Often problematically labeled as “Brutalist” architecture, the concrete buildings that transformed Boston during 1960s and 1970s were conceived with progressive-minded intentions by some of the world’s most influential designers, including Marcel Breuer, Le Corbusier, I. M. Pei, Henry Cobb, Araldo Cossutta, Gerhard Kallmann and Michael McKinnell, Paul Rudolph, Josep Lluís Sert, and The Architects Collaborative. As a worldwide phenomenon, building with concrete represents one of the major architectural movements of the postwar years, but in Boston it was deployed in more numerous and diverse civic, cultural, and academic projects than in any other major U.S. city. After decades of stagnation and corrupt leadership, public investment in Boston in the 1960s catalyzed enormous growth, resulting in a generation of bold buildings that shared a vocabulary of concrete modernism. The period from the 1960 arrival of Edward J. Logue as the powerful and often controversial director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority to the reopening of Quincy Market in 1976 saw Boston as an urban laboratory for the exploration of concrete’s structural and sculptural qualities. What emerged was a vision for the city’s widespread revitalization often referred to as the “New Boston.” Today, when concrete buildings across the nation are in danger of insensitive renovation or demolition, Heroic presents the concrete structures that defined Boston during this remarkable period—from the well-known (Boston City Hall, New England Aquarium, and cornerstones of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University) to the already lost (Mary Otis Stevens and Thomas F. McNulty’s concrete Lincoln House and Studio; Sert, Jackson &amp; Associates’ Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School)—with hundreds of images; essays by architectural historians Joan Ockman, Lizabeth Cohen, Keith N. Morgan, and Douglass Shand-Tucci; and interviews with a number of the architects themselves. The product of 8 years of research and advocacy, Heroic surveys the intentions and aspirations of this period and considers anew its legacies—both troubled and inspired.

Heroic: Concrete Architecture and the New Boston

History

GRIMLEY, Chris

Kubo, Michael

Pasnik, Mark

Americas

The Monacelli Press

Imagining the Modern explores Pittsburgh's ambitious modern architecture and urban renewal program that made it a gem of American postwar cities, and set the stage for its stature today. In the 1950s and '60s an ambitious program of urban revitalization transformed Pittsburgh and became a model for other American cities. Billed as the Pittsburgh Renaissance, this era of superlatives--the city claimed the tallest aluminum clad building, the world's largest retractable dome, the tallest steel structure--developed through visionary mayors and business leaders, powerful urban planning authorities, and architects and urban designers of international renown, including Frank Lloyd Wright, I.M. Pei, Mies van der Rohe, SOM, and Harrison &amp; Abramovitz. These leaders, civic groups, and architects worked together to reconceive the city through local and federal initiatives that aimed to address the problems that confronted Pittsburgh's postwar development. Initiated as an award-winning exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art in 2014, Imagining the Modern untangles this complicated relationship with modern architecture and planning through a history of Pittsburgh's major sites, protagonists, and voices of intervention. Through original documentation, photographs and drawings, as well as essays, analytical drawings, and interviews with participants, this book provides a nuanced view of this crucial moment in Pittsburgh's evolution. Addressing both positive and negative impacts of the era, Imagining the Modern examines what took place during the city's urban renewal era, what was gained and lost, and what these histories might suggest for the city's future.

Imagining the Modern: Architecture and Urbanism of the Pittsburgh Renaissance

Business & Money

el Samahy, Rami

Economics

The Yokohama Project: An interesting building usually has an equally interesting tale to tell, an epic embedded in the organization of the massive, complex amount of matter used to create the structure. This book recounts the story of the Yokokama Project, an inventive, undulating, grass-covered ferry terminal that was never meant to be built. Asked to produce some material for an architectural journal, London-based architects Farshid Moussavi and Alejandro Zaera-Polo of FOA (Foreign Office Architects) set themselves a program of entering three competitions, through which to explore design ideas they had become interested in. When they actually won the second competition, for the Yokohama International Port Terminal, in Yokohama, Japan, their plans suddenly changed. The Yokohama Project presents a textual and visual replica of the way their winning building was developed, over eight years, by FOA and a huge team of engineers and researchers in Tokyo and Yokohama. Unlike the typical architectural book, this one offers no critical texts and no theoretical analyses of the structure; instead, it aims to rediscover the linearity of the building's creation. The reader is thus moved linearly through the following chapters: Design Evolution, Building Permits, Structure, Services, Finishes, Circulation, and Final Documents. Peppered throughout with detailed plans, elevations, diagrams, and sketches, as well as candid snapshots of the design team at work (sometimes asleep at and under their desks!), The Yokohama Project is not only an homage to a building but to the many people who worked on making it real. Foreign Office Architects is a pioneering architectural practice founded in London in 1992. It has since expanded to include an office in Japan. The principal partners are Farshid Moussavi and Alejandro Zaera Polo, both of whom are graduates of Harvard University's Masters in Architecture program and former employees of Rem Koolhaus's OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture). Current projects include a publishing headquarters in Paju City, Korea, and a park and open-air auditorium in Barcelona, Spain. Completed projects include New Belgo restaurant and Bermondsey Antiques Market in London. This past year, FOA were among the short-listed winners for the competition to design Porto Antico in Genova, Italy.

The Yokohama Project

Arts & Photography

Architecture

Actar

Verb Conditioning

Sakamoto, Tomoko

Prat, Ramon

Ferré, Albert

Tetas, Anna

EDITORIAL ACTAR

Verb Natures

Hwang, Irene

Ballesteros, Mario

Architecture needs mechanisms that allow it to become connected to culture. It achieves this by continually capturing the forces that shape society as material to work with. Architecture's materiality is therefore a composite one, made up of visible forces (structural, functional, physical) as well as invisible forces (cultural, political, temporal). Architecture progresses through new concepts that connect with these forces, manifesting itself in new aesthetic compositions and affects. Ornament is the by-product of this process, through which architectural material is organized to transmit unique affects. This book is a graphic guide to ornaments in the twentieth century. It unveils the function of ornament as the agent for specific affects, dismantling the idea that ornament is applied to buildings as a discrete or non-essential entity. Each case operates through greater or lesser depth to exploit specific synergies between the exterior and the interior, constructing an internal orde

The Function of Ornament

Moussavi, Farshid

Harvard Graduate School Of Design

Verb Crisis (Spanish Edition)

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