Pamphlet Architecture 36

This newest addition to the Pamphlet Architecture series, long admired for its willingness to propose architectural solutions to challenging problems addresses the issue of rising sea levels with an interrogation of the concept of floating cities, a field of inquiry gaining increasing relevance and urgency with the impending reality of climate change. The authors explore notions of buoyancy and the amphibious through a typology based on human response and adaptation, to one of the hosting pressing issues of our day.

Pamphlet architecture was initiated in 1977 as an independent vehicle to criticize, question and exchange views. Each issue is assembled by an individual author/architect.

Ambiguous Spaces, the newest installment in the Pamphlet Architecture series and a return to Pamphlet's own progressive roots, features the architectural fictions "The Pregnant Island" and "Nuclear Breeding." These two projects develop alternative urban concepts that address the challenges presented by the specific situations and social dynamics described in controversial locations such as the Brazilian Tucurui Dam, the Three Gorges Dam in China, and former English nuclear test sites. Using narrative techniques, fictional programs, ambiguous spaces, and building devices, Ambiguous Spaces explores people, communities, and even entire cities oppressed by a lack of freedom.

Ambiguous Spaces, the newest installment in the Pamphlet Architecture series and a return to Pamphlet's own progressive roots, features the architectural fictions "The Pregnant Island" and "Nuclear Breeding." These two projects develop alternative urban concepts that address the challenges presented by the specific situations and social dynamicsdescribed in controversial locations such as the Brazilian Tucurui Dam, the Three Gorges Dam in China, and former English nuclear test sites. Using narrative techniques, fictional programs, ambiguous spaces, and building devices, AmbiguousSpaces explores people, communities, and even entire cities oppressed by a lack of freedom.

The Pamphlet Architecture series was founded in 1978 by architects Steven Holl and William Stout as a venue for publishing the works, thoughts, and theory of a new generation of architects. Now in its third decade, this award-winning series continues to build upon its legacy by promoting individual points of view with all of their raw and rough-edged spontaneity. In 1998 we published a hardcover volume collecting the first ten issues of Pamphlet Architecture. We areproud to present the next nine issues in the companion volume Pamphlet Architecture 11-20. This graphically stunning and theoretically stimulating collection includes the early work of many of today's best-knownarchitects, as well as an introduction by Steven Holl.

In this volume, the latest addition to the award-winning Pamphlet Architecture series, the authors examine common architectural forms (chairs, doors, and walls) and programs (a cinema, a health club, a skyscraper) in order to dissect and reconfigure them. In the process they create ten new projects that draw their power from an oscillation between the recognizable and the surreal. Cleverly undermining the conventions and norms of contemporary architectural design, the authors pose a direct challenge to the seemingly endless search for new styles, arguing instead that the greatest potential for architecture in the twenty-first century rests on an imaginative examination of what we take for granted. Designed by authors, Situation Normal... weaves together text, photographs, and drawings. An introductory essay establishes the theoretical and historical position of the book.