Product Description

Arquitectura Viva 179 New York Heights
WHEN FORM FOLLOWS FINANCE

PORTZAMPARC · CETRARUDDY · BIG · HERZOG & DE MEURON · SHOP · PERKINS + WILL · AALTO IN MADRID · CHIPPERFIELD’S ESSENTIALS · CONSTANT · DOSSIER: RAMMED EARTH

In Short. A new wave of residential and speculative skyscrapers colonizes Manhattan, Madrid Río wins the Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design; SANAA opens the Grace Farms Foundation headquarters in New Canaan; Kengo Kuma completes the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, CentroCentro Madrid hosts a retrospective on Wassily Kandinksy, and the Juan March Foundation presents Max Bill as artist and industrial designer.

Babels for Profit. Associated in ancient times with religious legends – the Tower of Babel –, the vertical myth found a new and no less powerful version in the enormous corporate buildings of the 20th century. But in today’s New York the old myth takes on an unforeseen form: that of soaring and unbelievably slender skyscrapers containing apartments with spectacular views of Central Park, and so expensive that only the global oligarchy can afford them. Cynthia Davidson identifies these new giants with a world in transformation where form no longer follows function, but finances, and explains their characteristics in an article threaded with astonishing height and budget figures. Her article is followed by a selection of six such buildings, two of which are finished, two are currently under construction, and two are still projects: on West 57th Street, by Christian de Portzamparc; on East 22nd, by CetraRuddy; on Leonard, by Herzog & de Meuron; again on West 57th, by BIG; on East 37th, by Perkins + Will; and yet another on West 57th, this time by SHoP Architects.

Masters and Utopias. The Madrid CaixaForum’s major exhibition on Alvar Aalto is accompanied in the capital by ‘Essentials’ at the ICO Museum, a look at the career of David Chipperfield, and ‘New Babylon’ at the Reina Sofía, which treats the Spanish public to the drawings and models of the urban utopia that Constant Nieuwenhuys dreamt up in the course of twenty years.

Paris in a Suitcase. The Spanish translation of Walter Benjamin’s Passagen-Werk is the latest milestone in the grand project to publish the German thinker’s Obras completas. In addition: two books on architectural drawing, and another pair – in line with the year’s Corbusian celebrations – on the Paris of the Swiss-French master and the Philips Pavilion for the Brussels Expo.

Dossier: Rammed Earth. It is one of the oldest construction material there is, but rammed earth remains an attractive option because it is easily available and thanks to its environmental properties. Fernando Vela writes on the technological evolution of this material, after which three buildings are featured: the house that the specialist Martin Rauch has built for himself in the Tyrol region in collaboration with Boltshauser Architekten; the twelve temporary dwellings protected by a large wall of earth raised by Luigi Rosselli in the Western Australia region; and the home designed by DUST in the Arizona desert, with finishes and colors inspired in vernacular architecture.

To close, Luis Fernández-Galiano reviews the second edition of the Foto/ Industria biennial organized by the MAST Foundation in Bologna.

NEW YORK HEIGHTS
When Form Follows Finance
Dossier Rammed Earth

News
Peaks of Speculation
Madrid Río Awarded
SANAA in New Canaan
Kuma in Hangzhou
Abstraction and Empathy
Master of Good Form

Cynthia Davidson
Living in the Clouds
The Skyline of Inequality

Christian de Portzamparc
One57

CetraRuddy
One Madison Park

Herzog & de Meuron
56 Leonard Street

BIG
VIA West 57th Street

Perkins + Will
Midtown Tower

SHoP Architects
111 West Tower

Art / Culture

Justo Isasi
Concert for Woods

Ángela Baldellou
The Reasons of Form

Julia Ramírez
A Nomadic Urb

Books
The Arcades Project
Scale Traces
World of Signs
The City of the Crow
Multimedia Spaces

Technique/ Construction

Fernando Vela
Crude and Technological

Three Cases

Boltshauser Architekten / Rauch
House, Schlins

Luigi Rosselli
Dwellings, Western Australia

DUST
House, Tucson

Products

Luis Fernández-Galiano
Work Landscapes