Ellen Kooi Above Rotterdam

Ellen Kooi Above Rotterdam
Author: John Bezold
Publisher: Actar D, Inc.
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2022-03-11
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 1638408556

High above the streets of Rotterdam, on cold winter nights, during early spring evenings, and dusky autumn days; five situations were staged and captured by artist Ellen Kooi, inside the B' Tower in Rotterdam, by architect Wiel Arets. Nearly each apartment is identical, which lends a receded repetition to the ‘stage sets’ Kooi created, in the tradition of her renowned landscape photography. In Kooi’s ‘sets’, a sleeping young girl cuddles with whimsical Weimaraners; a lonely business man digitally pines for his distant love; a young couple saunters and seduces one another, inside and out; an informal dinner gathering morphs into an impromptu musical; a mother creates a dream world for her and her children, high above Rotterdam’s streets. Interspersed throughout Kooi's sets of imagery are separately created scenes of poetry and prose, by artist Katrien Van den Brande, which alternate with Kooi's narratives–all graphically woven together by a design from Mainstudio. This publication is a two-dimensional immersion into a parallel urban reality, that’s at once fantasy and fiction–yet remarkably familiar.

Ellen Kooi Above Rotterdam

Ellen Kooi Above Rotterdam
Author: John Bezold
Publisher: Actar
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2017-09
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9781945150227

Colliding modern architecture, theatrically informed photography, and surreal poetry and prose; this carefully-crafted collaboration between artist Ellen Kooi, architect Wiel Arets, and artist Katrien Van den Brande documents five sets of highly-staged visual 'scenarios', and nine textual 'situations', of numerous imaginary guests, who simultaneously inhabit the B' Tower-a high-rise in the center of Rotterdam. Each scenario was dreamt up, created, and captured on camera by Kooi; each of Van den Brande's situations were written while staying at the tower, in the guise of the many other, 'unseen', temporary tower guests.

Tiny Taxonomy

Tiny Taxonomy
Author: Rosetta Sarah Elkin
Publisher: Actar
Total Pages: 139
Release: 2017
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9781940291833

Tiny Taxonomy offers a visually engaging collection of images and texts drawn from a series of contemporary garden installations, which highlight the role of individual plants in landscape architecture. Tiny Taxonomy showcases species that are in cultivation or in profusion, but rarely purposefully planted. A grouping of plants is categorized by common traits derived from an evolution towards feature miniaturization, generating another form of classification. Due to the diminutive size of their features, these plants are often over-looked and therefore tend to be under specified. It seems that as the world around us gains complexity and intricacy, our biological world is tending towards monotony. Tiny Taxonomy considers smallness a design opportunity, offering innumerable microcosmic considerations of the leaf form, flower structure, and physical habitat of individual plants.

Un-Conscious-City

Un-Conscious-City
Author: Wiel Arets
Publisher: Actar D, Inc.
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2022-02-25
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1638408491

No one demands that people move to cities; people tend to do so, on their own. People choose to move to cities for opportunity. Such choices are often made unconsciously, as they are based on rules, traditions, and local communities–or a combination of all three. Un-Conscious-City explores and unravels Dutch architect Wiel Arets’ kaleidoscopic viewpoints on the ways the collective, unconscious decisions taken by the world’s citizens throughout time–a process that remains invisible to the naked eye–are now working to transform and shift the physical, sensory, and emotional experiences of human beings, as they navigate and live in today’s metropolises as well as the countryside. People tend to only belong to one religion, one society, or one club–which completely defines their existence. One day most human beings will live in a global­nomadic-urban-condition; this will soon be amplified to unknown heights. Un-Conscious-City raises questions, predicaments, and ideals regarding the future of our cities, while recognizing their limitations. Wiel Arets–renowned architect, writer, and thinker–identifies this condition as the Un-Conscious-City.

Nowness Files

Nowness Files
Author: Wiel Arets
Publisher: Nowness
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2019-07-30
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9781948765305

"NOWNESS FILES charts the evolution of the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, under the deanship of distinguished architect Wiel Arets, from 2012-2018. NOWNESS FILES is the second publication in the NOWNESS series from Illinois Institute of Technology's College of Architecture-announcing and documenting the college's activities. Whereas NOWNESS set the college's new educational, and urban-centric theme-"Rethinking Metropolis"-and sought to announce new initiatives instituted under then new dean Wiel Arets; NOWNESS FILES documents the effect of those changes on the college's curriculum. Its pages chart the evolution of the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP), first awarded in 2014, expound on the numerous publications produced at the college from 2012-2018, reflects on lectures and lecturers, and highlights the college's new digital media outlets, as the website, and archiving system PROTOCOL. Special attention is given to the revised and expanded degrees the college offers, and to the activities of its faculty, staff, and students- who compose the college's community. Like the original publication; NOWNESS FILES closes with a visual essay by the late photographer Michael Wolf-with a selection of images from his "Transparent City" series-documenting Chicago's glass skyscrapers, and life within them."--Provided by publisher.

The Republican Alternative

The Republican Alternative
Author: André Holenstein
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2008
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9089640053

The Republican Alternative seeks to move beyond the mere notion of scholarly inquiry into the republic—the subject of recent rediscovery by political historians interested in Europe’s intellectual heritage—by investigating the practical similarities and differences between two early modern republics, as well as their self-images and interactions during the turbulent seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Among the world’s most economically successful societies, Switzerland and the Netherlands laid much of the foundation for their prosperity during the early modern period discussed here. This volume attempts to clarify the special character of these two countries as they developed, including issues of religious plurality, the republican form of government, and an increasingly commercially-driven agrarian society.

Mechanisms of Life History Evolution

Mechanisms of Life History Evolution
Author: Thomas Flatt
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 506
Release: 2011-05-12
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0191621021

Life history theory seeks to explain the evolution of the major features of life cycles by analyzing the ecological factors that shape age-specific schedules of growth, reproduction, and survival and by investigating the trade-offs that constrain the evolution of these traits. Although life history theory has made enormous progress in explaining the diversity of life history strategies among species, it traditionally ignores the underlying proximate mechanisms. This novel book argues that many fundamental problems in life history evolution, including the nature of trade-offs, can only be fully resolved if we begin to integrate information on developmental, physiological, and genetic mechanisms into the classical life history framework. Each chapter is written by an established or up-and-coming leader in their respective field; they not only represent the state of the art but also offer fresh perspectives for future research. The text is divided into 7 sections that cover basic concepts (Part 1), the mechanisms that affect different parts of the life cycle (growth, development, and maturation; reproduction; and aging and somatic maintenance) (Parts 2-4), life history plasticity (Part 5), life history integration and trade-offs (Part 6), and concludes with a synthesis chapter written by a prominent leader in the field and an editorial postscript (Part 7).

Dutch for Reading Knowledge

Dutch for Reading Knowledge
Author: Christine van Baalen
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2012
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9027211965

Suitable for students, researchers and scholars who need to learn how to read and translate modern Dutch texts for their academic research, this book focuses on those areas where the Netherlands plays or has played a leading and innovative role in the world.

Victorian Splendour

Victorian Splendour
Author: Suzanne Forge
Publisher: Melbourne ; New York : Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 168
Release: 1981
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: