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Saving space: Big ideas for small buildings Over the years, talented architects have occasionally indulged themselves with the challenge of designing small but perfectly formed buildings. Today, with reduced budgets, many architects have turned in a more focused way to creating works that may be diminutive in their dimensions, but are definitely big when it comes to trendsetting ideas. Whether in Japanese cities, where large sites are hard to come by, or at the frontier between art and architecture, small buildings present many advantages, and push their designers to do more with less. A dollhouse for Calvin Klein in New York, a playhouse for children in Trondheim, pop-up stores for fashion stars, vacation cabins, and housing for victims of natural disasters are all part of the new rush to develop the great small architecture of the moment. The 2013 Pritzker Prize winner Toyo Ito is here, but so are emergent architects from Portugal, Chile, England, and New Zealand. Alvaro Siza and Kazuyo Sejima (SANAA) display their eye for tiny detail alongside artists Doug Aitken and Olafur Eliasson. From world-famous names to the freshest new talent, come discover architectural invention on a whole new, small scale. Text in English, French, and German



About the Author

Philip Jodidio

Philip Jodidio, born in New Jersey in 1954 graduated from Harvard where he studied the history of art and economics. He was the Editor in Chief of the widest circulation French art magazine Connaissance des Arts from 1980 to 2002. He is the author of more than 130 books, mainly about contemporary architecture. He has published monographs on Richard Meier, Norman Foster, Santiago Calatrava, Alvaro Siza, Zaha Hadid, Renzo Piano, Tadao Ando, Jean Nouvel and Shigeru Ban. He has also worked with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture on books concerning the Muslim world.



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