Françoise Fromonot

This book examines how reading, writing and criticism can address the urgent issues faced by architecture as it is practiced, taught and studied today. The publication is drawn from an international public symposium organized in the spring of 2017 by the Department of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong. From Crisis to Crisis reflects Hong Kong's ongoing transformation from a gateway between China and the world, to a regional hub opening up a new milieu for the cultural, economic, and intellectual resources of Asia. The HKU Department of Architecture is part of this ongoing transformation, attracting thinkers from Asia, North America, Australia and Europe to engage in critical, relevant dialogues. The publication reflects this diversity and is characterized by its flexibility, contingency, vitality, and open-endedness. With contributions by Anthony Acciavatti, Chris Brisbin, Sony Devabhaktuni, Françoise Fromonot, Seng Kuan, Xiaoxuan Lu, Jonathan Massey, Graham Brenton Mckay, Kamran Afshar Naderi, Angelika Schnell, Eunice Seng, Nasrine Seraji, Zhi Wenjun, Tao Zhu, Seraji, Zhi Wenjun

Gumshoe is new series of architectural books, introducing a new approach to the writing of architectural history. It returns the focus of architectural discourse back onto buildings, in a style and form that is original and scholarly but also easy and enjoyable to read. It emulates the detective novel – a form of writing beloved by many, but also one that has enjoyed a parallel academic life in disciplines and by writers as diverse as psychoanalysis (Sigmund Freud), film (Sigfried Kracauer), and art history (Carlo Ginzburg) — but, significantly, not yet by architecture. Each volume will investigate a singular building as if it were a mystery waiting to be solved. Written by distinguished French architectural critic and historian Françoise Fromonot, the first case — The House of Doctor Koolhaas — is about the Villa dall’Ava, a private residence in Saint-Cloud, a suburb of Paris. Fromonot brilliantly unpicks, explains and interprets the very first building completed by Rem Koolhaas, who is universally regarded as the world’s most celebrated architect, and his Rotterdam-based firm Office for Metropolitan Architecture.

A thorough and interdisciplinary look at the many aspects of wood construction over the past three hundred years. The IBOIS Notebooks offer a societal, ecological, cultural, and political look at wood construction. Through the work and critical analyses of authors from various disciplines, these notebooks reveal the structuring, sometimes contradictory, and often underestimated role of timber construction in the architectural evolution of the last three centuries. This biannual editorial project, led by Christophe Catsaros, philosopher, journalist, and architecture critic, and Yves Weinand, architect-engineer and director of the Wood Construction Laboratory (IBOIS) at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), draws the outlines of an original and transdisciplinary account. Going beyond the established distinction between the humanities and applied sciences, the notebooks offer alternative relationships for innovative wood construction. Behind this original and cross-disciplinary panorama—where researchers, builders, and historians question the potential of a material—is the ambition of a radical change, as evidenced both by the research and the achievements of the EPFL’s Wood Construction Laboratory.