2g Fala Atelier Porto

Fala is a young architecture practice founded in 2013 in Porto, and led by Filipe Magalhães, Ana Luisa Soares and Ahmed Belkhodja. Hedonistic yet restrained, the studio takes lightness and joy very seriously. Their projects can be characterized by a strong tendency towards autonomy, or better: towards an emerging independence of architectural language. Many of the refurbishment projects in Porto were initiated by private investors, trying to make a fortune by real estate speculation. After the economic crisis of 2008 the downtowns of Porto and Lisbon were confronted with a rampant boom in tourism. Speculation was propelled by special governmental measures such as the relief of a far-reaching protection against dismissal or the easy availability of golden visas. This may be the reason why some of Fala's projects come across like topical declinations of the same program: separation of auxiliary functions from the main space, zoning of the plan, opening and staging of the view onto a small courtyard.

Colour is architecture’s sharpest tool in the box. It has indexed everything from the feminine, cosmetic and vulgar to the pure, intrinsic and embodied. Colour has played a central role in the history of architecture. From the polychromy of the ancients to the great white interiors of high modernism. The figurative flourishes of postmodernism to the embedded sublime of contemporary building systems and facades. In contemporary architecture, colour has emerged as something powerful, both a mode of working and a political proposition. The second digital age has brought a fundamental shift in how architects engage colour. Employing the full range of colour puts forth a projective mode of action. It aids the democratisation of visual culture: opening the field to enable subjectivities, bring in new references and embrace new voices. This book explores the function of colour in contemporary architecture and argues it is not to present a vision of an idealised other world, but to prompt new imaginaries. Take in the full spectrum. Features: 100 Architects, Maya Alam, David Batchelor, Galo Canizares, Courtney Coffman, Fala Atelier, Marcelyn Gow, Sauerbruch Hutton, Sam Jacobs, Carolyn Kane, Guto Requena, Paulette Singley, Amanda Williams and Mimi Zeiger.

This compilation of essays by the Chilean architect Smiljan Radic covers 20 years of written production. The texts were written for various reasons: on the occasion of the publication of a book, as lectures or to accompany an exhibition.

The latest in the 2G Architecture series focuses on the Parisian based practice Bruther. Bruther is a French architectural studio based in Paris. Stéphanie Bru and Alexandre Theriot opened their office in 2007, at the very beginning of what capitalists call a 'crisis' and Marxists might define as new round of 'primitive accumulation and dispossession'. Having grown up and trained during the heyday of the French welfare state and inspired by the optimism of the early European Union, Bru and Theriot are well aware of the pressure that the political shift to the right, social inequality and insecurity about the future of Europe are exerting on public institutions. Bruther stands for a specific architecture, adapted to the needs of each project in order to offer maximal living conditions. Adaptability and evolutivity of the building are fundamentals in the office practice. Since 2007, Bruther have developed national and international projects such as Cultural and Sport Center Saint-Blaise (2014), Helsinki Central Library (2013) and New Generation Research Center (2015).

Introduced by an essay about the vague contradiction between intentionality and chance, necessity and accident, reason and futility, authorship and anonymity, the book presents a selection of images that inform Pezo von Ellrichshausen’s cross production between art, architecture and academia. Each page contains a single picture and a brief caption describing it. Beyond a comprehensive depiction of the individual works, the monograph underlines transversal notions of inventory, format, scale, regulation and value within the pictorial representation. In the fashion of a personal album, each drawing, painting, photograph, model or building, evokes the mental world behind the couple's production. This volume could be read both as a collection of ideas, one after another, or as the same one that persists over time.

The latest in the 2G Architecture series focuses on Junya Ishigami 'To have a vision that is as flexible, as open, as subtle as possible to go beyond conventional wisdom about architecture' Ishigami In his works, which he compares readily to landscapes, Ishigami removes the boundary between the outside and the inner space. Transparency, lightness, organic forms, vegetation make up his vocabulary. His vision of the future is optimistic, ecological, and the prospects of this young Utopian are not barred by any limit. The first time Junya Ishigami made himself known in Europe, with his proposal for the Japan Pavilion for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2008, he was a young and almost unknown architect who had worked for several years with Kazuo Sejima, and had only founded his studio junya.ishigami+associates in 2004. In the Venice pavilion, Ishigami filled all the interior walls of the pavilion with delicate and somehow naïf drawings of gardens and decided to build several greenhouses with real gardens in the outdoor gardens of the building. The following year, he finished the Kanagawa Institute of Technology Workshop, and with only two works he was acclaimed as one of the most innovative proponents of new Japanese architecture. Initially forcing the limits of transparency and lightness, his latest works explore in a conceptual way the relationships between the built matter and the nature, in works such as the Botanical Farm Garden in Tochigi, a multi confessional chapel in China, or the house and restaurant for a chef in Japan, where the exploration of the tectonic merges with the earthly and nature.

Sir David Chipperfield is of one of Britain's leading architects. Renowned for his quiet and thoughtful style, he has a huge international reputation and has created works in China, Japan, Italy, USA, Spain and Germany. Chipperfield produces sophisticated buildings, from museums to homes, with an acute sensitivity for materials and a powerful awareness of their environment. This revised and expanded book presents projects spanning Chipperfield's entire career. Each has a project profile, many accompanied by specially commissioned photographs, along with a complete project chronology. Among the featured works are the River and Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames, the Neues Museum Berlin, BBC Scotland at Pacific Quay, The Hepworth Wakefield, Turner Contemporary Margate, Naga Museum Sudan and Fayland House. This new edition includes 34 new projects, including One Pancras Square and the Royal Academy extension.