URBAN TRANSFORMATION is a book about the State of the City. 50 architects, urban planners, theoreticians, artists, sociologists and politicians, among them such reputed authors as Saskia Sassen, Robert Somol, Jean-Philippe Vassal, Eyal Weizman, Teddy Cruz, Keller Easterling, Alejandro Aravena, Enrique Peñalosa, analyze the multi-facetted nature of global urban change today in 43 highly illustrated contributions. All of them are based on the assumption that that the city today no longer indexes a normative cultural concept – such as expressed, for instance, in the “European City” – but represents a cosmos of extremely varied notions determined by cultural, geographical, political, and economical conditions. To unfold the iridescent texture of our contemporary urbanity, the book takes us on a global dérive through emerging urban conditions in five continents. Urban Transformation publishes for the first time some of the best contributions of the Holcim Form “Urban_Trans_Formation” held in Shanghai in 2007, and represents the first title of the newly founded publishing house RUBY PRESS.
Welcome:
Kristin Feireiss, Aedes Berlin
Edward Schwarz, General Manager Holcim Foundation Zurich
Panel Discussion
Deane Simpson, ETH Zurich, will speak about nomadic urbanism in the USA consisting of aged residents who spend their retirement in highly equipped motor homes, free to move from place to place,
Jörg Stollmann, architecture office Instant, Zurich, guest-professor at TU Berlin, will present UNITED_BOTTLE. The building material of this award-winning project is a PET-bottle whose design has been slightly modified in order to use it as a construction element for small-size temporary shelters,
Florian Lippe, UdK Berlin, will explore how the yurt, the traditional shelter of Mongolian nomads, is doing in the changing urban reality of Ulaan Bataar of the 21st Century.
Moderation:
Andreas Ruby, RUBY PRESS
The panel discussion will be held in German and English.
Urban Transformation. Edited by Ilka & Andreas Ruby. Berlin: Ruby Press, 2008. 400 pages. With 336 illustrations. 17,5 x 23,5 cm. Language: English. ISBN 978-3-00-024878-8 38 EUR
