DAM Architectural Book Award 2024

Japanese architect Kengo Kuma and Greek photographer Erieta Attali have been working together for over twenty years. Their joint work...

Japanese architect Kengo Kuma and Greek photographer Erieta Attali have been working together for over twenty years. Their joint work is characterized by a shared aesthetic understanding of architecture, space, and visual perception. In both Kuma’s buildings and Attali’s photographs, interior and exterior spaces merge and dissolve into one another. Both are united by the idea that spatial experience is fleeting, shaped by the rhythm of the day and the seasons, making built space a medium that expands into the landscape and encourages people to question their notion of spatial boundaries.

A groundbreaking work of modernity in Porto, the FEP faculty building is a hidden architectural masterpiece, designed by Alfredo Viana...

A groundbreaking work of modernity in Porto, the FEP faculty building is a hidden architectural masterpiece, designed by Alfredo Viana de Lima in the 1960s. Through photographs especially taken by João Carmo Simões and edited drawings, this book shows why the project has been, a silent reference for generations of Portuguese architects.

For a quarter of a century, the architectural collective raumlaborberlin has been pioneering new spaces for action, charting unique paths...

For a quarter of a century, the architectural collective raumlaborberlin has been pioneering new spaces for action, charting unique paths in cooperative urban development, and creating places to foster encounters. Together with experts across various fields, they explore forms of urban practice, participation, and the joint production of space.

Polylemma tells the story of this work: its nine members visit the sites of their work, come together with long-standing colleagues and critics, dissect the mechanisms behind their actions, and reflect on the tools and methods of their research-based practice. Topics discussed across numerous projects include strategies for learning together, experimental building, and radical recycling. Polylemma challenges us to open up our notion of space. How do we want to live together in the future? The book is a plea for the city as a sphere of action.

Methodological, epistemic, and ontological borders have long prevented landscape and urban studies from engaging in transdisciplinary dialogue, sensuousness, and affect. Researching...

Methodological, epistemic, and ontological borders have long prevented landscape and urban studies from engaging in transdisciplinary dialogue, sensuousness, and affect. Researching Otherwise uncovers possibilities for deploying sensory, collaborative, and restitutive methodological tools to craft spaces for producing knowledge from pluriversal worlds. These methods connect researchers and their objects of investigation in new ways to empower restitutive and regenerative futures “otherwise.”

Original contributions stem from research methods based on drawing, photography, sounding and listening, filmmaking, walking, and cartography. They reveal journeys of specialists and their companions while navigating through multi-species walks, engaging in cinematic and performative ways of knowing, submerging in ocean worlds, unsilencing bank vaults and troubled architectural histories, and exploring collaborative ethnographic investigations with refugees.

The book ‘Rosa Reihe Rom’ takes a look at the urban house type of the Palazzine Romane, which is rarely...

The book ‘Rosa Reihe Rom’ takes a look at the urban house type of the Palazzine Romane, which is rarely documented outside of Italy. Over a period of more than sixty years from 1920, numerous of these detached residential buildings were built in the urban extensions of Rome, whose neighbourhoods they still characterise today. As outstanding examples of this type, the twenty-one houses presented in this book document the interaction of carefully orchestrated entrance spaces, interior spatial comfort, orientation towards the city and garden and the external impact as objects of the city.

The Garden House by the Japanese architect Tsuyoshi Tane is the latest building on the Vitra Campus in Weil am...

The Garden House by the Japanese architect Tsuyoshi Tane is the latest building on the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein and the first designed with the climate crisis in mind. The small structure was developed in a trial-and-error process that explored many different options in search of the essence of the site. Tsuyoshi Tane’s unique architectural approach, his discussions with the client and his exchange with the artisans and other participants in the process are conveyed in this publication through a lively collage of statements, drawings and prototypes.

The publication »Tane Garden House« provides a deep insight into the design process that stretched over several years. It documets the creation of the architectural project, including unrealised models, as well as sketches drawn by Tsuyoshi Tane. The appealing softcover book in a handy format does not only excite those interested in architecture, but also serves as a source of inspiration for the topic of building in the future.

In his office Urbana, Bangladesh, Kashef Chowdhury designs architecture that is rooted in the history and nature of the location....

In his office Urbana, Bangladesh, Kashef Chowdhury designs architecture that is rooted in the history and nature of the location. Nature in this sense not only consists of vegetation, plants and forests, but also the spiritual and cultural context of a specific environment and landscape. The range of his works includes the transformation of ships, the development of housing and the construction of mosques, museums and corporate headquarters. All of his projects have the common feature that they are based on comprehensive research work, aimed at applying an awareness of a specific location and its nature to achieve a high degree of innovation and original expression. This combination of traditional building styles and contemporary architecture often has an inspirational effect. The Consciousness of Place is Chowdhury’s philosophical engagement with his own understanding of architecture, based on his research and lectures. It focuses on the significance of architecture, which is able to connect us to nature and liberate us from hectic urban life. Buildings and workplaces should be transformed into oases of peace and relaxation in order to benefit from nature’s regenerative and relaxing qualities. Chowdhury stresses the need to listen to nature and appreciate its beauty. Accordingly, he prefers natural materials in his projects, while also using the interplay of light and shadow as a key element to create spaces that inspire us to pause and think. This publication is a manifesto of a form of architecture that harmonises with the respective location, reflecting the identity of its culture and people. Chowdhury regards his task not so much as work and more as an activity stemming from his love of an art form that serves the people – which he believes is the nature of architecture. In recent years, Chowdhury’s constructed works have attracted international attention and have been awarded prizes such as the 2022 RIBA International Prize and the 2016 Aga Khan Award for Architecture.

Building with earthquakes is a familiar yet persistent design problem for resilient construction on all continents. This book elaborates on...

Building with earthquakes is a familiar yet persistent design problem for resilient construction on all continents. This book elaborates on various factors for earthquake-resilient architecture in six thematic chapters that explore the design strategies of lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, multiplicity and consistency. These factors allow designers to develop contextual solutions that marry technical know-how with social and cultural understanding, ranging in scale from buildings to furniture and urban master plans.

120 case studies from roughly 30 countries, including some highly prestigious buildings, provide a comprehensive overview of the different design strategies.

When it comes to matters related to architecture and urban planning, few other countries grant their population such a far-reaching...

When it comes to matters related to architecture and urban planning, few other countries grant their population such a far-reaching democratic right of co-determination as Switzerland. This facilitates both a societal acceptance of architecture that is unique worldwide, and the constant prevention of projects, including some quite notable ones.

Such projects, often developed with much blood, sweat and tears but then not implemented, are part and parcel of everyday life at architectural firms, even those spoiled by success. Be they lost, rejected, stalled or altered: a host of architectural designs exist that are still talked about today despite the fact that they were never implemented.

For the exhibition Was wäre wenn/ What if, the S AM, together with 25 architectural institutions from all over the country, has made a representative selection from this sheer endless stock of projects.

Wild Site explores the ephemeral by-products of an ever changing city: gaps between buildings, brownfields, intermediate and residual spaces, “wild sites”....

Wild Site explores the ephemeral by-products of an ever changing city: gaps between buildings, brownfields, intermediate and residual spaces, “wild sites”. Five conversations with researchers from the fields of biology, geology, climatology, botany, landscape architecture, urbanism, and architecture are accompanied by a photo series by Zara Pfeifer. Edited by das BAU: Eva Herunter, Katharina Hummer and Julia Obleitner