The Make Believe Space

Looks at the Turkish territory of Northern Cyprus, a self-defined state, which is actually imaginary (because it is only recognized by Turkey). This title examines the sense of haunted property and objects lost and gained in the partition, along with people's relation to the fictive remapping of places and history by this new state.

Why technology is most transformative when it is playful, and innovative spatial design happens only when designers are both tinkerers and dreamers. In Urban Play, Fábio Duarte and Ricardo Álvarez argue that the merely functional aspects of technology may undermine its transformative power. Technology is powerful not when it becomes optimally functional, but while it is still playful and open to experimentation. It is through play--in the sense of acting for one's own enjoyment rather than to achieve a goal--that we explore new territories, create new devices and languages, and transform ourselves. Only then can innovative spatial design create resonant spaces that go beyond functionalism to evoke an emotional response in those who use them. The authors show how creativity emerges in moments of instability, when a new technology overthrows an established one, or when internal factors change a technology until it becomes a different technology. Exploring the role of fantasy in design, they examine Disney World and its outsize influence on design and on forms of social interaction beyond the entertainment world. They also consider Las Vegas and Dubai, desert cities that combine technology with fantasies of pleasure and wealth. Video games and interactive media, they show, infuse the design process with interactivity and participatory dynamics, leaving spaces open to variations depending on the users' behavior. Throughout, they pinpoint the critical moments when technology plays a key role in reshaping how we design and experience spaces.

In The Case for Make Believe, Harvard child psychologist Susan Linn tells the alarming story of childhood under siege in a commercialized and technology-saturated world. Although play is essential to human development and children are born with an innate capacity for make believe, Linn argues that, in modern-day America, nurturing creative play is not only countercultural—it threatens corporate profits. A book with immediate relevance for parents and educators alike, The Case for Make Believe helps readers understand how crucial child’s play is—and what parents and educators can do to protect it. At the heart of the book are stories of children at home, in school, and at a therapist’s office playing about real-life issues from entering kindergarten to a sibling’s death, expressing feelings they can’t express directly, and making meaning of an often confusing world. In an era when toys come from television and media companies sell videos as brain-builders for babies, Linn lays out the inextricable links between play, creativity, and health, showing us how and why to preserve the space for make believe that children need to lead fulfilling and meaningful lives.

New fantastic sticker books for children to enjoy Each book contains 16 coloring and activity pages, as well as 2 sticker sheets and 2 press-out pages centered around an adorable theme. From the alphabet to woodland creatures, children can quite literally get stuck in and enjoy hours of fun

Make-believe cool is not quite enough.

At the foot of the Argentine Andes, bulldozers are destroying forests and homes to create soy fields in an area already strewn with rubble from previous waves of destruction and violence. Based on ethnographic research in this region where the mountains give way to the Gran Chaco lowlands, Gastón R. Gordillo shows how geographic space is inseparable from the material, historical, and affective ruptures embodied in debris. His exploration of the significance of rubble encompasses lost cities, derelict train stations, overgrown Jesuit missions and Spanish forts, stranded steamships, mass graves, and razed forests. Examining the effects of these and other forms of debris on the people living on nearby ranches and farms, and in towns, Gordillo emphasizes that for the rural poor, the rubble left in the wake of capitalist and imperialist endeavors is not romanticized ruin but the material manifestation of the violence and dislocation that created it.

Electrical lines that turn into the strings of a massive guitar in the sky. A man dragging a bed sheet, which turns into a road, across an empty field. A charming cottage on an island that is actually the back of a giant fish. Digital photography artist Erik Johansson has achieved international fame by taking and then combining photos into surreal, M.C. Escher–like worlds. This is his first book, and it captures the improbable and impossible in fifty distinctive images. Digital artist Erik Johansson starts with a simple hand-drawn sketch, but what you see in the end is anything but simple: dazzlingly realistic scenes made of hundreds of photographs—all meticulously staged and propped and then stitched together in software—offer a glimpse into wholly invented, incredibly detailed worlds. While shooting takes only a few days, Johansson’s planning and retouching process each take months, resulting in out-of-this-world images that have won him fans worldwide. Here’s what people are saying about the Erik Johannson’s work: “Erik Johansson has created a portfolio of stunning images combining photography, raw materials, and digital editing.” — Daily Mail UK “Erik Johansson … has [taken] the blogosphere by storm by producing heavily manipulated photographs [that] invert aesthetics as we understand them, inspired by MC Escher and other surrealist artists.” — Independent UK