Frei Otto – Complete Works
Publisher: Wilfried Nerdinger
Birkhäuser Verlag
ISBN: 3-7643-7233-8 (German)
ISBN-10: 3-7643-7231-1 (English)
No German architect has gained so much international recognition in the second half of the 20th century as Frei Otto. Last year, in celebration of Frei Otto’s 80th birthday, the Architecture Museum of the Munich Technical University dedicated a comprehensive exhibition and a monograph of more than 200 pages to the great engineer and architect. In it, his companions of many years describe the most important aspects of Frei Otto’s works, in particular the constant tendency to learn from nature that lead to him becoming one of the precursors of ecological architecture in the 1980s and 1990s. The volume ends with a detailed list of his 200 buildings and projects from 1951 to 2004.
Der Baron auf den Bäumen (The Baron in the Trees)
Author: Italo Calvino
dtv Verlag
ISBN 3-423-10578-X
(Italian original edition:
Italo CalvinoIT’ART
88-04-37085-8)
In his novel which was first published in 1957, the Italian author, Italo Calvino, tells the story of a really remarkable recluse: on 15th June 1767, the 12 year old Cosimo Piovasco di Rondo climbs a tree in his garden in protest against his parents, and never returns to the ground again in his lifetime – not even in order to die: he gets swept out of his tree by the land anchor of a Montgolfier, and vanishes out to sea. In the book, Cosimo’s younger brother and companion for many years, Biagio tells the story of his life in the trees. Italo Calvino’s book ranks among the greatest examples of the ‘adventure novel’. It is written in an amusing way, but nevertheless with great depth.
Surroundings Surrounded
Olafur Eliasson
Publisher: Peter Weibel
MIT Press
ISBN 0-262-73148-7
Essays on Space and Science is the sub-title of this unusual exhibition catalogue by and about the Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson. Although the exhibition of his work, Surroundings Surrounded, which first took place in 2000 in Graz and 2001 in Karls-ruhe was made up of notes from Eliasson’s works, the artist renounces the otherwise usual documentation and instead reveals the theoretical background to his work in the catalogue. The 704 page book contain 56 essays by natural and spiritual scientists, architects and art theorists. 30 of these were published for the first time in this book.
Basics – Grundformen der Architektur (basics - Basic forms of Architecture)
Author: Franziska Ullmann
Springer Verlag
ISBN 3-211-83800-7
“What is a solitaire? What makes a solitaire into a monument? Why is a building profane? What makes a space into a sacred space? Why do Zaha Hadid’s buildings have a dynamic effect?”
Franziska Ullmann answers these and many other questions on architecture and spatial perception in her book, basics. In direct comparison with texts and pictures of international buildings, she researches the meaning and influence of basic architectural elements individually and in compositions. Her starting point is Wassily Kandinsky’s fundamental work Punkt und Linie zu Fläche (Point and Line to Plane), in which the painter makes a similar analysis for painting elements.