Studio Futures

Future Fictions - Future Literacy - Future Ethics.

Annotation. Essays on the evolving role of the studio within architectural education.

The twentieth century offered up countless visions of domestic life, from the aspirational to the radical. Whether it was the dream of the fully mechanised home or the notion that technology might free us from home altogether, the domestic realm was a site of endless invention and speculation. But what happened to those visions? Are the smart homes of today the future that architects and designers once predicted, or has 'home' proved resistant to radical change? Home Futures: Living in Yesterday's Tomorrow -accompanying a major Design Museum exhibition of the same title-explores a number of different attitudes toward domestic life, tracing the social and technological developments that have driven change in the home. It proposes that we are already living in yesterday's tomorrow, just not in the way anyone predicted. This book begins with a lavishly illustrated catalogue portraying the 'home futures' of the twentieth century and beyond, from the work of Ettore Sottsass and Joe Colombo to Google's recent forays into the smart home. The catalogue is followed by a reader consisting of newly commissioned essays by writers such as Dan Hill and Justin McGuirk, which explore the changes in the domestic realm in relation to space, technology, society, economy and psychology.

Hani Rashid, co-founder of Asymptote, the visionary New York architectural practice, has been heading up Studio Hani Rashid in Vienna since 2011. The curriculum focuses on the development of conceptual and practical skills for creating future-oriented architecture – on experimental investigation of atmospheric, phenomenal, and visual effects, which provides intelligent solutions for contemporary forms of dwelling and being but which should also satisfy "feasibility criteria". "Re: Futures" uses texts, digital visualizations and descriptive architectural sketches to document the work created over recent years, and thereby reveals a spectrum of contemporary design methods and future-oriented architectural themes.

A debut monograph on the highly sought-after French architecture duo renowned for a signature aesthetic infused with clean lines and raw minimalism. Founded by French architects Karl Fournier and Olivier Marty in 2000, Studio KO has quickly secured its status in the world of architectural design. A refreshing modernist aesthetic imbued with subtle references to history and culture defines their work. While Marty and Fournier are best known for their minimalist villas set in awe-inspiring landscapes, recent commissions also include restaurants, boutiques, and hotels across New York, Paris, and London. The first monograph dedicated to Studio KO, this beautifully illustrated book spotlights a diverse array of their work, from private residences in breathtaking scenery, ranging from the Moroccan mountains to Provence and Brittany in France, to the highly anticipated Yves Saint Laurent Museum, due to open in Marrakech in 2017. Boasting never-before-seen architectural plans, personal photos, and sumptuous photographs of finished spaces, this book offers a fascinating look at the most in-demand architectural designers of today.

Studios are, at once, material environments and symbolic forms, sites of artistic creation and physical labor, and nodes in networks of resource circulation. They are architectural places that generate virtual spaces—worlds built to build worlds. Yet, despite being icons of corporate identity, studios have faded into the background of critical discourse and into the margins of film and media history. In response, In the Studio demonstrates that when we foreground these worlds, we gain new insights into moving-image culture and the dynamics that quietly mark the worlds on our screens. Spanning the twentieth century and moving globally, this unique collection tells new stories about studio icons—Pinewood, Cinecittà, Churubusco, and CBS—as well as about the experimental workplaces of filmmakers and artists from Aleksandr Medvedkin to Charles and Ray Eames and Hollis Frampton.

In Hollywood, we hear, it’s all about the money. It’s a ready explanation for why so few black films get made—no crossover appeal, no promise of a big payoff. But what if the money itself is color-coded? What if the economics that governs film production is so skewed that no film by, about, or for people of color will ever look like a worthy investment unless it follows specific racial or gender patterns? This, Monica Ndounou shows us, is precisely the case. In a work as revealing about the culture of filmmaking as it is about the distorted economics of African American film, Ndounou clearly traces the insidious connections between history, content, and cash in black films. How does history come into it? Hollywood’s reliance on past performance as a measure of potential success virtually guarantees that historically underrepresented, underfunded, and undersold African American films devalue the future prospects of black films. So the cycle continues as it has for nearly a century. Behind the scenes, the numbers are far from neutral. Analyzing the onscreen narratives and off-screen circumstances behind nearly two thousand films featuring African Americans in leading and supporting roles, including such recent productions as Bamboozled, Beloved, and Tyler Perry’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Ndounou exposes the cultural and racial constraints that limit not just the production but also the expression and creative freedom of black films. Her wide-ranging analysis reaches into questions of literature, language, speech and dialect, film images and narrative, acting, theater and film business practices, production history and financing, and organizational history. By uncovering the ideology behind profit-driven industry practices that reshape narratives by, about, and for people of color, this provocative work brings to light existing limitations—and possibilities for reworking stories and business practices in theater, literature, and film.

“A literary experience unlike any I’ve had in recent memory . . . a blueprint for this moment and the next, for where Black folks have been and where they might be going.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) What does it mean to be Black and alive right now? Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham have brought together this collection of work—images, photos, essays, memes, dialogues, recipes, tweets, poetry, and more—to tell the story of the radical, imaginative, provocative, and gorgeous world that Black creators are bringing forth today. The book presents a succession of startling and beautiful pieces that generate an entrancing rhythm: Readers will go from conversations with activists and academics to memes and Instagram posts, from powerful essays to dazzling paintings and insightful infographics. In answering the question of what it means to be Black and alive, Black Futures opens a prismatic vision of possibility for every reader.