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

This third volume in a series presenting young architecture and design talents - Brayer and Simonot co-edited the previous two focusing on global architecture and living space - turns its attention to building with the land. Projects by 30 innovative young practices - including Field Operations, Tom Leader, NOX, Servo, Vicente Guallart and Kengo Kuma - confront and offer proposals and solutions to such issues 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 larger-scale schemes reveal an almost infinite array of breathtaking ideas for the future, an inspiration for a generation of designers, practitioners and policy makers. 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 consider respond to our fragile planet in a technology-driven age.