This unique text/reference presents a unified approach to the formulation of Gestalt laws for perceptual grouping, and the construction of nested hierarchies by aggregation utilizing these laws. The book also describes the extraction of such constructions from noisy images showing man-made objects and clutter. Each Gestalt operation is introduced in a separate, self-contained chapter, together with application examples and a brief literature review. These are then brought together in an algebraic closure chapter, followed by chapters that connect the method to the data - i.e., the extraction of primitives from images, cooperation with machine-readable knowledge, and cooperation with machine learning. Topics and features: offers the first unified approach to nested hierarchical perceptual grouping; presents a review of all relevant Gestalt laws in a single source; covers reflection symmetry, frieze symmetry, rotational symmetry, parallelism and rectangular settings, contour prolongation, and lattices; describes the problem from all theoretical viewpoints, including syntactic, probabilistic, and algebraic perspectives; discusses issues important to practical application, such as primitive extraction and any-time search; provides an appendix detailing a general adjustment model with constraints. This work offers new insights and proposes novel methods to advance the field of machine vision, which will be of great benefit to students, researchers, and engineers active in this area.

Connecting the Dots showcases the remarkable contribution of one designer, Garry Emery, to Australian culture internationally over 60+ years. It publishes a selection of Emery's writings, alongside notes he calls 'ramblings' as well as presenting EmeryStudio's design work. Connecting the Dots collects ad-hoc design thinking, comments, insights, thoughts, quotations, snippets, questions, answers, essays, articles, meditations, opinions, ambiguities, dogmas, observations, ideas, remnants, contradictions, realities, episodes, moments, fantasies, threads, traces, snapshots, ramblings, ruminations, not so many facts, no certainties. 'As this book shows, Emery's work is much more than graphic design. It is the design of alphabets, pages, books, branding and websites, but also of walls, installations, exhibitions, furniture, rooms, postage stamps, car parks, building facades and busy streets. How do we read a page or a poster; how do we find our way around crowded, chaotic cities?' - James Button, writer and editor

The Routledge Companion to Paradigms of Performativity in Design and Architecture focuses on a non-linear, multilateral, ethical way of design thinking, positioning the design process as a journey. It expands on the multiple facets and paradigms of performative design thinking as an emerging trend in design methodology. This edited collection explores the meaning of performativity by examining its relevance in conjunction with three fundamental principles: firmness, commodity and delight. The scope and broader meaning of performativity, performative architecture and performance-based building design are discussed in terms of how they influence today's design thinking. With contributions from 44 expert practitioners, educators and researchers, this volume engages theory, history, technology and the human aspects of performative design thinking and its implications for the future of design.

This timely study deals with the heating and cooling of buildings using innovative systems that can reduce fossil fuel and electric energy requirements by as much as 80 percent. It also deals with promises and problems of solar energy use for efficient comfort conditioning.

Southern California, blessed with an enviable climate, progressively discerning individuals, talented craftspeople, and impassioned artisans, sets the stage for this lushly illustrated volume of work. The book features the work of the renowned Los Angeles–based firm, Studio William Hefner, a practice that integrates architecture, interior design, and landscape. The studio’s impressive portfolio is distinguished by an aesthetic sensibility that merges an elegant simplicity with a luxury of details and materials. Hefner’s signature airy, light-filled spaces effortlessly embrace California’s natural beauty. This richly illustrated monograph on Hefner’s work showcases beautiful homes, from contemporary to traditional, each conveying the details and depth of design character that make Studio William Hefner’s oeuvre so unique. Studio William Hefner is a master architect whose California-based luxury residential designs are richly detailed and bright, with private views of abundant landscapes and lush gardens.

The Routledge Companion to Games in Architecture and Urban Planning aims to identify and showcase the rich diversity of games, including: simulation games, game-like approaches, game scenarios, and gamification processes for teaching/learning, design and research in architecture and urban planning. This collection creates an opportunity for exchange and reflection on games in architecture and urban planning. Theoretical discussions, descriptive accounts, and case studies presenting empirical evidence are featured; combined with reflections, constructive critical analysis, discussions of connections, and various influences on this field. Twenty-eight international contributors have come together from eleven countries and five continents to present their studies on games in architecture and urban planning, pose new questions, and advocate for innovative perspectives.

Solar electricity - or photovoltaics (PV) - is the world's fastest growing energy technology. It can be used on a wide variety of scales, from single dwellings to utility-scale solar farms providing power for whole communities. It can be integrated into existing electricity grids with relative simplicity, meaning that in times of low solar energy users can continue to draw power from the grid, while power can be fed or sold back into the grid at a profit when their electricity generation exceeds the amount they are using. The falling price of the equipment combined with various incentive schemes around the world have made PV into a lucrative low carbon investment, and as such demand has never been higher for the technology, and for people with the expertise to design and install systems. This Expert handbook provides a clear introduction to solar radiation, before proceeding to cover: electrical basics and PV cells and modules inverters design of grid-connected PV systems system installation and commissioning maintenance and trouble shooting health and safety economics and marketing. Highly illustrated in full colour throughout, this is the ideal guide for electricians, builders and architects, housing and property developers, home owners and DIY enthusiasts, and anyone who needs a clear introduction to grid-connected solar electric technology.

This volume examines one of Rome's most influential churches: the principal basilica dedicated to St Paul. Nicola Camerlenghi traces nearly two thousand years of physical transformations to the church, from before its construction in the fourth century to its reconstruction following a fire in 1823. By recounting this long history, he restores the building to its rightful place as a central, active participant in epochal political and religious shifts in Rome and across Christendom, as well as a protagonist in Western art and architectural history. Camerlenghi also examines how buildings in general trigger memories and anchor meaning, and how and why buildings endure, evolve, and remain relevant in cultural contexts far removed from the moment of their inception. At its core, Saint Paul's exemplifies the concept of building as a process, not a product: a process deeply interlinked with religion, institutions, history, cultural memory, and the arts. This study also includes state-of-the-art digital reconstructions synthesizing a wealth of historical evidence to visualize and analyze the earlier (now lost) stages of the building's history, offering glimpses into heretofore unexamined parts of its long, rich life.

Will Pryce unveils a world of beauty and genius in this unparalleled, specially photographed survey of the world's architectural master- pieces. More than 350 color photographs celebrate the finest buildings from over two thousand years of civilization: Hagia Sophia, the Gothic cathedrals of Europe, Islamic masterworks at Isfahan, the Taj Mahal, the Palace of Westminster, Gehry's iconic Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, and much more. There are some eighty buildings featured, more than forty of which receive in-depth attention in detailed photo essays. Pryce's accompanying texts and commentaries provide an extra dimension of understanding for the contexts in which they were created, and of the evolution of architecture through history.

Distinguished by their lavish sculpture, metalwork or tile facades, Art Nouveau buildings certainly stand out. Art Nouveau buildings are unique, audacious and inspirational. Rejecting historic styles, considered inappropriate for an era driven by progress, architects and designers sought a new vocabulary of architectural forms. Their vision was shaped by modern materials and innovative technologies, including iron, glass and ceramics. A truly democratic style, Art Nouveau transformed life on the eve of the twentieth century and still captivates our imaginations today. Beautifully illustrated, this book explains how the new style came into being, its rationale and why it is known by so many different names: French Art Nouveau, German Jugendstil, Viennese Secession, Catalan Modernisme, Italian Liberty and Portuguese Arte Nova. It covers the key architects and designers associated with the style; Victor Horta in Brussels, Hector Guimard in Paris, Antoni Gaudi on Barcelona, Otto Wagner in Vienna, Odon Lechner in Budapest and Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Glasgow. There are detailed descriptions and stunning photographs of buildings to be found in Brussels, Paris, Nancy, Darmstadt, Vienna, Budapest, Barcelona, Milan, Turin and Aveiro. Finally, it covers the decorative arts, stained glass, tiles and metalwork that make Art Nouveau buildings so distinctive.

This volume takes up the idea of 'multiplicity' as a new common ground for international theory, bringing together 10 scholars to reflect on the implications of societal multiplicity for areas as diverse as nationalism, ecology, architecture, monetary systems, cosmology and the history of political ideas. International relations (IR), it is often said, has contributed no big ideas to the interdisciplinary conversation of the social sciences and humanities. Yet this is an unnecessary silence, for IR uniquely addresses a fundamental fact about the human world: its division into a multiplicity of interacting social formations. This feature is full of consequences for the very nature of societies and for social phenomena of all kinds. And in recent years a research programme has emerged within IR to theorise these 'consequences of multiplicity' and to trace how the effects of the international dimension extend into other fields of social life. This book is a powerful indication of the contribution that IR may yet make to the human disciplines. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Globalizations.

Homes fit for Heroes looks at the pledge made 100 years ago by the Lloyd George government to build half a million 'homes fit for heroes' - the pledge which made council housing a major part of the housing system in the UK. Originally published in 1981, the book is the only full-scale study of the provision and design of state housing in the period following the 1918 Armistice and remains the standard work on the subject. It looks at the municipal garden suburbs of the 1920s, which were completely different from traditional working-class housing, inside and out. Instead of being packed onto the ground in long terraces, the houses were set in spacious gardens surrounded by trees and open spaces and often they contained luxuries, like upstairs bathrooms, unheard-of in the working-class houses of the past. The book shows that, in the turbulent period following the First World War, the British government launched the housing campaign as a way of persuading the troops and the people that their aspirations would be met under the existing system, without any need for revolution. The design of the houses, based on the famous Tudor Walters Report of 1918, was a central element in this strategy: the large and comfortable houses provided by the state were intended as visible evidence of the arrival of a 'new era for the working classes of this country'.

This book surveys the intersections between water systems and the phenomenology of visual cultures in early modern, colonial and contemporary South Asia. Bringing together contributions by eminent artists, architects, curators and scholars who explore the connections between the environmental and the cultural, the volume situates water in an expansive relational domain. It covers disciplines as diverse as literary studies, environmental humanities, sustainable design, urban planning and media studies. The chapters explore the ways in which material cultures of water generate technological and aesthetic acts of envisioning geographies, and make an intervention within political, social and cultural discourses. A critical interjection in the sociologies of water in the subcontinent, the book brings art history into conversation with current debates on climate change by examining water's artistic, architectural, engineering, religious, scientific and environmental facets from the 16th century to the present. This is one of the first books on South Asia's art, architecture and visual history to interweave the ecological with the aesthetic under the emerging field of eco art history. The volume will be of interest to scholars and general readers of art history, Islamic studies, South Asian studies, urban studies, architecture, geography, history and environmental studies. It will also appeal to activists, curators, art critics and those interested in water management.

The Protected Vista draws a historical lineage from the eighteenth-century picturesque to present-day planning policy, highlighting how the values embedded within familiar views have developed over time through appropriation by diverse groups for cultural and political purposes. The book examines the intellectual construction of the protected vista, questioning the values entrenched within the view, by whom, and how they are observed and disseminated, to reveal how these views have been, and continue to be, part of a changing historical and political narrative. With a deeper knowledge and understanding of the shifting values in urban views, we will be better equipped to make decisions surrounding their protection in our urban centres. The book identifies the origins of current view protection policy in the aesthetic convention of the picturesque, drawing on a range of illustrated examples in the UK, the US, Australia, Canada and South Africa, to serve as a useful reference for students, researchers and academics in architecture, architectural conservation, landscape and urban planning.

As Eudora Welty observed, "One place understood helps us know all places better". Nowhere is this more apropos than in her home state of Mississippi. Although accounts of its architecture have long conjured visions of white-columned antebellum mansions, its towns, buildings, and landscapes are ultimately far more complex, engaging, and challenging. This guidebook surveys a range of such locations, from Native American mounds and villages to plantation outbuildings that bear witness to the lives of enslaved African Americans, from twentieth-century enclaves built for sawmill workers and oil tycoons to neighborhoods that bolstered black Mississippians during segregation, and from the vernacular streetscapes of small towns to modern architecture in Greenville, Meridian, Jackson, and Biloxi. In the pages of this latest volume in the celebrated Buildings of the United States series, newly redesigned in a more user-friendly format, readers will come to know the history of close to 600 sites, illustrated by 250 photographs (most in full color) and 29 maps, including such wide-ranging places as Longwood and the Museum of African American History and Culture in Natchez, Vicksburg National Military Park, Winterville Mounds, the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, the Neshoba County Jail and Courthouse, the University of Mississippi and William Faulkner's Rowan Oak in Oxford, and the homes of Medgar and Myrlie Evers and Eudora Welty in Jackson.

PREFACE: OF all building materials which are not found in a state of nature, the most important are, unquestionably, cement, concrete and bricks. The first of these includes a large variety of materials used to bind together particles of stone, sand, and other naturally occurring materials the second used in a broad sense includes all kinds of artificial stones made by cementing various materials together without the aid of heat, and the last bricks includes an even larger number of different articles, distinguished by their general form and by the fact that heat has been used to render their shape permanent. It is a mistake to suppose that all bricks are made of clay at the present time they are made from a number of other materials, such as destructor refuse, sand, slag, etc. Indeed, the composition of some bricks so closely resembles that of concrete as to render it necessary to include them as one of the forms taken by this material. It is important, in considering the chemical and other properties of these three typical building materials, to observe the genetic relationships between them. To neglect this is to enter upon a course of study which is exceptionally difficult, and to follow a pathway of thought along which many men have lost their way. So long as cement and concrete are considered as having nothing in common with bricks, and vice to understand the constitution versa, it is almost impossible of any of these materials. Separately, they lead to no important conclusions, but considered together they throw a light on each others characteristics which is as important as it is unexpected. Until a few years ago the brick industry of this country had no men of sufficientscientific training to study adequately the constitution of the materials used or the chemical and physical changes which occur during manufacture. Consequently, the industry was largely workedby rule of thumb, and men had often to pay very dearly for their experience, simply because there was no source from which to obtain guidance on the complex technical problems associated with their work. The manufacturers of cement have been more fortunate, for they realised at an early stage that success or failure depended largely on maintaining a mixture of constant chemical composition they found that tests were necessary at so many stages in the manufacture that the employment of several chemists became essential. With this scientific assistance the chemical and physical laws affecting the production of cement were studied with very gratifying results, and though much remains to be done, theimportance of a knowledge of chemistry in the manufacture of cement has been fully established. Concrete is in an intermediate stage so far as the application of science to its production is concerned...

Ancient Monuments and Modern Identities sets out to examine the role of archaeology in the creation of ethnic, national and social identities in 19th and 20th century Greece. The essays included in this volume examine the development of interpretative and methodological principles guiding the recovery, protection and interpretation of material remains and their presentation to the public. The role of archaeology is examined alongside prevailing perceptions of the past, and is thereby situated in its political and ideological context. The book is organized chronologically and follows the changing attitudes to the past during the formation, expansion and consolidation of the Modern Greek State. The aim of this volume is to examine the premises of the archaeological discipline, and to apply reflection and critique to contemporary archaeological theory and practice. The past, however, is not a domain exclusive to archaeologists. The contributors to this volume include prehistoric and classical archaeologists, but also modern historians, museum specialists, architectural historians, anthropologists, and legal scholars who have all been invited to discuss the impact of the material traces of the past on the Modern Greek social imaginary.

Offers architects and creative services professionals exclusive insights and strategies for success from the former CEO of HOK. Designing a World Class Architecture Firm: The People, Stories and Strategies Behind HOK tells the history of one of the largest design firms in the world and draws lessons from it that can help other architects, interior designers, urban planners and creative services professionals grow bigger or better. Former HOK CEO Patrick MacLeamy shares the revolutionary strategies HOK's founders deployed to create a brand-new type of architecture firm. He pulls no punches, revealing the triple crisis that almost bankrupted HOK and describes how any firm can survive and thrive. Designing a World Class Architecture Firm tells the inside story of many of HOK's most iconic buildings, including the National Air and Space Museum, Moscone Convention Center, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, the Houston Galleria and the reimagined LaGuardia Airport. Each chapter conveys lessons learned from HOK's successes --and failures-- including: The importance of diversifying to depression-and-recession-proof your firm The benefit of organizing your firm around specialized leaders and project types The difference between leading and managing your people The value of simple financial metrics to ensure your firm's health and profitability The "run toward trouble" strategy which prevents problems from ballooning MacLeamy delivers his advice via inspirational stories such as how HOK survived when its home office in St. Louis went up in flames and humorous stories, like the time an HOK executive was mistaken for royalty on a trip to Saudi Arabia. In this tell-all guide, the driven architecture or design professional will find the tools needed to evolve or grow any firm.

Design and Spirituality examines the philosophical context of our current situation and argues for a re-establishment and re-affirmation of self-transcending priorities, together with an ethos of moderation and sufficiency. It covers a wide range of topics broadly related to the main theme, including material culture and spiritual teachings; sustainability and the spiritual perspective; traditional and indigenous knowledge; technology and spirituality; notions of meaningful design; and the deeper, symbolic significance of (some) material things. The author is a leading thinker in the field and he presents his arguments in a manner that invites the reader to reflect and to think about where we are going, why we are going there and what really matters.

Combining a fascinating, thought-provoking and - above all - readable text with over 800 photographs, plans, and sections, this exciting new reading of modern architecture is a must for students and architecture enthusiasts alike. Organized largely as a chronology, chapters necessarily overlap to allow for the discrete examination of key themes including typologies, movements, and biographical studies, as well as the impact of evolving technology and country-specific influences.

Some of the finest architectural structures in India are to be found below ground: these are its ancient stepwells. Stepwells are unique to India; the earliest rudimentary wells date from about the 4th century CE, and eventually they were built throughout the country, particularly in the arid western regions. Stepwell construction evolved so that, by the 11th century, they were amazingly complex feats of architecture and engineering, not only providing water all year round but also serving as gathering places, refuges and retreats. The journalist Victoria Lautman first encountered stepwells three decades ago, and this book - now available in paperback for the first time - is a testament to her determined efforts over several years to document these fascinating but largely unknown structures before they disappear. Of the thousands of stepwells that proliferated across India, most were abandoned as a result of modernization and the depletion of water tables. Frequently commissioned by royal or wealthy patrons, the wells vary greatly in scale and design. Some also functioned as subterranean Hindu temples, featuring columned pavilions and elaborate stone carvings. Islamic wells were generally less flamboyant, but often incorporated shady loggias and small chambers in which to relax and escape the stifling heat. Today, few stepwells are in use. The majority have been left to silt up, fill with rubbish and crumble into disrepair. Gradually, however, the Indian government and heritage organizations are recognizing the need to preserve these architectural wonders. In 2014 India's grandest and best-known stepwell, the Rani ki Vav in Patan, Gujarat, became a UNESCO World Heritage site. In her introduction, Lautman discusses why and where the stepwells were built. She reflects on the reasons they became derelict and considers how the appreciation of stepwells is changing with the work of organizations and individuals who aim to protect and restore them. The main part of the book is arranged in a broadly chronological order, with up to four pages devoted to each of c. 70 stepwells, every one unique in design and engineering. The name, location (including GPS coordinates) and approximate date of each well accompany colour photographs and a concise commentary by Lautman on the history and architecture of the well and her experience of visiting it. While many of the stepwells are rather decrepit, their magnificent engineering and great beauty never fail to impress.