, Christian Hubert, Chad Randl, Theodore Spyropoulos, and Mark JP Wolf.Featured architects: Phil Ayres, FleaFolly Architects, Minimaforms, and Stasus.

This issue of AD explores the working discipline of architecture as it impacts the material culture within which it is always embedded. An architecture of impact uses advanced digital techniques in such a way that its material assembly supersedes its use of the digital.Until now, this type of architecture has been formally and materially bound by restrictive conventional methodologies, which the digital project has moved from the scale of installations to three-dimensional building-sized fabrications. Unless architects turn to a new culture of making, architecture shaped by even innovative digital technology will become irrelevant. Architectural projects that are more subversive in how they are created and that lose their digital signature have greater potential to be at the forefront of the discipline's new materialisations. This issue illustrates these ideas and their architectural impact.Contributors: Kutan Ayata, Ben van Berkel, Hernan Diaz Alonso, David Goldblatt, Thomas Heatherwick, Ferda Kolatan, Ascan Mergenthaler, Antoine Picon, Casey Rehm, Patrik Schumacher, and Philip F Yuan.Featured architects: Archi-Union, Contemporary Architecture Practice, HDA-X, Heatherwick Studio, Herzog & de Meuron, Ishida Rehm Studio, Pininfarina, SHoP Architects, SU-11, UNStudio, and Young & Ayata, and Zaha Hadid Architects.

This groundbreaking edition of AD brings together a range of global expertise on social value, exploring its potential for demonstrating the positive impact of both architecture and architects on homes and communities in terms of social justice, sustainability and wellbeing. There has been a recent groundswell of interest in the mapping and measuring of social value caused by developments in legislation and planning, as well as a revival of interest in the ethical dimensions of architectural practice. Not only do architects promote wellbeing through the development of carefully conceived and appropriate designs, they can also add social value through the processes of consultation, visioning, briefing, co-design, co-creation, user manuals, soft landings (helping people to make the most of their buildings in use) and post-occupancy evaluation. These are, however, poorly recognised aspects of an architect's role. We live in an audit culture where organisational performance is measured against predetermined targets. Unfortunately, the focus of architectural practice is generally on the financial cost of what it does in the short term rather than its long-term social value, arguably its market niche. This AD posits that the mapping and measuring of social value provides a real opportunity for the architectural profession to make its key contribution heard. Contributors: Nabeela Ahmed and Ayona Datta, Nicola Bacon and Paul Goodship, Irena Bauman, Cristina Garduno Freeman, Mat Hinds, Anthony Hoete, Karen Kubey, Mhairi McVicar, Aoibheann Ní Mhearáin and Tara Kennedy, Jenni Montgomery, Edward Ng and Li Wan, Doina Petrescu, and Peter Andreas Sattrup Featured architects: Atelier d'Architecture Autogérée (AAA), Barton Willmore, Bauman Lyons Architects, Jateen Ladd, John McLaughlin Architects, and Taylor and Hinds Architects

Given the rapid evolution of concepts such as smart cities, who are the architects riding the wave of new possibilities for urban design? How do contemporary agencies find pathways to understand the challenges and opportunities presented by evolving urban technology, and how does architecture engage with the expanding pool of associated disciplines? How should schools of architecture and urban design engage with radical digitalised urbanism?This issue of AD claims that this is contested territory. The two-dimensionality of planners' urban construct is as limited as engineers' predilection to zero-in and solve problems. Urban Futures contends that society needs a much broader professional brush than has been applied in the past: interdisciplinary urban design professionals who can reach across the philosophy and mundanity of urban existence with a creative eye. The issue identifies a selection of internally resourceful visionaries who combine sociology, geography, logistics and systems theory with the practical realities and challenges of mobility, sustainable materials, food, water and energy supply, and waste disposal. Crucially, they seek to ensure better urban futures, and a civil and convivial urban experience for all city dwellers.Contributors: Refik Anadol, Philip Belesky, Shajay Bhooshan, Jane Burry and Marcus White, Thomas Daniell, Vicente Guallart, Shan He, Wanyu He, Dan Hill, Justyna Karakiewicz, Tom Kvan, Areti Markopoulou, Ed Parham, Carlo Ratti, Ferran Sagarra, and Bige Tunçer.Featured architects: Arup Digital Studio, Guallart Architects, Space10, Space Syntax, UNStudio, and XKool Technology.

Who defines the landscapes around us? What practices are employed as contemporary landscapes are produced? This issue argues that landscapes are made and remade through interrelations between people and the worlds around them - from geographers investigating the lives of urban wastelands to landscape architects projecting future cities, and from migrants navigating border systems to artists working with local residents. In contrast to tendencies to emphasise the physical forms of landscapes, with their potential to be redesigned and represented in drawings, this issue brings to the forefront the social constructedness of landscapes by focusing on a range of critical practices and daily actions. As conventional frames of landscape are challenged, other ways of measuring, mapping, imagining, designing, building and occupying them are revealed. For centuries, artists and designers have represented landscapes of power in paintings and have transformed them through their design proposals. But in recent years a number of researchers, designers, artists and activists have explored an expanded field of landscape, investigating populations fleeing conflict zones, reimagining cities facing ecological challenges, questioning territorial claims, and critiquing processes of urbanisation. This issue focuses on some of these individuals whose work and lives encompass a diverse range of practices, brought together through their critical redefinition of landscape relations.Contributors: Pierre Bélanger, Harry Bix, Neil Brenner and Nikos Katsikis, Luis Callejas and Charlotte Hansson, James Corner, Gareth Doherty and Pol Fité Matamoros, Matthew Gandy, Christina Leigh Geros, Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy, Nina-Marie Lister, Richard Mosse, Kate Orff, Toya Peal, Neil Spiller, Tiago Torres Campos and Tim Waterman.Featured practices: Advanced Landscape and Urbanism, Design Earth, East Anglia Records, Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, Furtherfield, James Corner Field Operations, Larissa Fassler, LCLA office, OPSYS and SCAPE.

Today there are more tools for communication than ever before, yet very little in the way of reflection on how these are being used and even less on what exactly is being conveyed. This issue of AD looks at how architecture is communicated from a cultural perspective. Do the identities of practices or their business-driven branding and promotional efforts resonate with the critical acclaim many architects seek? Has slick image-led media coverage sold the profession short? How is it possible to convey the less visual and haptic qualities of architecture? Can architects be more creative in their communication efforts, making these joyous on their own terms as Le Corbusier did so memorably? Is there really a need to succumb to the world of corporate marketing processes and managerial business jargon?The issue explores notions of editing and curating work in an age of data deluge, and discusses social media as a genuinely alternative space for communication rather than for just repurposing and regurgitating information relayed. The Identity of the Architect encourages the promotion of practices as an integral extension of the very culture they hope to engender through their work.Contributors: Stephen Bayley, Caroline Cole, Adam Nathaniel Furman, Gabor Gallov, Jonathan Glancey, Justine Harvey, Owen Hopkins, Crispin Kelly, Jay Merrick, Robin Monotti, Juhani Pallasmaa, Vicky Richardson, Jenny Sabin, and Austin Williams.Featured architects: Ian Ritchie, BIG, MVRDV, IF_DO and Zaha Hadid Architects

Beauty in architecture matters again. This issue of AD posits that after 80 years of aggressive suppression of engagement with aesthetics, the temporarily dormant preoccupation with beauty is back. This is evidenced by a current cultural shift from the supposedly objective to an emerging trust in the subjective - a renewed fascination for aesthetics supported by new knowledge emanating simultaneously from disparate disciplines.Digital design continues to influence architectural discourse, not only due to changes in manufacturing but also through establishing meaning. The very term 'post-digital' was introduced by computational designers and artists, who accept that digital gains in architectural design are augmented by human judgement and cognitive intuition.The issue takes an interdisciplinary approach to this re-emerging interest in beauty across neuroscience, neuroaesthetics, mathematics, philosophy and architecture, while discussing the work of the international architects, in both practice and academe, who are generating new aesthetics.Contributors: Alisa Andrasek,Izaskun Chinchilla, Marjan Colletti, Peter Cook, Robbert Dijkgraaf, Winka Dubbeldam, David Garcia, Graham Harman, Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto, Alan Powers, Gilles Retsin, Kristina Schinegger and Stefan Rutzinger, Fleur Watson and Martyn Hook and Semir Zeki.Featured architects: Archi-Tectonics, ecoLogicStudio, NaJa & deOstos, Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa/SANAA, soma architecture, Studio Gang, John Wardle Architects and Tom Wiscombe Architecture.

The 1960s and 1970s avant-garde has been likened to an 'architectural Big Bang', such was the intensity of energy and ambition in which it exploded into the postwar world. Marked out by architectural projects that redefined the discipline, it remains just as influential today. References to the likes of Archizoom, Peter Eisenman, John Hejduk and Superstudio abound. Highly diverse, the avant-garde cannot be defined as a single strand or tendency. It was divergent geographically - reaching from Europe to North America and Japan - and in its political, formal and cultural preoccupations. It was unified, though, as a critical and experimental force, critiquing contemporary society against the backdrop of extreme social and political upheaval: the Paris riots of May 1968, the anti-Vietnam war movement in America and the looming ecological crisis.Re-imagining the Avant-garde outlines how in contemporary architectural practice, avant-garde projects retain their power as historical precedents, as barometers of a particular design ethos, as critiques of society and instigators of new formal techniques. Given the far-reaching impact of the subsequent digital revolution, which has since reshaped every aspect of practice, the issue asks why this historical period continues to retain its undeniable grip on current architecture.Contributors: Pablo Bronstein and Sam Jacob, Sarah Deyong, Stylianos Giamarelos, Damjan Jovanovic, Andrew Kovacs, Perry Kulper, Igor Marjanovic, William Menking, Michael Sorkin, Neil Spiller and Mimi Zeiger.Featured architects: Archizoom, Andrea Branzi, Jimenez Lai, Luis Miguel (Koldo) Lus Arana (Klaus), NEMESTUDIO, Superstudio and UrbanLab.

Architectural research is being redefined in practice. Whereas once the value of a piece of research was solely measured by the number of citations it received by fellow academics, shifting funding models and new societal concerns are forcing academia to question its structure and this mode of evaluation. At the same time a wave of practitioners and new types of institutions, such as RMIT in Melbourne and the London School of Architecture (LSA), have been recasting architectural education and theoretical speculation within practice, turning the traditional architectural studio into a learning environment that adopts and adapts academic models, and starts to use architectural research as a potential source of business intelligence, as a means for self-generating future commissions and speculative opportunities that sometimes even shift the terrain of practice.This new focus on research in practice is indicative of a profession redefining its relevance and scope. This is destabilising the traditional roles of academia and practice by questioning their deep-rooted separation and demanding a new definition of the term 'research' with one that is relevant to both parties. This issue features contributions from architectural thinkers, researchers and a number of practitioners who are recasting academic speculation within their own studios. This not only redefines what is meant by research and what forms it takes, but also how it creates value for them, their clients, for the discipline as a whole and for the ultimate users of their designs. This helps us to understand how research might be deemed valuable beyond a purely academic context. Moreover, it raises significant questions in terms of opportunities and risks that arise when research is recast into the less regimented realm of practice.Contributors: Daniel Davis, Lionel Devlieger, David Green, Harriet Harris, Rory Hyde, Lara Kinneir, James Soane, Ziona Strelitz, Leon van Schaik, John ZhangFeatured architects: Assemble, DSDHA, Foster + Partners, Iredale Pedersen Hook, OMA, Public Practice and Superflux.

Today, architecture in China is at a watershed. Over the last decade, rapid urbanisation and the burgeoning economy turned the country into a playground for the world's signature architects, making it possible to realise extravagant forms and structures at a vast scale. The Chinese government has now drawn a line under this phenomenon by issuing a directive calling an end to the 'oversized, xenocentric, weird' buildings devoid of character or cultural heritage that have sprung up across the country, requiring that urban architecture be 'suitable, economic, green and pleasing to the eye'. This government directive comes at a time when homegrown architecture has become increasingly self-assured and reflective in its approach. A new generation of architects in China in their 30s and 40s are emerging, and in a wholly contemporary way they are exploring local responses to often bewildering urban and rural conditions and serious social and environmental challenges. This is often expressed through a revival of interest in traditional street patterns, courtyards and gardens. At the same time, architects are also recognising the opportunities to harness the potential of China's established manufacturing base to develop prefabricated building systems. Innovative practices are employing new modes of working, such as research-based studio teaching and exhibitions, field workshops, cross-disciplinary collaboration, laboratory-based practice, design think-tanks and collective projects, generating a vibrant culture of design research. Contributors: Lu Feng, Murray Fraser, Xiao Fu and Wei You, Xiahong Hua and Shen Zhuang, Xinggang Li, Yichun Liu, James Shen, Yehao Song, Hui Wang, Shuo Wang, Xin Wang and Qiuye Jin, Philip F Yuan and Xiang Wang, Li Zhang, Xin Zhang and Jingxiang Zhu. Featured architects Archi-Union Architects, Atelier Archmixing, Atelier Deshaus, Atelier Li Xinggang, Integrated Architecture Studio, LanD Studio, META-Project, People's Architecture Office, SUP Atelier, URBANUS and Zaoyuan Gardening Studio

Architects are facing a crisis of agency. For decades, they have seen their traditional role diminish in scope as more and more of their responsibilities have been taken over by other disciplines within the building construction industry. Once upon a time, we might have seen the architect as the conductor of the orchestra; now he or she is but one cog in a vast and increasingly complex machine. In an attempt to find a way out of this crisis, there is growing debate about how architects might reassert the importance of their role and influence. On one side of this argument are those who believe that architects must refocus their attention on the internal demands of the discipline. On the other are those who argue that architects must, instead, reacquaint themselves with what many still believe to be the discipline's core mission of advancing social progress and promoting the public good, and at the same time the scope of their traditional disciplinary remit. At root, this question is fundamentally about freedom, about whether architects still possess it - if they have ever done - and whether it is possible to find the professional, disciplinary and individual autonomy to be able to define the spheres of their own practice. Presenting a variety of views and perspectives, this issue of AD takes us to the heart of what freedom means for architecture as it adapts and evolves in response to the changing contexts in which it is practised in the 21st century. Contributors include: Phillip Bernstein, Peggy Deamer, Adam Nathaniel Furman, Kate Goodwin, Charles Holland, Anna Minton, Patrik Schumacher, Alex Scott-Whitby, Ines Weizman, and Sarah Wigglesworth. Featured architects: Atelier Kite, C+S Architects, Anupama Kundoo, Noero Architects, Umbrellium, and Zaha Hadid Architects.

We are entering a new era of architecture that is technologically enhanced, virtual and synthetic. Contemporary architects operate in a creative environment that is both real and digital; mixed, augmented and hybridised. This world consists of ecstasies, fears, fetishisms and phantoms, processes and spatiality that can best be described as Surrealist. Though too long dormant, Surrealism has been a significant cultural force in modern architecture. Founded by poet André Breton in Paris in 1924 as an artistic, intellectual and literary movement, architects such as Le Corbusier, Diller + Scofidio, Bernard Tschumi and John Hejduk realised its evocative powers to propel them to 'starchitect' status. Rem Koolhaas most famously illustrated Delirious New York (1978) with Madelon Vriesendorp's compelling Surrealist images.Architects are now reviving the power of Surrealism to inspire and explore the ramifications of advanced technology. Architects' studios in practices and schools are becoming places where nothing is forbidden. Architectural languages and theories are 'mashed' together, approaches are permissively appropriated, and styles are not mutually exclusive. Projects are polemic, postmodern and surreally media savvy. Today's architects must compose space that operates across the spatial spectrum. Surrealism, with its multiple readings of the city, its collage semiotics, its extruded forms and artificial landscapes, is an ideal source for contemporary architectural inspiration.Contributors include: Bryan Cantley, Nic Clear, James Eagle, Natalie Gall, Mark Morris, Dagmar Motycka Weston, Alberto Perez-Gomez, Shaun Murray, Anthony Vidler, and Elizabeth Anne Williams.Featured architects: Nigel Coates, Hernan Diaz Alonso, Perry Kulper, and Mark West.

January/February 2018 Profile 251 Volume 88 No 1 ISBN 978 1119 379515 Guest-Edited by John Nastasi, Ed May and Clarke Snell In the 21st century, architects and engineers are being challenged to produce work that is concurrently sustainable and resilient. Buildings need to mitigate their impact on climate change by minimising their carbon footprint, while also countering the challenging new weather conditions. Globally, severe storms, extreme droughts and rising sea levels are becoming an increasingly reoccurring feature. To respond, a design process is required that seeks to integrate resiliency by building in the capacity to absorb the impacts of these disruptive events and adapt over time to further changes, while simultaneously being part of the solution to the problem itself. This issue of AD is guest-edited by the interdisciplinary team at Stevens Institute of Technology who developed the winning entry for the 2015 US Department of Energy Solar Decathlon competition, the SU+RE House. While particular focus is paid to this student designed and built prototype home, the publication also provides a broader discussion of the value of design-build as a model for tackling the issue of integrating sustainability and resilience, and what changes are required across education, policy, practice and industry for widespread implementation. Contributors include: Bronwyn Barry, Michael Bruno, Alex Carpenter, Adam Cohen, Ann Holtzman, Ken Levenson, Brady Peters, Terri Peters, Craig Robertson, Karin Stieldorf, Alex Washburn, Claire Weisz, and Graham Wright. Featured architects: 3XN, Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (AHMM), FXFOWLE Architects, Local Office Landscape Architecture, Lateral Office, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), Structures Design/Build, and WXY architecture + urban design.

Some architects dream of 3D-printing houses. Some even fantasise about 3D-printing entire cities. But what is the real potential of 3D printing for architects? This issue focuses on another strand of 3D-printing practice emerging among architects operating at a much smaller scale that is potentially more significant.

Workflows are being rethought and remodelled across the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) spectrum.

We are now on the brink of a new era in construction that of autonomous assembly. For some time, the widespread adoption of robotic and digital fabrication technologies has made it possible for architects and academic researchers to design non-standard, highly customised structures.

4D Hyperlocal: A Cultural Tool Kit for the Open-source City The evolution of digital tools is revolutionising urban design, planning and community engagement.

Brazil is a country of city dwellers undergoing radical transformation: over 85 per cent of the countryΓÇÖs citizens live in cities and over 40 per cent of the population live in metropolises of more than a million people. Whereas previously urban growth had been ad hoc, preparation for the FIFA World Cup in 12 cities across the country in 2014, and for the upcoming Olympic and Paralympic Games in Rio, changed all that. Several Brazilian cities have proactively invested in infrastructure and the public realm. And a number of projects by international ΓÇÿstarchitectsΓÇÖ have heightened interest in Brazil from architects and urban practitioners abroad. The failure of public authorities to meet their ambitious aspirations for the sporting megaΓÇôevents sparked a series of street protests across the country under the banner of ΓÇÿthe right to the cityΓÇÖ, beginning in 2013. For Brazil, this was an entirely new phenomenon, one which has unveiled the potential for bottomΓÇôup influences to effect urban change. The focus of this issue, though, is on design projects that contribute a strong sense of place to their respective cities, highlighting also the integration of landscape design in urban planning and community interventions that seek to address the enormous disparity between the lives of the countryΓÇÖs rich and poor. Contributors: Ricky Burdett, Thomas Deckker, Gabriel Duarte, Sergio Ekerman, Nanda Eskes and André Vieira, Alexandre Hepner and Silvio Soares Macedo, Circe Monteiro and Luiz Carvalho, Joana Carla Soares Gonçalves, Jaime Lerner, Ana Luiza Nobre, Justin McGuirk, Francesco PerrottaΓÇôBosch, Maria do Rocio Rosário, Fernando Serapião, Guilherme Wisnik Featured architects: AECOM, Biselli Katchborian, Brasil Arquitetura, Santiago Calatrava, Studio Arthur Casas, Diller Scofdio + Renfro, Herzog & de Meuron, Vigliecca & Associados

Loose-Fit Architecture: Designing Buildings for ChangeSeptember/October 2017Profile 249 Volume 87 No 5ISBN 978 1119 152644Guest-Edited by Alex LifschutzThe idea that a building is 'finished' or 'complete' on the day it opens its doors is hardwired into existing thinking about design, planning and construction. But this ignores the unprecedented rate of social and technological change. A building only begins its life when the contractors leave. With resources at a premium and a greater need for a sustainable use of building materials, can we still afford to construct new housing or indeed any buildings that ignore the need for flexibility or the ability to evolve over time? Our design culture needs to move beyond the idealisation of a creative individual designer generating highly specific forms with fixed uses. The possibilities of adaptation and flexibility have often been overlooked, but they create hugely exciting 'loose-fit' architectures that emancipate users to create their own versatile and vibrant environments.Contributors include: Stewart Brand, Renee Chow, Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson, John Habraken, Edwin Heathcote, Despina Katsakakis, Stephen Kendall, Ian Lambot, Giorgio Macchi, Alexi Marmot, Andrea Martin, Kazunobu Minami, Peter Murray, Brett Steele, and Simon Sturgis.

Design for Health: Sustainable Approaches to Therapeutic Architecture Guest-Edited by Terri Peters This issue of AD seeks out innovative and varied sustainable architectural responses to designing for health, such as:

Evoking Through Design: Contemporary Moods in Architecture is visually stunning, featuring built work and speculative projects, which highlight how contemporary practices are using devices such as spatial compositing, surface articulation and novel manipulations of materials in order to constitute spatial conditions radiating in delicate and sophisticated atmospheres.  Contributors: Benjamin Bratton, Jeffrey Kipnis, Neil Leach, Silvia Levin, Frederic Migayrou, Juhani Pallasmaa, David Ruy, and Mario Carpo. Architects: Phillip Beesley, Marjan Colletti, Hernan Diaz Alonso, Evan Douglis, Michael Hansmayer, Steven Holl,Ferda Kolatan, Sean Lally, Greg Lynn and Peter Zumthor.

What happens when computational design and fabrication technologies ramp up to the urban scale? Though these innovative production processes are currently now largely limited to small-scale design projects, what will happen when they are applied to the vast scale of the 21st-century world city? Could new technologies enable an important shift away from mass production to increasingly bespoke and custom-designed systems? The introduction of standardisation and mass production processes in the 20th century saw the industrial city take on a repetitious and homogeneous quality through the duplication of component parts. Today non-standard, bespoke systems hold out the promise of realising a distinctive urbanism; characterized by the differentiation of serial production and the variation of simple parts that should lead to a more complex and compelling whole. Given the current pace and rate of urbanisation in Asia, the mass customization of the city is set to have imminent and far-reaching practical consequences for the rest of the developing and developed world.

Parametricism is an avant-garde architecture and design movement that has been growing and maturing over the last 15 years, emerging as a remarkable global force. The tendency started in architecture but now encompasses all design disciplines, from urban design to fashion. In architecture, the style has an international following and is currently progressing beyond its experimental roots to make an impact on a broader scale, with practices like Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) winning and completing large-scale architectural projects worldwide. Parametricism implies that all elements and aspects of an architectural composition or product are parametrically malleable; and the style owes its original, unmistakable physiognomy to its unprecedented use of computational design tools and fabrication methods. All design parameters are conceived as variables that allow the design to vary and adapt to the diverse, complex and dynamic requirements of contemporary society. Although Parametricism has been talked about and hotly debated for a number of years, so far there has been no publication dedicated to Parametricism. The issue is guest-edited by Patrik Schumacher, partner at ZHA, and one of the world's most highly renowned advocates of Parametricism.Contributors: Philippe Block, Shajay Bhooshan, Mark Burry, Mario Carpo, Manuel DeLanda, John Frazer, Mark Foster Gage, Enriqueta Llabres and Eduardo Rico, Achim Menges, Theo Spyropoulos, Robert Stuart-Smith, Philip F Yuan.Featured architects and designers: Arup, MARC FORNES/THEVERYMANY, Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) and Ross Lovegrove.

Material Synthesis: Fusing the Physical and the Computational Guest-edited by Achim Menges A new understanding of the material in architecture is fast emerging. Designers are no longer conceiving of the digital realm as separate from the physical world.