Throughout history, follies have been used as a provocation, a frivolous diversion or strategic place of madness and satire freed from the constraints of societal norms. This volume documents a series of eight newly commissioned follies forging links between everyday uses and political practice.

The official Biennale catalogue--a global overview of architecture of the last one hundred years. The emphasis of the 2014 Biennale is on architectural history. Each country is asked to narrate its history over the last one hundred years in relation to the idea of modernity. Has national identity been sacrificed on the altar of modernity? This is the issue that the Biennale is called on to address.

Dutch architect, architectural theorist and urban thinker Rem Koolhaas (born 1944) has been a protagonist of the international architectural avant-garde since the 1970s; his numerous worldwide awards include the Pritzker Prize in 2000 for his lifetime achievement. Through a series of essays, this book interprets his many buildings and projects by drawing on Koolhaas' own theoretical oeuvre of polemics, manifestos, interviews, books such as Delirious New York and his so-called -design patents.- In these writings, Koolhaas articulates a design method that links theory and practice,...