Martha Banta reaches across several disciplines to investigate America's early quest to shape an aesthetic equal to the nation's belief in its cultural worth. Marked by an unusually wide-ranging sweep, the book focuses on three major "testing grounds" where nineteenth-century Americans responded to Ralph Waldo Emerson's call to embrace "everything" in order to uncover the theoretical principles underlying "the idea of creation." The interactions of those who rose to this urgent challenge--artists, architects, writers, politicians, and the technocrats of scientific inquiry--brought about an engrossing tangle of achievements and failures. The first section of the book traces efforts to advance the status of the arts in the face of the aspersion that America lacked an Art Soul as deep as Europe's. Following that is a hard look at heated political debates over how to embellish the architecture of Washington, D.C., with the icons of cherished republican ideals. The concluding section probes novels in which artists' lives are portrayed and aesthetic principles tested.

A glorious illustrated history of sixteen of the world's greatest cathedrals, interwoven with the extraordinary stories of the people who built them. 'An impeccable guide to the golden age of ecclesiastical architecture' The Times 'Vivid, colourful and absorbing' Dan Jones 'An epic ode to some of our most beautiful and beloved buildings' Helen Carr The emergence of the Gothic in twelfth-century France, an architectural style characterized by pointed arches, rib vaults, flying buttresses, large windows and elaborate tracery, triggered an explosion of cathedral-building across western Europe. It is this remarkable flowering of ecclesiastical architecture that forms the central core of Emma Wells's authoritative but accessible study of the golden age of the cathedral. Prefacing her account with the construction in the sixth century of the Hagia Sophia, the remarkable Christian cathedral of the eastern Roman empire, she goes on to chart the construction of a glittering sequence of iconic structures, including Saint-Denis, Notre-Dame, Canterbury, Chartres, Salisbury, York Minster and Florence's Duomo. More than architectural biographies, these are human stories of triumph and tragedy that take the reader from the chaotic atmosphere of the mason's yard to the cloisters of power. Together, they reveal how 1000 years of cathedral-building shaped modern Europe, and influenced art, culture and society around the world.

Livable Luxe is the first-ever monograph on acclaimed Los Angeles–based interior designer Brigette Romanek.

Brigette Romanek is one of the most sought-after interior designers working today, and her high-profile client and partner list is extensive, from celebrities like Demi Moore, Beyoncé and Jay-Z, and Christian Bale, to brands like Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, Crate and Barrel, and Audemars Piguet. Her beautiful interior designs highlight her distinct luxurious yet casual aesthetic, on a range of residential and commercial projects from Los Angeles to New York.

In Livable Luxe, Romanek shares an insider’s glimpse into her lush and aspirational collection of interior design projects for the first time, through over 150 photographs that capture and reflect the personality and lifestyle of her clients. Additionally, Romanek shares her insightful approach to design and interiors through personal essays and anecdotes.

In her introduction, Romanek charts her unique upbringing on the road with her super-talented, single mother, Paulette McWilliams, who sang with the likes of Marvin Gaye, David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, and many others. What grounded Romanek throughout her peripatetic childhood was her ability to make any new space "home" by decorating and personalizing it with special treasures and mementos that had meaning in her life.

As a designer, she has elevated that same instinct by bringing together an eclectic mix of design elements that create a sense of ease, comfort, and style. Her aesthetic blend of both the high-end and the accessible, or as she calls it, "Gucci meets Gap," is a refreshing approach and fully apparent in her own beautiful home in Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles.

Extensively featured in Livable Luxe are the homes of her well-known clients, including Gwyneth Paltrow and Molly Sims, to name a few, who admire and seek her design expertise in creating spaces that evoke a laid-back-yet-elegant feel. Paltrow is a close friend and client, and she has also penned the foreword. Romanek has created stunning designs for several of Paltrow's homes, including her lovely Montecito home featured on the cover.

Livable Luxe is a gorgeous coffee-table book worthy of its name, filled with detailed design moments, personal stories, and inspiring interiors that look luxe but feel livable. It makes the perfect gift for interior designers and home décor enthusiasts, and a splendid addition to any coffee table, tabletop, or book collection.

Dear reader, if you are holding in your hands the book "Legends of the Phoenix" by A.V.Trehlebov, then in just a moment a magnificent journey awaits you filled with fascinating knowledge about the hidden history of our world and some of the most fascinating societal processes to ever occur. If you have already read a few dozen books on the subject but are still asking yourself the questions "Who am i?" "What is my purpose here?" or "Why do we die?" then this book will become a treasure within your library. If you are still searching for the answers to the age old questions of the origins of life on earth, the origins and evolution of our modern civilization, the origins of different races, the true history of the people on earth, our spiritual growth as humans, or the universal laws of the universe, then this book has come to you at the right time. Through years of scientific study, this non-fiction tractate is written in a simple yet fascinating manner and is suitable for all readers. The phoenix, as in the title of the book, is an ancient Russian symbol symbolizing the rebirth of Russia and the Slavic people. From folk tales it is written that these birds rise from their ashes, are then reborn in a magical flame and appear in a purer form. Since history has always been written by, and for the benefit of the current rulers, disregarding any previous facts or knowledge, we use the experience and heritage of our ancestors which have been laid out in the "Legends of the Phoenix." "Legends of the Phoenix" is devoted to the revival of the ancient, million year old culture and heritage of the Slavic people. The information in this book has deep roots from the Slavic Vedas dating back hundreds of thousands of years with knowledge not yet fully discovered by our modern civilization. Consisting of two parts, the first part "Origin of the Slavic-Aryans" discusses the root origins of the Slavic people, the ancient texts and archaeological monuments, the eon old Slavic ancestry, our beliefs, morals, commandments, and the answers to the mysterious wise tales of the Slavs. The second part called "The Path to Light" discusses the connection and meaning of the Slavic and Hindu Vedas, the stages of the ancient Slavic spiritual belief "Rodoveriye," the meaning of spiritual development, the paths and goals of our ancient societies, the wisdom behind each stage of life and how to get ready for and create virtuous offspring, the nature of divine and demonic entities and their purpose, the importance of understanding your inner self and past lives, the structure of all our energy bodies, the origins of the Vedas, what it means to have a non-dualistic view of the universe, and the secrets of the Golden Path.

Over the last decade, 'parametricism' has been heralded as a new avant-garde in the industries of architecture, urban design, and industrial design, regarded by many as the next grand style in the history of architecture, heir to postmodernism and deconstruction. From buildings to cities, the built environment is increasingly addressed, designed and constructed using digital software based on parametric scripting platforms which claim to be able to process complex physical and social modelling alike. As more and more digital tools are developed into an apparently infinite repertoire of socio-technical functions, critical questions concerning these cultural and technological shifts are often eclipsed by the seductive aesthetic and the alluring futuristic imaginary that parametric design tools and their architectural products and discourses represent. The Politics of Parametricism addresses these issues, offering a collection of new essays written by leading international thinkers in the fields of digital design, architecture, theory and technology. Exploring the social, political, ethical and philosophical issues at stake in the history, practice and processes of parametric architecture and urbanism, each chapter provides different vantage points to interrogate the challenges and opportunities presented by this latest mode of technological production.

For the last 50 years, we have been building communities for the wrong reason. "How to Build a VillageTown" proposes to turn real estate development upside down, so that people may regain control of their lives, their communities and their future. Instead of building communities to sell cars, "How to Build a VillageTown" proposes people build communities that provide for their needs and aspirations... places to live that are places they love. The idea is not new. Over 2,000 years ago, Aristotle wrote that when several villages come together so they may become economically self-supporting, the purpose for their continuance is to enable their citizens to enjoy a good life, understood as the social pursuits of conviviality, citizenship, artistic, intellectual and spiritual growth. In almost every place and time, except our own, every aspect of community design, from the central plaza with its meeting places, cafes, taverns and shops, to their support for the artistic, educational and holy places followed these timeless patterns and principles of design. The people who live there help shape its design which is what gives it its character and authenticity. Beginning after World-War II, starting in America and spreading to other parts of the world, we radically redesigned how people live based on a different intent: to perpetually boom national economies. We invented suburbs to sell cars. We reshaped life based on this plan that came to be known as suburban sprawl. The core principle was that of separation. We separated destinations, generations and stages of life. The design principle became that of standardization. If we look at everything that surrounds us in daily life, we notice the extent to which our physical environment has become generic and bland. We redefined citizens as consumers, and in the process lost sight of why we build communities. This radical experiment in suburban sprawl failed to deliver on its promise. We now face a host of new and serious problems our ancestors knew not. For the most part, our response to these problems is either denial or investing substantial energy trying to fix broken and broke systems. In "How to Build a VillageTown," you are invited to take a different approach. Called a VillageTown - a town made of villages - it proposes people come together to form villages, about 500 people in each, with about twenty villages side by side to create the necessary economic and social critical mass of a town of 10,000 people. The optimal size proposes a 150 acre urban core surrounded by a 300 acre greenbelt and a 50 acre industrial park. Within the urban core, all is walkable - no cars within. This rescales everything, permitting a secure, stimulating place for all ages and stages of life. Human-scaled, it more resembles the market-town of yore; only it takes advantage of modern technology, most notably Telepresence that permits one to be in two places at once. It proposes creating its own local economy that enables its citizens to regain control over their own lives and enjoy a Good Life. The purpose of the series of VillageTown books is to put forth a proposal to build a new, timeless form of community to replace suburbs. All profits from book sales go to raise the funds required to build VillageTowns.The author takes no royalties, the publisher charges no fees. To support the idea, to help make it go from a good idea to real built communities, buy books, give them as gifts, leave them in cafes or anywhere else folks gather. This is not a drill. If you like the idea and want to live in a VillageTown, please go to the web site, VillageForum.com and become involved.

This groundbreaking new book presents 60 projects - past and present, real and imagined - of 'anarchist' architecture. From junk playgrounds to Extinction Rebellion in the UK, from Christiania to the Calais Jungle in Europe, and from Dignity Village to Slab City in the USA - all are motivated by the core values of autonomy, voluntary association, mutual aid and self-organisation. Taken as a whole, they are meant as an inspiration to build less uniformly, more inclusively and more freely. Architecture and Anarchism documents and illustrates 60 projects, past and present, that key into a libertarian ethos and desire for diverse self-organised ways of building. They are what this book calls an 'anarchist' architecture, that is, forms of design and building that embrace the core values of traditional anarchist political theory since its divergence from the mainstream of socialist politics in the 19th century. These are autonomy, voluntary association, mutual aid, and self-organisation through direct democracy. As the book shows, there are a vast range of architectural projects that can been seen to refl ect some or all of these values, whether they are acknowledged as specifically anarchist or otherwise. Anarchist values are evident in projects that grow out of romantic notions of escape - from isolated cabins to intentional communities. Yet, in contrast, they also manifest in direct action - occupations or protests that produce micro-countercommunities. Artists also produce anarchist architecture - intimations of much freer forms of building cut loose from the demands of moneyed clients; so do architects and planners who want to involve users in a process normally restricted to an elite few. Others also imagine new social realities through speculative proposals. Finally, building without authority is, for some, a necessity - the thousands of migrants denied their right to become citizens, even as they have to live somewhere; or the unhoused of otherwise affl uent cities forced to build improvised homes for themselves. The result is to significantly broaden existing ideas about what might constitute anarchism in architecture and also to argue strongly for its nurturing in the built environment. Understood in this way, anarchism off ers a powerful way of reconceptualising architecture as an emancipatory, inclusive, ecological and egalitarian practice.

The seventh edition of the highly successful The City Reader juxtaposes the very best classic and contemporary writings on the city. Sixty-three selections are included: forty-five from the sixth edition and eighteen new selections, including three newly written exclusively for The City Reader. The anthology features a Prologue essay on "How to Study Cities", eight part introductions as well as individual introductions to each of the selected articles. The new edition has been extensively updated and expanded to reflect the latest thinking in each of the disciplinary and topical areas included, such as sustainable urban development, globalization, the impact of technology on cities, resilient cities, and urban theory. The seventh edition places greater emphasis on cities in the developing world, the global city system, and the future of cities in the digital transformation age. While retaining classic writings from authors such as Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs, and Louis Wirth, this edition also includes the best contemporary writings of, among others, Peter Hall, Manuel Castells, and Saskia Sassen. New material has been added on compact cities, urban history, placemaking, climate change, the world city network, smart cities, the new social exclusion, ordinary cities, gentrification, gender perspectives, regime theory, comparative urbanization, and the impact of technology on cities. Bibliographic material has been completely updated and strengthened so that the seventh edition can serve as a reference volume orienting faculty and students to the most important writings of all the key topics in urban studies and planning. The City Reader provides the comprehensive mapping of the terrain of Urban Studies, old and new. It is essential reading for anyone interested in studying cities and city life.