When we think of Marseille and Architecture, we inevitably think of Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation, the famous and prototypical case study project for modernist housing of the 20th century. This book focuses on the much less known Grands Ensembles that were built in Marseille in the aftermath of the Unité. Larger in scale but arguably less ambitious in their design and program, these housing precincts were meant to supply the demand for new affordable homes.

The first edition of this book, edited by Pier Vittorio Aureli was published 7 years ago in 2013. Already in 2014 we had to print a second edition, and two years later in 2016 a third, which was sold out for quite some time now.  As many people still were asking for a reprint, we decided to go for it. So this is now the fourth edition – this time with a new cover color and on a different paper.  The City as a Project is presents the results of the PhD program of the same name, that Pier Vittorio conducted at the Berlage institute and TU Delft from 2009 to 2013.

For decades, we’ve been told that climate-friendly architecture means reducing the energy used to run buildings. But in reality, that problem can be solved by switching to renewable power. The materials used in construction, by contrast, are a bigger challenge as manufacturing them typically creates emissions, and they are often made from raw materials that are finite. Truly climate-friendly architecture, then, means shifting to materials that produce zero emissions, use no fossil fuels, and create no waste. This book tells you how to start.

Last October Marc Angélil, with whom we had the pleasure to work together on over a dozen books, gave his farewell lecture at ETH Zurich together with the opening of his impressive exhibition „Terrestrial Tales: 100+ Takes on Earth“. We are happy that the accompanying publication by Marc Angélil and Cary Siress is now available in our webshop.

Dear friends, architecture and book lovers, an eventful year draws to a close and we close the office until Jan 6th. Emails and orders will only processed sporadically. 2020 we are entering a crucial decade for our planet, let’s stay engaged, let’s stay together. We wish you lovely holidays and a great start into the twenties!

Together with 24 other books Atlas of the Copenhagens by Deane Simpson, Kathrin Susanna Gimmel, Anders Lonka, Marc Jay, Joost Grootenswas awarded one of the most beautiful German books by the Stiftung Buchkunst. The jury report reads as follows: "Copenhagen is considered one of the most sustainable, livable and bicycle-friendly cities in the world. In critical essays, quotations and more than 400 maps, graphics, diagrams and photos, this volume searches for the basis for the repeatedly positive ranking.

Happy to announce that „Atlas of the Copenhagens“ edited by Deane Simpson, Kathrin Susanna Gimmel, Anders Lonka, Marc Jay, and Joost Grootens, Berlin, Ruby Press, was awarded one of the most beautiful books of Germany 2019.

I still remember the moment I first discovered Lacaton & Vassal’s work. I was flipping through a Spanish architecture magazine, when a photo of their first first project, Maison Latapie, made me gasp. Wow, I thought, this is a house? This can be architecture!? I was shocked, and fascinated. Never before I had seen anything like it: A volume totally enclosed in corrugated fiber cement panels, behind a squiggly filigreed-metal fence. The refusal of any formal expression, a cheap material from a DIY store. And then this ornamental fence, which had obviously been there before! Was this meant as...

Just in time for Christmas we are happy to announce three new releases: Mirroring Effects. Tales of Territory by Marc Angélil and Cary Siress, Ländliche Verheissung by Mathias Burke, Eleonore Harmel, Leon Jank, and Sabeth Kerkhoff, and Addis Ababa. A Manifesto on African Progress by Dirk E. Hebel, Felix Heisel, Marta H. Wisniewska, Sophie Nash.

The exhibition was curated by Ilka & andreas Ruby and swiss architects EM2N. It was shown at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein and the CID Grand Hornu in Belgium before. For the Grassi Museum also 10 housing projects from Leipzig were included. Opening: Wednesday November 28th, 7 pm Exhibition: 29 Nov 2018 – 17 March 2019 Grassi Museum of Applied Art, Johannisplatz 5-11, 04103 Leipzig

Our publication 51N4E Skanderbeg Square Tirana won the International DAM Architecture Book Award 2018 and The Atlas of the Copenhagens got shortlisted. The prize, that was awarded the 10th time, honors the best architectural books in a year based on criteria such as design, content, quality of material and finishing, innovation, and topicality. This year there were 238 entries from 96 architectural and art book publishers from all over the world out of which ten books got awarded and another ten got shortlisted.

Please join us for a discussion with editors Christine Bock, Ulrich Pappenberger and Jörg Stollmann and authors Nishat Awan, Ulrike Hamann & Sandy Kaltenborn, Yamil Hasbun Chavarría, moderated by Mathias Heyden. Wednesday July 4th, 20:30-22:30, Pro qm book store, Almstadtstraße 48-50, 10119 Berlin (in English).

Ruby Press, Esther Schipper Gallery, and Vice Versa Artbooks invite you to the launch of SKANDERBEG SQUARE. The transformation of the square in Tirana is the result of a collaboration between Belgian architecture office 51N4E, Albanian artist Anri Sala, Belgian environmental designers Plant en Houtgoed, and Albanian company for project implementation iRI. Join the conversation between Anri Sala and Freek Persyn from 51N4E: Thursday, June 28th, 6-8 pm at gallery Esther Schipper, Potsdamer Str. 81E, Berlin.

Skanderbeg Square in Tirana, Albania, has won the European Prize for Urban Public Space, a biennial competition honoring projects that create, recover, and improve plazas and squares in European cities. The project was selected from among 279 candidates in 32 countries.

We are happy to publish the second book on housing in and around Africa's biggest cities Cairo. With Cairo Desert Cities the editors of the award winning publication Housing Cairo, Marc Angélil and Charlotte Malterre Barthes, in collaboration with Something Fantastic and Cluster, this time focus on the new towns, that were developed in the desert around Cairo since the 1950s, many of them never completed.

We are happy that the authors of our first "Architecture Monogram" issue, Pieterjan Gijs and Arnout Vaerenbergh, founder of Gijs Van Vaerenbergh, were awarded the Flemish Culture Prize in the category Architecture/Design. Congrats!

We’re happy to announce the opening of the exhibition Together! The New Architecture of the Collective at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein! A major project nearly two years in the making, this ambitious exhibition curated by Ilka & Andreas Ruby together with EM2N aims to provide a comprehensive cross-section of a silent revolution in architecture: the return of the collective.

As part of the Copenhagen Architecture Festival 2017, the exhibition Never Demolish presented the spectacular transformation of 530 dwellings across three high-rise buildings of the Cité du Grand Parc in Bordeaux, France designed by the architectural offices of Lacaton & Vassal, Frédéric Druot and Christophe Hutin. The exhibition was staged at two different sites, the gallery SPACE10 in Copenhagen and the Gellerup Museum in Aarhus.

Our Realities: United Featuring book was featured in the Temporary Library on digital culture during the transmediale festival in Berlin as one of 200 selected publications.

We’re delighted to follow up our previous post to announce that the National Urban Design Awards 2017 took place in central London on March 2 where it was announced that the winner of Book Award category was Ruby Press for Housing Cairo: The Informal Response.

We are very happy to announce that Housing Cairo: The Informal Response by Marc Angélil and Charlotte Malterre-Barthes in collaboration with Something Fantastic and CLUSTER has been shortlisted for the Book Award at the 2017 National Urban Design Awards.

On the occasion of our latest publication Infrastructure Space we invite you to join us for lectures and discussion, drinks and snacks. Friday Jan 20th, 6:30 pm at ANCB, Christinenstr. 18-19, Berlin.

Another big box arrived at our office, inside: Giraffes, Telegraphs, and Hero of Alexandria – Urban Design by Narration , edited by Sabine Müller and Andreas Quednau from Berlin office SMAQ. With a poster showing a selection of the beautiful playful pneumatic inventions of Hero of Alexandria, Greek mathematician and engineer born in 10AD.

The third volume of the series revisits the ideas of the Polish architect Oskar Hansen (1922-2005) on “open forms,” or architectural forms that allow for completion through the user. Editors Rainer Hehl and Ludwig Engel this time look at Japan and ask what lessons the performative dimension of architecture prevalent in traditional and contemporary japanese architecture have for the modern Western architect? Check out Open Living Structures at our web shop.