Eco-Tech: Sustainable Architecture and High Technology

The high-tech architecture movement embodied by seminal buildings such as Paris's Centre Pompidou (1977) and London's Lloyd's Building (1986) has undergone a subtle but palpable transformation. While daring feats of structural engineering still mark recent projects by the architects who forged the earliest examples, a new generation has expanded the vocabulary of this architectonic language, and evolved an architecture with different aims. The most significant of these objectives is to create a sustainable architecture. This international survey presents projects completed in the 1990s that use high-tech forms and materials for environmentally intelligent means. It brings together innovative approaches by established practitionersRichard Rogers, Norman Foster, Nicholas Grimshaw, and Michael Hopkinswith a new generationThomas Herzog, Von Gerkan Marg, Design Antenna, and Itsuko Hasegawa. The introduction charts the evolution of high-tech architecture and its progression toward more ecological concerns, and the movement as a whole is considered in a broader architectural context. At the book's heart is a selection of forty of the world's most sophisticated projects, each with a thorough description of its unique architectural and technological features, as well as extensive plans, drawings, and sketches. A complete reference section includes architect biographies and technical details of each project. Accompanying the texts and drawings are spectacular photographs, most of which were specially commissioned for this publication. 356 illustrations, 112 in color.