Best selling Reference books from GTA
On this page you’ll find a ranking of the best Reference books from GTA. To give you a quick overview, we’ve added the most important product details. This page always stays fresh and updates automatically.
1. GTA The Crit
Whether as a courtroom, competition show, or theater of the absurd, critical reviews, known as "crits," are an electrifying, confrontational, and unforgettable ritual in architectural education. The crit stages a drama in which students are asked to present and defend their work before an audience of peers, educators, and external experts. Although it often serves as a source of acute discomfort, the crit is also a teaching tool, a forum for exchange, and a place of discovery.
A thorough analysis of the crit reveals radical possibilities in experimental teaching, process-oriented design, and the presentation of architectural ideas. At the same time, this analysis highlights fault lines in the global architectural discourse and education, reflecting their historical spread and contemporary discontent. This issue of the gta papers presents both a critique and a celebration of this time-honored ritual.
2. GTA Über Putz
Plaster surfaces have not only significant practical value but also high aesthetic appeal. Today, they are often used as part of plastered external thermal insulation; typically, standard solutions provided by manufacturers are utilized as systems. However, the potential of plaster goes far beyond common practices. This publication invites readers to observe craftsmen as they mix and apply plaster, exploring the diverse possibilities that the material offers. Detailed recipes, developed and tested at ETH Zurich, along with an illustrated glossary, provide practical guidance, making the publication a valuable handbook and reference. The contributions have been revised and significantly expanded for this new edition, complemented by insights into current research on digital plastering techniques and two new interviews.
3. GTA Ernst Gisel Architekt
Ernst Gisel (born 1922) is an outstanding figure in Swiss architecture. His buildings, realized since the mid-1940s in Switzerland, Germany, Austria and the Principality of Liechtenstein, have always set important new accents and stimulated architectural discourse far beyond Switzerland. In his more than six decades of design and construction work, Ernst Gisel never oriented himself to dogmatic programs, theoretical superstructures or fleeting fashions. Nonetheless, his important buildings were always among the most striking solutions to current construction tasks and were received with a correspondingly broad reception. This applies to his first major project, the Parktheater in Grenchen, as well as to his paradigmatic residential, school and sacred buildings. Detached from traditional typologies, they testify to a comprehensive, holistic approach.
4. GTA trans 46. spolia
Spolia absorb energy from an external force and deform elastically. As archaeological tools on (deconstruction) sites, they are hidden testimonies of political dependencies, collisions between ecosystems, art in galleries, and even elevators in office towers. Input: strange simultaneity of symbols - immediate, available, and ready to be transformed. Output: remnants that are reorganized to serve architecture and its demands. We look back into the future and forward into the past. We build, dig, find, collect, and continuously assemble to produce meanings.
5. GTA In the Daylight of Our Existence
In 1991, poet, author, and professor June Jordan encouraged radical alterations of the built environment as crucial to "A New Politics of Sexuality," the title of her address to the Bisexual, Gay, and Lesbian Student Association at Stanford University. Jordan did not tell her listeners what this altered environment would look like. Instead, she elicited their imagination to conceive a place for living, kissing, and holding hands without terror, what that space would look and feel like, and what else it would make possible.
Tracing the efforts of feminist and LGBTQIA+ organizations for more just spaces for housing, health care, and artistic production, this book takes up Jordan's theoretical premise to work against normative ideas about gender and sexuality through environmental transformation. It presents methodologies of writing feminist and queer histories of architecture by investigating planning and urbanism, resistance and refusal, women's health, and communal life in New York City, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Toronto, and Mexican border cities. A wide range of primary and secondary texts offer insight into the intersection of architectural history and gender studies.
Reference books
EUR32,–
In the Daylight of Our Existence
English, Candace Borders, Davy Knittle, Germán Pallares-Avitia, H.E. Eisterer, Ladi'Sasha Jones, M.C. Overholt, Malcolm Rio, Molly M. Brandt, Torsten Lange, 2025
6. GTA Fritz Haller. Architect and researcher
Fritz Haller (1924-2013) is one of the influential figures of the 20th century in the field of industrial construction. In the early 1960s, he became widely known beyond the borders of Switzerland as a representative of the so-called School of Solothurn, alongside architects Alfons Barth, Franz Füeg, Max Schlup, and Hans Zaugg, who also hailed from the Solothurn region. Haller's work encompasses a remarkable range of different buildings and projects, including school buildings, residential and commercial properties, industrial halls, modular steel construction systems, and digital planning tools. The furniture construction system "USM Haller," developed in collaboration with the company USM U. Schärer Söhne in Münsingen, has become a globally recognized brand. Fritz Haller was committed not only practically but also theoretically, whether at Konrad Wachsmann's Institute for Building Form.
Reference books
EUR85,–
Fritz Haller. Architect and researcher
German, Franz Füeg, Hans Frei, Joachim ruffle, Laurent Stalder, Monika Dommann, 2016
7. GTA trans 45. Dirty
Cleanliness is an obsession, dirt a fascination. Our disgust is embedded in a personal and cultural system of distinction that helps us navigate the world and discern what might threaten our integrity as bodies or societies. Yet, the aversion to dirt is more than just a protective mechanism. Introducing uncleanliness into design can be enlightening or even revolutionary. As aspiring architects, we know that our profession and its history have always been unclean. We have rejected our masters, dismissed our teachers, and distanced ourselves from our rituals. However, if we become too aware of the dirt our profession produces, we risk erecting hygienic barriers that prevent us from getting our hands dirty.
8. GTA Against and for Method
Can design processes be researched in the true sense of the word? Of course they can. "Against and For Method" presents exemplary cases of how teaching architects teach architectural design, with or without strict consideration of methodological and research approaches. The anthology openly addresses deficits in design teaching and suggests ways of integrating methodological approaches into teaching and practice. Contributions by leading architectural researchers and interviews with five practicing architects who are professors at ETH Zurich show how design concepts are considered, analyzed, and passed on. The texts and interviews are intended to encourage teaching architects to reflect on their methods and to examine the extent to which systematic and conceptually coherent approaches help their students.
9. GTA Der Wert der Oberfläche
Are politics and economics engines for artistic and architectural changes? The research project "The Value of Surface" at ETH Zurich, led by Philip Ursprung, explored this question. The term "value" is considered here both in economic contexts and as an idea of quality in art and architecture. Where can we observe comparabilities, for example, between early industrial capitalism, the Crystal Palace in London, Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick, and the corporeal presence of a white whale? Or to what extent did the consequences of the Bologna Reform shape the structure of the School of Architecture in Nantes by Lacaton & Vassal? From a distinctly subjective perspective, Philip Ursprung illustrates connections between economics, architecture, and art in his 14 essays produced as part of the project.
10. GTA Cooperative Conditions
Zurich is a center of global finance. Its financialized real estate influences not only the rise of rent and property prices but also methods of extracting value from housing and residents. Yet, Switzerland's largest city has a century-old commitment to public benefit and nonprofit housing, implemented through a cooperative model of sharing resources. Even more strikingly, cooperatives have been at the forefront of architectural and urban design innovation for a broad mix of uses and household formations.
Eight specific conditions have enabled a long-standing commitment to nonspeculation within Zurich's for-profit real estate market. Through its original reading of contemporary and historic projects, Cooperative Conditions makes tangible the interplay between architectural, regulatory, and financial instruments in housing. In doing so, aspects of Zurich's cooperative model become transferable to other places.
Reference books
EUR39,–
Cooperative Conditions
English, Anne Kockelkorn, Anne Schindler Kockelkorn, Rebekka Hirschberg, Susanne Schindler, 2024
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