Archilab's Earth Buildings: Radical Experiments in the Architecture of the Land

The third volume in this exciting series presenting young architecture and design talents, ArchiLab's Earth Buildings turns its focus to building with the land. Projects from thirty of the most innovative young practices of todayincluding Field Operations, Tom Leader, NOX, Servo, Vicente Guallart, and Kengo Kumaconfront and offer proposals and solutions to issues such as dwindling natural resources, land engineering, the city as ecosystem, and the sensitive development of brown sites. Presented through extensive plans, computer renderings, and photographs, buildings and large-scale schemes reveal an almost infinite array of breathtaking ideas for the future, an inspiration for a generation of designers, practitioners, and policymakers. Essays by international critics Frederic Migayrou, Bart Lootsma, Manuel Gausa, and others consider the earth's economy and suggest how contemporary architects might best and most responsibly respond to our fragile planet in a technology-driven age. Over 600 color illustrations.

Marie-Ange Brayer is the director of the FRAC, a government-funded regional art collection based in Orleans, France, with one of the largest collections of contemporary architectural models and drawings in the world. She is also the organizer of the celebrated annual ArchiLab conference in Orleans. Beatrice Simonot is co-curator of the ArchiLab conference in Orleans and a frequent contributor to European architectural journals. Both co-edited ArchiLab: Radical Experiments in Global Architecture (2001) and ArchiLab's FutureHouse: Radical Experiments in Living Space (2002) published by Thames & Hudson.