This is a multi-disciplinary study that adopts an innovative and original approach to a highly topical question, that of meaning-making in museums, focusing its attention on pedagogy and visual culture. This work explores such questions as:How and why is it that museums select and arrange artefacts, shape knowledge, construct a view?How do museums produce values? How do active audiences make meaning from what they experience in museums?This stimulating book provokes debate and discussion on t...

As Found Houses is a guide to the surprising design decisions found in the domestic architecture of rural China and a resource for thinking about contemporary design.

Almost all texts of this anthology revolves around this same topic: drawing. There are subtle variations in the inception and focus of each of the seventeen texts but, as a whole, the book can be read as a continuous monologue that keeps going back to that same core idea, almost compulsively. Flores & Prats believe in the capacity of drawing by hand to generate multiple and complex strata of knowledge about a space or a place, so they use it to guide the successive steps in their design p...

The Sonneveld House in Rotterdam is one of the best preserved examples of Dutch Functionalist domestic architecture. It was built in 1933 to a design by Brinkman and Van der Vlugt, an architectural practice that acquired international fame with its designs for the Van Nelle Factory, the Van der Leeuw House and Feyenoord Stadium, all three in Rotterdam. The Sonneveld House, now a museum, was originally built for one of the Van Nelle directors, A.H. Sonneveld.

An unusual feature of the Sonnevel...

Migration is one of the most pressing and complex spatial urban challenges in Europe today. Observing how newcomers, such as labour migrants, refugees, border crossers sans papiers, and asylum seekers are accommodated, we must conclude that at present not a single urban strategy convincingly enables us to receive new arrivals at the heart of our societies and cities. People are being stored in overcrowded refugee settlements on Greek islands, in squalid basement apartments in central Athens, ...

For English see belowEuropa kwam zwaar gehavend uit de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Nederland pakte, ondanks de omvang, de armoede en aanzienlijke oorlogsschade, de wederopbouw voortvarend op. Gebombardeerde steden en dorpen herrezen uit het puin en dankzij centrale sturing werd Nederland ruimtelijk opnieuw ingericht. Ook in economisch en sociaal-maatschappelijk opzicht vonden ingrijpende vernieuwingen plaats.Het gevoel van optimisme leidde tot een verrassend grote diversiteit in architectuur, steden...