ECOLOGICAL URBANISM
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Edited by Mohsen Mostafavi

with Gareth Doherty

Harvard University

Graduate School of Design

Lars Müller Publishers <link>

656 pages

approx. 1000 illustrations

hardcover (2010)

facebook <link>

While climate change, sustainable architecture, and green technologies have become increasingly topical, issues surrounding the sustainability of the city are much less developed. The premise of this book is that an ecological approach is urgently needed as an imaginative and practical method for addressing existing as well as new cities.

Ecological Urbanism considers the city with multiple instruments and with a worldview that is fluid in scale and disciplinary focus. Design provides the synthetic key to connect ecology with an urbanism that is not in contradiction with its environment. The book brings together practitioners, theorists, economists, engineers, artists, policymakers, scientists, and public health specialists, with the goal of providing a multilayered, diverse, and nuanced understanding of ecological urbanism and what it might be in the future. The promise is nothing short of a new ethics and aesthetics of the urban.

This book is also part of an ongoing series of research projects at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design that explore alternative and radical approaches between ecology and architecture, landscape architecture, planning, and urbanism.

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The Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design invites you to the release party of their recently published book, Jour Fixe – zeitgenössische Positionen in Architektur, Design, Kunst (DOMpublishers, Berlin) which documents a series of 14 lectures from 2008-2009 by various thinkers  including Julien De Smedt.

Tuesday, 27 April:

INTRODUCTION TO BOOK 18.30
JOUR FIXIE LECTURE 19.00
BOOK RELEASE PARTY 21.00

Am Weißenjof 1, 70191 Stuttgart; Mehrzwecksaal, Neubau II

http://www.architektur.abk-stuttgart.de

A5 booklet containing 90 pages of selected JDS projects 01 -10.
10€ + shipping. Please email press@jdsarchitects.com for
request.

26 February – 10 March

Exhibition in Brussels presenting the bookawards and nominations of the Fernand Baudin Prize 2009

At the BIP, Rue Royale, 2-4

1000 Brussels

Opening on 25th of February 2010 at 6 pm

-Agenda was nominated for the prize, and appears in the photo above

- The international jury convened at the ERG to choose the most beautiful books that were designed, published or printed in Brussels and Wallonia in 2009.

The jury consisted of the following six members:

Roger WILLEMS, graphic artist, publisher, chairman of the Jury (NL)

Willem OOREBEEK, artist, teacher (NL)

Jean-Marie COURANT, graphic artist, curator, teacher (F)

David POULLARD, typographer, teacher (F)

Jan WOUTER HELSPEEL, graphic artist, teacher (B)

Drita KOTAJI, book historian, teacher (B)

The 83 received books, presented by category (general literature (fiction), general literature (non-fiction), artists’ books, art books and catalogues, architecture and urban planning books, books for young people and comic books) were placed at the disposal of the jury.

20 books were nominated and the Prize was awarded to 10 books, that were given the title “Winner of the Fernand Baudin Prize 2009”. The three parties of the award winning book; the graphic designer, the publisher and the printer, will receive an honorary diploma.

The Fernand Baudin Prize is supported by Brussels Export, Wallonia-Brussels International (WBI) and the Walloon Agency for Export and Foreign Investments (AWEX)

For More on the Fernand Baudin Prize, click HERE.

Check out the YouTube preview of AGENDA

AGENDA is now available on Amazon.com as well as Actar.com

You can download the movie HERE for your iPhone or other mobile device here, so you can show your friends, family, and strangers on public transportation, it’s an excellent conversation starter!

The soundtrack is a selection from “A New Error” by Moderat, a JDS Brussels office favorite.

JDS invites you to the AGENDA book launch + Julien’s birthday party this Thursday, December 3rd at the new Moeder Lambic Fontainas in Brussels.

TIME: 7 PM – 1 AM
ADDRESS: Place Fontainas 8 [view map]

We would like to thank everyone that came out to the AGENDA Book Launch in Oslo! Not only were we able to see the book, we were also able to enjoy the presense of the  Ski Jump!
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JDS ARCHITECTS invites you to join us and celebrate the release of our new book, AGENDA, next Saturday, November 28th at the (soon-to-be-completed) Holmenkollen Ski Jump in Oslo, Norway.

We will serve champagne and Julien De Smedt will be signing copies of AGENDA.

Saturday, 28 November 2009 from 14.00-16.00
@ Holmenkollen Ski Jump – Visitor’s Centre [map]

You are welcome to bring guests, but please RSVP to press@jdsarchitects.com with the names of those you
wish to bring.

AGENDA is an architecture book that occupies the territory between a monograph, a diary, and a collection of essays, interviews, and conversations. At its most harmless AGENDA is a catalog of 365 days, like a diary or journal: a collective narrative, personal and subjective. It documents the work and thinking of JDS Architects over a specific year marked by crisis, beginning on September 15th, 2008, the day that Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. The form of the book exploits the double meaning of its title, presenting the absurdities of day-to-day architectural practice while also staking our intent.

Rather than a definitive direction, our agenda is a definitive attitude – of eagerness, enthusiasm, and optimism, of criticality and concern, of fun and inquiry. It is a directive, a motivation to act, at times without clear knowledge of where our agenda will lead. “Change,” the buzzword of the last U.S. presidential campaign, is the order of the day, and the task of AGENDA is to explore what kind of change will be needed if architects are to assume a political and social agency in this new landscape.

Bringing together diverse forms of content, AGENDA is a product of vigilant observation, introspection, and engagement with outside thinkers and collaborators – artists, curators, politicians, authors, economists, journalists, developers, educators, and architects.

AGENDA is a record of search and research, providing more questions than answers.

AGENDA is unapologetically naive.

AGENDA is an unorthodox architecture novel.

AGENDA demystifies the practice of architecture, revealing process, research, fun, and failure.

AGENDA looks to both the past and the future.

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There will be book launch parties in the following cities:

ROTTERDAM | Friday, 20 November 2009 from 17.00-22.00 / invite only

OSLO | Saturday, 28 November 2009 from 14.00-16.00
@ Holmenkollen Ski Jump – Visitor’s Centre [map] / RSVP

BRUSSELS | Thursday, 3 December 2009 – TBA / check back soon…

NEW YORK CITY | Thursday, 10 December 2009 from 18.00 – 21.00
@ Storefront for Art and Architecture [map] / open to public

Launches in Copenhagen, Paris, Barcelona, and London will follow in early 2010. More details about the launch parties and about how to obtain your own copy of AGENDA will be posted soon. AGENDA will be available worldwide in December.

PRE-ORDER ON ACTAR’S WEBSITE.

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15 Oct
Book launch at Overgaden – Institute of Contemporary Art
Copenhagen. Time: 18- 21.00

Read more here.