Books published by JOVIS Verlag

At the beginning of the economic crisis in 2007, housing became a central commodity in the short-circuit system of mortgages granted to private individuals and businesses. In the aftermath of the crisis, and in the wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic, housing-as a right, in its most radical form-re-emerged due to local housing, migration, and health emergencies. In light of an eclipse of a general discourse on housing, a new secular and international ethics arose, both foreign and superior to nation states. This book returns to a broader notion of housing: using metaphors of sanitary and salvific reinstatement, it retrieves case studies from the 1950s for re-conceptualizing the housing question in contemporary architecture and visual arts.

Bilingual edition (English/Arabic) / Zweisprachige Ausgabe (englisch/arabisch) Designing Modernity: Architecture in the Arab World 1945-1973 is the result of a fascinating investigation by international experts into the influences of modernist architecture in the Arab world. Ten case studies provide the foundation for a thorough exploration of the relevant cultural-historical, sociopolitical, climatic and demographic aspects. Questions concerning the region's reciprocal relationship with modernist architecture in the period from 1945 to 1973 are investigated through the biographies of selected buildings and building complexes from Iraq, Lebanon, Kuwait, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt and Morocco. Texts, contemporary images, architectural drawings and archival material are used to document the process from commissioning and design through to completion and building use.

Zweisprachige Ausgabe (deutsch/englisch) / Bilingual edition (English/German) Das Konzept der Landschaftlichkeit gewinnt nicht zuletzt durch den Klimawandel immer mehr Bedeutung in der Architektur. Anhand internationaler Beispiele analysiert Margitta Buchert die Potenziale der Architektur für den Umgang mit zeitgenössischen Herausforderungen und blickt dabei auf sozio-kulturelle Transformationen ebenso wie auf die Frage nach lebensweltlichen Orientierungen im Spannungsfeld von globaler Vernetzung und lokaler Orientierung, von Naturraum und urbanem Raum. Welche Architekturverständnisse und welche Eigenschaften fließen durch die Thematisierung von Landschaftlichkeit in architektonische und urbanistische Projekte ein? Welche raumartikulierenden Qualitäten werden hervorgehoben? Und welche Sensibilisierungen und Kapazitäten werden bereichert? Dimensionen von Landschaft als Natur, wie geformt und überformt von Menschen sie auch sein mögen, stehen dabei ebenso im Fokus wie die Verbindung von Ästhetik, Architektur, Ökologie und Stadt.

Activism at Home offers a unique study of architects' own dwellings purposely designed to express social, political, economic, and cultural critiques. Through thirty case studies by architectural scholars, this book highlights different forms of activism at home from the early twentieth century to today. The architect-led experiments in activist living discussed in this book include the dwellings of Ralph Erskine, Paulo Mendes Da Rocha, Charles Moore, Flora Ruchat-Roncati, and Kiyoshi Seike, as well as many others. ¿ Offering candid appraisals of alternative living solutions that formulate a response to rising real estate prices, economic inequality, social alienation, and mounting environmental and cultural challenges, Activism at Home is more than a historical study; it is an appeal to architects to use the discipline's tools to their full potential, and a plea to scholars to continue to bring into focus architecture's activist practices-whether at home or elsewhere.