Every summer season, the sun-drenched coasts of Bulgaria and Croatia turn into densely inhabited, intensively exploited tourism industry hotspots. This book traces the various architectural and urban planning strategies pursued there since the mid 1950s, in order first to create then to further develop modern holiday destinations. It portrays (late-) modern tourism architecture and resorts of a remarkable quality and typological diversity, which have persisted both as a playground for the domestic labour force and as a viable product on the international market. Yet the authors focus above all on how, in the wake of political change and the privatization…

HEC Paris is a leading European school of advanced business studies with a global community of students from Europe, North and South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. In 2012, HEC Paris’s campus near Versailles was redesigned by renowned architects Martin Duplantier and David Chipperfield to reflect the school’s global character and its focus on open communication and exchange. This new book documents the HEC Campus’s transformation in close detail and richly illustrated, including a newly commissioned photo essay by award-winning French photographer Cyrille Weiner. It takes readers through the planning and construction of its modern buildings, designed by René Coulons, throughout the…

This timely volume brings together fourteen case studies that address the challenges of conserving the twentieth century’s most ubiquitous building material—concrete. Following a meeting of international heritage conservation professionals in 2013, the need for recent, thorough, and well-vetted case studies on conserving twentieth century heritage became clear. This book answers that need and kicks off a new series, Conserving Modern Heritage, aimed at sharing best practices. The projects selected represent a range of building typologies, uses, and sizes, from the high-rise housing blocks of Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation and public buildings such as London’s National Theatre to small monuments like the…

The renowned and highly influential architect, furniture-maker, interior designer and photographer Eileen Gray was born in Ireland and remained throughout her life an Irishwoman at heart. An elusive figure, her interior world has never before been observed as closely as in this ground-breaking study of her work, philosophy and inner circle of fellow artists. Jennifer Goff expertly blends art history and biography to create a stunning ensemble, offering a clear beacon of light into truly understanding Gray – the woman and the professional. Gray was a self-taught polymath and her work was multi-functional, user-friendly, ready for mass production yet succinctly…

Alvar Aalto Libraries presents all nineteen of Alvar Aalto’s completed libraries as well as the Academic Bookstore in Helsinki. Chronologically, the completed buildings range from Viipuri Library in the 1930s to Alajärvi Library in the 1990s, which was built after Aalto’s death. Aalto’s libraries have served various needs, for instance, as part of larger administrative, institutional or cultural centres. A significant group is the public libraries, such as those in Seinäjoki, Rovaniemi and Wolfsburg. Another significant group, which includes the libraries at the University of Jyväskylä, Aalto University and the Mount Angel monastery, are his scholarly libraries. The libraries in…

Our entire culture rests on the nature of our dwellings, stated Alvar Aalto in a lecture he delivered in Munich in 1957. During the course of a career spanning over 50 years, Aalto designed a total of nearly 100 single-family houses, apartments blocks, student dormitories and summer homes. Many of them are architectural gems, in which his thoughts about dwelling and architecture converge. Aalto considered experimental building to be very important: in his opinion, there should always be an opportunity for experimentation in every project, for it is only in that way that architecture can be promoted and quality improved…

The first pubblication in German of the Swedish Acceptera-manifesto by Gunnar Asplund, Wolter Gahn, Sven Markelius, Gregor Paulsson, Eskil Sundahl and Uno Åhrén. The book is published with the support of Universitätsbund Erlangen-Nürnberg and is available from the publisher FAU University Press. From the publisher The »Stockholm Exhibition 1930 of Arts and Crafts and Home Industries« (›Stockholmsutställningen 1930 av konstindustri, konsthantverk och hemslöjd‹) and the Acceptera-manifesto, published the following year by the exhibition organizers – Gunnar Asplund, Wolter Gahn, Sven Markelius, Gregor Paulsson, Eskil Sundahl und Uno Åhrén – mark the breakthrough of Modern Architecture in Sweden as well as in the other Nordic countries. In Acceptera (›Accept‹) the authors promote, under the term…