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Rising to the top of a wealth of entries from more than ninety art and architectural publishers, Landscape and Structures, a forthcoming Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess book edited by the Swiss Federal Office of Culture, won the international DAM Architectural Book Award in the category of Engineering. The book is a striking visual tour of Switzerland’s public structural landmarks—bridges, tunnels, mountain passes—through the personal perspective of renowned civil engineer Jurg Conzett with photographs by Martin Linsi. The jury of the DAM prize, bestowed by the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in conjunction with the Frankfurt Book Fair, praised the book’s unique subject and thoughtful execution:

Jurg Conzett and Martin Linsi take readers on an expedition to bridges from all eras in Switzerland. The structures are presented in writing and in images from a point of view that is just as expert as it is consistently subjective. The articles and photos go far beyond a pure documentation and are a delight to read and look at.

Landscape and Structures: A Personal Inventory of Jurg Conzett, Photographed by Martin Linsi is scheduled for publication in the early spring of 2011.

Posted by COA at 10:32 AM | Permalink
Posted to Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess

In a post on yesterday’s NYRblog, Martin Filler examines the life and works of renowned architect Denise Scott Brown. Scott Brown’s Learning from Las Vegas—which she cowrote with Robert Venturi and Steven Izenour—enjoys today the reputation as a signal work of postmodernism in architecture and urban planning.

In Las Vegas Studio, a book published recently by Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess, editors Hilar Stadler and Martino Stierli assemble several of the pictures and film stills that Scott Brown, Venturi, and Izenour shot in 1968 during their research for Learning from Las Vegas.

Also, for those who live in Los Angeles or will be traveling there in the near future, many of the images are now on exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Posted by COA at 12:15 PM | Permalink
Posted to Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess

The wires and webs are buzzing with news about many of our client presses, and here's your chance to partake of the excitement—

Just in time for the November 9th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Tariq Ali will be talking about the past and future of communism at the Harvard Book Store on November 10th at 7:00 pm. Visit the store for more details.

In contrast, an icon of capitalist splendor—Las Vegas—will be on display October 29, 2009 to February 5, 2010 when the Yale School of Architecture presents an exhibit on Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown's Las Vegas Studio.

If you've seen Bright Star, the new film on John Keats and Fanny Brawne and are eager to learn more about one of the original Romantics, you should check out this new podcast featuring Stephen Hebron, author of John Keats: A Poet and His Manuscripts, discussing what Keats's letters and poems reveal about his creative process.

Fred Czarra, author of Spices: A Global History, reveals his good taste and love of flavor in an article by the Southern Maryland News.

Creatures great and small, covered in fur or scales, get a full treatment in The Chronicle Review's look at Reaktion's Animal Series.

Over at Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Brian Klug discusses his new book from Seagull, Offence: The Jewish Case.

Finally, the excitement is only just beginning for Seagull's new translation of short stories from one of the most unique and significant fiction writers of the 20th Century, Thomas Bernhard.

Posted by COA at 12:01 PM | Permalink
Posted to Art and Architecture | Author Events | British Library | Features | Food | Literature | Politics and Current Events | Reaktion | Reviews | Seagull Books | Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess

Swiss architect Peter Zumthor has been named the 2009 winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the premiere international distinction for an architect. Zumthor is best known for his design for the Therme Vals spa complex in the Swiss Alps. Inspired by the spa's majestic surroundings, Zumthor built the structure on the sharp grade of an Alpine mountain slope with grass-topped roofs to mimic Swiss meadows.

The Pritzker jury praised both Zumthor's detailed approach to each of his projects as well as his use of materials, commenting: "In Zumthor's skillful hands, like those of the consummate craftsman, materials from cedar shingles to sandblasted glass are used in a way that celebrates their own unique qualities, all in the service of an architecture of permanence.… In paring down architecture to its barest yet most sumptuous essentials, he has reaffirmed architecture's indispensable place in a fragile world."

Two recent books by Verlag Scheidegger and Spiess offer wonderful insight into Zumthor's work alongside gorgeous images that present his striking designs. Peter Zumthor Therme Vals is the only book-length study of this unique building, and it includes the his original sketches and plans for its design. Seeing Zumthor is a unique collaboration between distinguished Swiss photographer Hans Danuser and Zumthor. Danuser's images of the buildings created by Zumthor are photographs that comment equally on the art of photography and the art of architecture.

Posted by COA at 09:03 AM | Permalink
Posted to Art and Architecture | Awards | Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess

Art and photography blog 5B4 features an insightful review of Las Vegas Studio. The book reproduces the groundbreaking images from Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour's classic treatise in architectural theory Learning from Las Vegas alongside new essays that explore how the pictures contemplate the phenomenon of the modern city and forge the link to architectural practice of the decades since.

From 5B4's Review:
"Las Vegas Studio: Images from the Archive of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown in design and execution is the exact opposite of the gaudy flash of its content. Cool, calculated and elegant, it embraces an aesthetic which is so controlled and clean that it manages to somehow reign in the explosion of typography, color, and scale that the photos describe."

Posted by COA at 04:27 PM | Permalink
Posted to Art and Architecture | Reviews | Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess