Frei Otto – Complete Works
Architecture in the Digital Age:
Design and Manufacturing
Hugh Leach, Branko Kolarevic
Spon Press (UK)
ISBN 0415278201
The 320-page book offers a comprehensive insight into the status quo of digital architecture, thus bridging the gap from the origins to the contemporary situation: How are computer-aided means applied in architecture and what influence do they have? How can they be favourably used in the future? Chris Leung: ‘… The availability of CAM (Computer Aided Manufacture) software and small-scale CNC (Computer Numerically Controlled) facilities has closed the gap between thinking about the design and its realization. The book raises the bar of expectation with accounts of individuals and practices at the cutting-edge of working with these tools.’
Dynamic Daylighting
Architecture
Helmut Köster
Birkhäuser
ISBN 3-7643-6730-X
(German edition: Dynamische
Tageslichtarchitektur
ISBN 3-7643-6729-6)
‘Dynamic Daylighting Architecture’ is directed at architects, lighting planers, construction physicians, and air conditioning engineers. Helmut Köster is concerned with an objective that can only be achieved in a joint effort: the reasonable integration of daylight and solar energy in buildings. Chris Leung: “I was looking for a book like this for years, a thorough technical description of day-light and sun-light. [...] Just when you think that the author has made his point, you discover another way of looking at the way a space can be efficiently and naturally lit, harnessing one of nature’s free gifts ...... the sun.
The Technology of
Ecological Buildings
Klaus Daniels
Birkhäuser
ISBN 3-7643-6131-X
(German edition:
Technologie des ökologischen
Bauens
ISBN 3-7643-6131-X)
The 302 pages of this book, which has been published in German and English, presents ‘basic principles and measures, examples and ideas’ (so is the blurb) on the topic ecological construction. Chris Leung: ‘This book was a source of environmental design ideas during the office competition entry for the Aga Khan University competition. Since then the beautifully presented and clear diagrams the book contains have prompted many conversation around the potential to use the many different technologies and scenarios the book documents. It has and continues to be a bridge building aid in the office to start a conversation with enlightened engineers.’
Computer-Aided Manufacture
in Architecture – The Pursuit
of Novelty
Nick Callicott
Architectural Press
ISBN 0-7506-4647-0
Un-biased and easily comprehensible, but in a very detailed fashion Nick Callicott introduces the readers of his book to the secrets of computer aided manufacturing and its application in architecture. Chris Leung: ‘This book is a favourite not least of which because it introduced me to many of the rapid-prototyping techniques that are available to designers that I am becoming increasingly familiar with, but more significantly for me the mode of engagement with them that this book advocates.’