Eco-Tech: Sustainable Architecture and High Technology by Catherine Slessor

Eco-Tech: Sustainable Architecture and High Technology by Catherine Slessor, John Linden (Photographer)

The high-tech architecture movement embodied by seminal buildings such as Paris's Centre Pompidou (1977) and London's Lloyd's Building (1986) has undergone a subtle but palpable transformation. While daring feats of structural engineering still mark recent projects by the architects who forged the earliest examples, a new generation has expanded the vocabulary of this architectonic language, and evolved an architecture with different aims. The most significant of these objectives is to create a sustainable architecture.

This international survey presents projects completed in the 1990s that use high-tech forms and materials for environmentally intelligent means. It brings together innovative approaches by established practitioners -- Richard Rogers, Norman Foster, Nicholas Grimshaw, and Michael Hopkins -- with a new generation -- Thomas Herzog, Von Gerkan Marg, Design Antenna, and Itsuko Hasegawa.

The introduction charts the evolution of high-tech architecture and its progression toward more ecological concerns, and the movement as a whole is considered in a broader architectural context. At the book's heart is a selection of forty of the world's most sophisticated projects, each with a thorough description of its unique architectural and technological features, as well as extensive plans, drawings, and sketches. A complete reference section includes architect biographies and technical details of each project. Accompanying the texts and drawings are spectacular photographs, most of which were specially commissioned for this publication.