a+t architecture publishers

Article written by Xavier González

The history of urban planning has shown us that in any urban area, whether it be a developed or spontaneous area, three basic functions exist. These functions are residence, materialised as a group of dwellings that takes up the majority of the built-up area; activities, found in workplaces or in facility-containing places; and lastly, the flow, movement supported by the infrastructural network.
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Article written by Xavier González

Though customs are constantly evolving in accordance with fashions or social and economic transformations, the appearance of new uses has become the main agent for the invention of new spatial or architectural typologies. Thus, are stations, pedestrian passages, department stores, airports, and shopping centers an enlargement, a limit, a reduction, or a mere refuge of public space? Such ambiguity, and even interference, of the indicators of and limits between public and private space, magnified by the urbanistic heritage of the Modern Movement, gives the impression that public space belongs to everybody and nobody at the same time.
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Article written by Xavier González

Blue eyes or brown, blonde hair or black, fair or dark skin –the details of the famous doll change to facilitate local identification for kids. But beyond the slight differences, Barbie’s body doesn’t change: the matrix stays the same. And if her vital statistics recall (in miniature, metric) those of Naomi Campbell (86-58-81) or Claudia Schiffer (96-62-92), before anything else her body represents a model: the universal sublimation of the standard young woman and her charms.
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Article written by Xavier González

Poring over all sorts of reviews to prepare and document my article, I suddenly became aware of the manner in which my attention was caught by one project or another. As I look at pictures, examine documents and leaf through magazines, the flow of my reading is arrested now and then by a detail.
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Article written by Xavier González

Savory and plump, and melting in the tea, la petite madeleine has become, even for those who have not read Proust, the object-symbol that summarizes remembrance, the survival of images and the sudden re-emergence of the past within the present. Spontaneously we recognize those things once familiar to us and which, from somewhere deeply buried in our recollection are suddenly revived through the madeleine’s mysterious savor.
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Article written by Xavier González

Several books and articles have been published throughout the world on Jean Nouvel; he himself has regularly expressed his ideas in a large number of interviews and lectures. Yet, what is particularly striking is the extreme diversity of his projects, the sense that they are rooted in their place and in to the present time. For the past twenty years, Jean Nouvel has questioned the very basis of architecture by substituting the spatial discourse and the endogenous heritage of architecture for a sensitive approach that engages perception and emotion.
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Article written by Xavier González

“Flexibility is not the exhaustive anticipation of all possible changes. Most changes are unpredictable. (...) Flexibility is the creation of a capacity with a wide margin that enables different and even opposing interpretations and uses” (1) According to Charles Darwin, animal and plant species alike must adapt to their environment in order to survive. The same can be said of architecture.
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Clearly, the human body and architecture have a long history in common. The human body has been in reality, the first instrument of measurement, so that units such as feet and inches are still used today in manycountries. Measurement has become, for this reason, the sense of size and proportion...