Creative Engineering, Architecture, and Technology
From the Publisher. The bridge between technology and design: When it comes to a successful integration of two disciplines that are usually treated as separate, Munich-based building technology expert Klaus Daniels can look back on several decades of experience. His projects illustrate how architecture and engineering can work hand in hand, based as they are on an approach in which building services are seen neither as a catalyst for an “overall idea of the building” nor as mere aids to the architectural design. The projects presented in this volume have set international standards in the architecture and technology debate.
This collection of both built and unrealized architectural projects associated with Munich-based technology expert Klaus Daniels offers a provocative survey of the rapidly dissolving boundaries between design and engineering. Although the book opens with an overblown hallelujah chorus of praise in the form of eight prefaces crowning Daniels by eight like-minded colleagues, Daniels is part of a new breed of aesthetically oriented engineers exemplified by Cecil Balmond and Werner Sobek. Talented and worthy of this extensive monograph? Absolutely. As original as these prefaces claim? That is another matter.
The deep worth of this book stems from an intriguing and far from self-serving history of Daniels’s firm, HL Technik, as its engineering focus expanded to accommodate supporting architects in an age of dwindling resources and climate change. Daniels expresses his feelings about the rapidity of change at his engineering firm in his opening essay, “Engineering Design Competence in a Changing World”: “It is astonishing that many professional tasks of our work as an engineering firm today were entirely unknown to use when we established our consultancy in the 1960s.” These include double-skin facade solutions for skyscrapers and natural ventilation systems.
In addition to energy savings over the long haul, Daniels constantly works with architects to develop energy-conservation designs that are beautiful as well as problem-solving. Ten projects are extensively documented in these pages. Especially inspiring was his collaboration with architect Dominique Perrault on the Marinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia, which melds Daniels’s concern for an economical natural ventilation system with Perrault’s plan for a diamond-shaped building facade marked by a metallic textile material looking like gargantuan snowflakes in fractal profusion. Alas, disputes with the building’s client and budget cuts left the building an unfulfilled vision, but the plans in this book reveal just how fertile a richly nuanced engineer-architect meeting of minds this was.
Hope for the future of an aesthetically inspiring integrative fusing of engineering and architecture is supported by the book’s final section honoring innovative educational experiments that mesh the two disciplines. Daniels worked as a technology advisor to a student-led German team from the Technical University at Darmstadt that won first place in the U. S. Department of Energy’s “Solar Decathlon” competition. Far more modest than the Perrault collaboration, graphics reveal a structure just as creative in exemplifying what one planner aptly called “beautility.”
Announcements
Louis Kahn: Architecture as Philosophy by John Lobell
Louis Kahn: Architecture as Philosophy
By John Lobell
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: June 2020
Noted Louis I.Kahn expert John Lobell explores how Kahn’s focus on structure, respect for materials, clarity of program, and reverence for details come together to manifest an overall philosophy.
Our Days Are Like Full Years: A Memoir with Letters from Louis Kahn by Harriet Pattison
Our Days Are Like Full Years: A Memoir with Letters from Louis Kahn
By Harriet Pattison
Publisher: Yale University Press
Forthcoming: October 2020
An intimate glimpse into the professional and romantic relationship between Harriet Pattison and the renowned architect Louis Kahn. Harriet Pattison, FASLA, is a distinguished landscape architect. She was Louis Kahn’s romantic partner from 1959 to 1974, and his collaborator on the landscapes of the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, and the F.D.R. Memorial/Four Freedoms Park, New York. She is the mother of their son, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn.
Louis I. Kahn: The Nordic Latitudes
Louis I. Kahn: The Nordic Latitudes
By Per Olaf Fjeld and Emily Randall Fjeld
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
Published: October 4, 2019
A new and personal reading of the architecture, teachings, and legacy of Louis I. Kahn from Per Olaf Fjeld’s perspective as a former student. The book explores Kahn’s life and work, offering a unique take on one of the twentieth century’s most important architects. Kahn’s Nordic and European ties are emphasized in this study that also covers his early childhood in Estonia, his travels, and his relationships with other architects, including the Norwegian architect Arne Korsmo.
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Reading Graphic Design History: Image, Text, and Context by David Raizman
Reading Graphic Design History: Image, Text, and Context
By David Raizman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Published: December 2020
An innovative approach to graphic design that uses a series of key artifacts from the history of print culture in light of their specific historical contexts. It encourages the reader to look carefully and critically at print advertising, illustration, posters, magazine art direction, and typography, often addressing issues of class, race, and gender.
David King: Designer, Activist, Visual Historian by Rick Poynor
David King: Designer, Activist, Visual Historian
By Rick Poynor
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: September 2020
A comprehensive overview of the work and legacy of David King (1943–2016), whose fascinating career bridged journalism, graphic design, photography, and collecting. King launched his career at Britain’s Sunday Times Magazine in the 1960s, starting as a designer and later branching out into image-led journalism, blending political activism with his design work.
Teaching Graphic Design History by Steven Heller
Teaching Graphic Design History
By Steven Heller
Publisher: Allworth Press
Published: June 2019
An examination of the concerted efforts, happy accidents, and key influences of the practice throughout the years, Teaching Graphic Design History is an illuminating resource for students, practitioners, and future teachers of the subject.
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