Architecture

Bringing together leading international practitioners and theorists in the field, ranging from the 1960s pioneers of participation to some of the major contemporary figures in the field, Architecture and Participationopens up the social and political aspects of our built environment, and the way that the eventual users may shape it. Divided into three sections, looking at the politics, histories and practices of participation, the book gives both a broad theoretical background and more direct examples of participation in practice. Respectively the book explores participation's broader context, outlining key themes and including work from some seminal European figures and shows examples of how leading practitioners have put their ideas into action.

Expanding Architecture presents a new generation of creative design carried out in the service of the greater public and the greater good. Questioning how design can improve daily lives, editors Bryan Bell and Katie Wakeford map an emerging geography of architectural activism - or 'public-interest architecture' - that might function akin to public interest law or medicine by expanding architecture's all-too-often elite client base. With 30 essays by practising architects and designers, urban and community planners, historians, landscape architects, environmental designers and members of other fields, this volume is full of work from around the world that illustrates the ways in which design can address issues of social justice, allow individuals and communities to plan and improve their own lives and serve a much larger percentage of the population than it has in the past.

An installation is usually the end product for an artist, but for architects it can also be a preliminary step in an ongoing design process. Like paper projects designed in the absence of "real" architecture, installations offer architects another way to engage in issues critical to their practice. Direct experimentation with architecture's material and social dimensions engages the public around issues in the built environment that concern them and expands the ways that architecture can participate in and impact people's everyday lives. The first survey of its kind,Installations by Architects features fifty of the most significant projects from the last twenty-five years by today's most exciting architects, including Anderson Anderson, Philip Beesley, Diller + Scofidio, John Hejduk, Dan Hoffman, and Kuth/Ranieri Architects. Projects are grouped in critical areas of discussion under the themes of tectonics, body, nature, memory, and public space.