Fiefs and Vassals is a book that will change our view of the medieval world. Offering a fundamental challenge to orthodox conceptions of feudalism, Susan Reynolds argues that the concepts of fiefs and vassalage that have been central to the understanding of medieval society for hundreds of years are in fact based on a misunderstanding of the primary sources.
Reynolds demonstrates convincingly that the ideas of fiefs and vassalage as currently understood, far from being the central structural elements of medieval social and economic relations, are a conceptual lens through which historians have focused the details of medieval life. This lens, according to Reynolds, distorts more than it clarifies. With the lens removed, the realities of medieval life will have the chance to appear as they really are: more various, more individual, more complex, and perhaps richer than has previously been supposed.
This is a radical new examination of social relations within the noble class and between lords and their vassals, the distillation of wide-ranging research by a leading medieval historian. It will revolutionize the way we think of the Middle Ages.

The magnificent color illustrations of the Elting books make extensive use of surviving eyewitness sketches and accounts, and show how widely most armies of the time made use of captured or improvised equipment.

With a professional career of more than twenty years behind them, French architects Anne Lacaton & Jean Philippe Vassal, to whom we devoted an issue of our magazine 2G in 2001, continue to pursue their own coherent, personal approach to architecture. Theirs is a position far removed from formal originality, being based, instead, on an ethical conception that upholds the essential idea of the architect s social responsibility. Lacaton & Vassal have constructed a discourse of their own that, although seemingly simple, embraces the complexity of contemporary reality. The few, carefully chosen issues that interest them are tantamount, in themselves, to a wish to go beyond paradigms established by the market. The strategies that shape their work might be summed up as understanding the real needs of the client without formal preconceptions, inventing supplementary extra space through intelligent use of the budget (cost-effectiveness as a planning tool), fomenting freedom of use on the part of users, endowing buildings with flexibility, creating controlled climatic environments by means of technology and simple materials, and the ambition to influence the urban planning of the city through architectural design. All these concerns, present from the beginning of their career in all their projects, whatever the programme or scale, are developed exhaustively and perseveringly in the projects we present in this number of our magazine 2G. Among them, we might point to recently finalized projects like the transformation of the Bois-le-Prêtre tower block in Paris a built example of their investigation into how to act on obsolete blocks of flats from the 1960s and 70s in France (an investigation we include in our book Large-scale Housing Developments: An Exceptional Case) two multi-family housing projects in Saint-Nazaire, and the School of Architecture in Nantes. In this volume we also present projects on a city scale such as an urban plan for Dublin, their proposal for the Porte de la Chapelle in Paris, and the La Vecquerie eco-area in Saint-Nazaire. Other projects that are representative of their recent trajectory are the scheme for Holcim Laboratories (Holderbank, Switzerland), the artwork storage facilities for the Fundação Serralves (Matosinhos, Portugal, and the building for the Fond Régional d Art Contemporain Nord-Pas de Calais in Dunkerque, the completion of which is foreseen for 2013. The introductory texts by Iñaki Ábalos and Karine Dana each provide a personal and novel look at the work of this French studio. To end, the text by Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal in the nexus section enables us to unequivocally grasp what the coceptual basis of their work as architects is.

Violently ripped from his people at a young age and never quite fitting in with those who took him in and helped him, Torren has spent most of his life avoiding his past, traveling as a sword for hire. Yet a chance meeting with a young woman pursued by unknown assailants changes everything, an act of grudging kindness driving him toward having to face all he’d rather leave forgotten, the reasons behind the girl’s pursuit clues to a long-buried mystery tied to his past.

Acknowledging only what he must while fighting feelings he long thought dead and buried, and driven to fulfill a duty he never thought would be his, Torren once more cuts his ties with all he knows, convinced he can never return to what was, no matter how much others might wish otherwise. Yet, divided within, dreams of doom and betrayal filling his nights, he waits, unable to move on despite his intentions.

Matters grow more complicated as his heritage seeks him out, not willing to let him go. Not only does it seem that the evil from the past is about to be repeated, his people possibly destroyed from within, but this time it is somehow connected to the impending war of two Lander countries, the impact of which would be felt throughout the world. Torren must push his pain behind him and act, his unique inhabiting of two vastly different worlds possibly the only thing able to prevent war and genocide.

While at the beginning of their professional career they were known for their innovatory schemes in the realm of single-family housing, through their daring use of materials and technologies at odds with the traditional discipline of architectural design their work has evolved in the direction of projects of a wider scope which keep faith with their original aims. Their work is not based upon a preoccupation with form. This is not an a priori aim but the outcome of a design process nourished by issues like typological research, the maximising of built surface for a given budget, energy optimisation and adapting to the programme requested by the client. Technological innovation and materials (polycarbonate, industrial greenhouses) are used to ensure the most suitable price, one that allows the biggest possible spaces to be constructed with a forceful, modern image and no concessions to prototypical solutions. This, then, is a singular way of doing things that opens up new horizons for architectural methodology.

This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

Designed by the architectss themselves, this monograph is published in conjunction with an exhibition of their work at the Cité de lArchitecture et du Patrimoine in Paris. The illustrated monograph gathers all the projects that have been designed by the office and presents them in thematic groups, such as beginnings, landscape, dreams, freedom, transformation and the city together, these themes are woven into a story that challenges the architectss proposals. In denying the obvious, the architects seek to emphasise what is essential and specific to each situation and context, while in turn proposing an architecture that celebrates freedom.

Ce livre est une oeuvre du domaine public éditée au format numérique par Norph-Nop. L’achat de l’édition Kindle inclut le téléchargement via un réseau sans fil sur votre liseuse et vos applications de lecture Kindle

Ce livre est une oeuvre du domaine public éditée au format numérique par Norph-Nop. L’achat de l’édition Kindle inclut le téléchargement via un réseau sans fil sur votre liseuse et vos applications de lecture Kindle