Peter Kulka

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essay by Aaron Betsky

"Zaha Hadid's highly inventive and seemingly unbuildable designs have always defied conventional ideas of architectural space and construction. The BMW Central Building in Leipzig, Germany, a recent addition to her visionary, gravity-defying, fearlessly bold, and rapidly increasing body of built work, succeeds in creating space through lines of motion. The heart of the BMW factory complex, the Central Building is the dynamic focal point of the entire plant that visually, physically, and experientially sustains a sense of animation. With the constant movement supplied by employees, visitors, and automobiles and its audacious, abstracted geometry of forms and lines, the structure challenges the notion of building as a static art." "Zaha Hadid, the 2004 Pritzker Prize Laureate and the first woman to receive the honor, is celebrated for her unbuilt works as well as her built works, including the Phaeno Science Center (Wolfsburg, Germany), Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art (Cincinnati, Ohio), Bergisel Ski Jump (Innsbruck, Austria), and Vitra Fire Station (Weil am Rhein, Germany)."--Jacket.

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Michael Stern and Alan Hess

"A visionary artist who has achieved worldwide fame, Julius Shulman transformed the face of architectural photography - has, in truth, changed the very nature of how we see architecture - demanding that his work be so much more than the cold documentation of buildings. From the earliest photographs till those taken today, in a prolific and still vibrant career, his work demonstrates a profound sensitivity to and appreciation for the spaces in which actual people live, spaces that, as seen through his lens, are at once luminous and profoundly shadowed, spaces that are sometimes wonderfully mannered and yet still strangely, deeply personal, spaces of intrigue and ultimately extraordinary beauty, into which the observer - Shulman's passionate audience - longs to enter." "This volume, published in association with the Palm Springs Art Museum to accompany the exhibition, Julius Shulman: Palm Springs, tells the brilliant, decades-long story of the legendary photographer's symbiotic relationship with this oasis of Modernism on which so much of his photography is focused, an architectural landscape the formation of which he has simultaneously observed and helped bring to be."--BOOK JACKET.

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Lesley A. DuTemple

Describes the history of the construction, in Rome, Italy, of the Colosseum, considered by many to be the most famous building in the world.

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Yves Draussin

Décrire la ville, la rendre sensible, perceptible, en démontrer les formes, les évolutions, la complexité visible et invisible ; et en expliquer les échecs. Mais ce récit entend également replacer la conception dans son contexte évènementiel, redonnant aux acteurs la paternité de leurs décisions et de leur influence sur le présent et le futur de la ville. Ainsi, l'identité de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines s'est forgée, principalement dans l'urbanisme, l'architecture et l'art public de son centre.(Ouvrage comportant 85 photos)