DOM Publishers

The German-Chinese forum Urban Academy - organised by the Goethe-Institute Shanghai - focuses on sustainable urban development as well as on the theme of the World Expo 2010: Better City - Better Life. Eco-efficiency in building services, engineering, traffic, water and energy, social transformations and cultural industry stimulated by the City of Shanghai are main issues of these discussions.

The orthodox concept of modernism, as it was passed on with little alteration from the 1920s to the post-war era, has been in a state of crisis for some time. This is especially clear to see in the fields of architecture and urban design. Meanwhile, neither postmodernism nor deconstructivism has proven to be a convincing alternative. In this book,

The Akademie der Kunste (Academy of Arts) in Berlin has carried out its task of promoting the arts in Germany since the year it was founded in 1696. From the outset, master builders have been eligible to become members. The architect Hans Scharoun laid the groundwork for establishing the architectural archive.

An anthology containing all of van der Rohe's writings and lectures, both well known and never republished on architecture and education--mostly translated from German to English--reveal him as an architect who constructed his texts with the same disciplined restraint with which he designed buildings.buildings.

As one of the three royal centres of the Kathmandu Valley in the Nepalese Himalayas, Bhaktapur is a thriving city with some 40,000 inhabitants. Over almost two millennia, its original inhabitantsof the valley, the Newars, have shaped a unique urban culture that preserved a pre-industrial lifestyle until the middle of the twentieth century. The city