The newest title from AA Publications features key early projects of 20 young architectural practices of the 60s and 70s, together with commentaries by invited critics, including Kenneth Frampton, Sylvia Lavin and Pier Vittorio Aureli. First Works - Emerging Architectural Experimentation of the 1960s & 1970s, edited by Brett Steele Francisco Gonzalez de Canales, takes a look at the new generation of architects who began their careers amidst a tumultous period in the 1960s and 70s - a time of profound social, new conditions for architecture and the city and lasting changes to popular and critical forms of cultural production. First Works is the story of this period and examines the conditions of architecture and founding of architectural careers through a selection of projects undertaken during the 60s and 70s. Accompanying a major travelling exhibition, the book presents a single key early project, in the form of models, sketches, photographs and drawings, by 20 young architectural practices: Archigram, Archizoom, Aldo Rossi, Alvaro Siza, Cedric Price, Robert Venturi, Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, Paul Virilio and Claude Parent, Rafael Moneo, Renzo Piano, Peter Eisenman, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Toyo Ito, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, Tom Mayne and Michael Rotondi, Morphosis, Bernard Tschumi, Herzog & de Meuron and Zaha Hadid. Alongside these 'first works', 20 invited critics, including Kenneth Frampton, Sylvia Lavin and Pier Vittorio Aureli, offer contemporary commentaries on these projects and their place within the architects' subsequent careers.

Source - AA Publications

Adam Bryce