The Birmingham Art Book is a tribute to a unique city whose visionary scientists and inventors made it famous as a manufacturing powerhouse. From heavy metal industry - here is where the first steam trains were built- to heavy metal music - Black Sabbath made their mark here, this is a place with a proud heritage. Its handsome university is the original of the 'Redbrick' universities, founded by a farsighted mayor in 1900 as a civic place of learning, open to all, now with many world famous alumni and staff, 10 of whom have won Nobel prizes. Local artists convey the architectural glory of Victoria Square and the city centre Museum and Art Gallery (which holds a sumptuous collection of Pre-Raphaelite art). In their drawings, they echo the modern vibrancy of buildings such as the iconic Selfridges department store and the REP theatre. Collages and sketches depict a city buzzing with vitality -from the world-renowned Hippodrome theatre, to the shopping centres and legendary nightlife that are national attractions. Quirky nooks like the Jewellery Quarter, the Electric Cinema or the tranquil Botanic gardens hidden so close to the centre are reflected in this lovely book. The green city with 8000 acres of public parks and many miles of canal paths dating from its heyday in the Industrial Revolution is lovingly drawn and painted by its artists. The Birmingham Art Book is where local artists shine a light on the grand and the humdrum with equal affection. Their love for the modern city is evident and their pride in its heritage comes to the fore in this lovely book.

In the years after the fall of communist governments in Central, Eastern, and South- eastern Europe (CESEE), a flood of memoir literature began to fill bookstores around the region. The turn to autobiography and personal narrative inspired the theme section in this volume of "Aspasia" women's auto-biographical writing and correspondence. Articles in this section examine women's autobiographical writing in the second half of the nineteenth century and women's written memories of epochal moments in the Soviet past: the Holodomor (or Great Famine) that convulsed Ukraine in the aftermath of forced collectivization, and the experience of women soldiers during World War II.

Also in this volume, we present the continuation of a fascinating forum on women's and gender history in CESEE, "Clio on the Margins," edited by Krassimira Daskalova (the first five essays appeared in Aspasia volume 6]). The eight essays in this section provide a comprehensive look at the state of the field of women's and gender history in Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, and Russia.

The volume concludes with two more general articles, two book review essays, twenty book reviews, and a conference report.

Architecture in Context: Designing in the Middle East provides a foundation for understanding the critical context of architecture and design in this region. It does this by: presenting a practical overview of architectural know-how in the Middle East, and its potential for cultivating a sense of place introducing local architectural vocabularies and styles, and how they can still be reactivated in contemporary design exploring the cultural and contextual meaning of forms as references that may influence contemporary architecture discussing important discourses and trends in architecture that allow a rethinking of the current global/local dichotomy. Highly illustrated, the book covers architecture and design in North Africa, the Levant, the Gulf, and Turkey, Iran and Iraq.

Origins of Form is about the shape of things. What limits the height of a tree? Why is a large ship or office building more efficient than a small one? What is the similarity between a human rib cage and an airplane or a bison and a cantilevered bridge? How might we plan for things to improve as they are used instead of wearing out? The author has chosen eight criteria that constitute the major influences on three-dimensional form. These criteria comprise the eight chapters of the book: each looks at form from entirely different viewpoints. The products of both nature and man are examined and compared. This book will make readers-especially those who design and build-aware of their physical environment and how to break away from previously held assumptions and indifference about the ways forms in our human environment have evolved. It shows better ways to do things.The author's practical, no-nonsense approach and his exquisite drawings, done especially for this volume, provide a clear understanding of what can and cannot be; how big or small an object should be, of what material it will be made, how its function will relate to its design, how its use will change it, and what laws will influence its development. The facts and information were gathered from many sources: the areas of mechanics, structure, and materials; geology, biology, anthropology, paleobiology, morphology and others. These are standard facts in these areas of specialization, but they are also essential to the designer's overall knowledge and understanding of form. The result is an invaluable work for students, designers, architects, and planners, and an informed introduction to a fascinating subject for laymen.

Overview: The Various Passive Cooling Systems and Their Applicability to Different Climates and Building Types.

Minimizing Cooling Needs by Building Design.

Ventilative Cooling.

Radiant Cooling.

Evaporative Cooling Systems.

The Earth as a Cooling Source for Buildings.

Cooling of Attached Outdoor Spaces.

Index.

A Companion to Medieval Toledo. Reconsidering the Canons explores the limits of "Convivencia" through new and problematized readings of material familiar to specialists and offers a thoughtful initiation for the non-specialist into the historical, cultural, and religious complexity of the iconic city of Toledo. The volume seeks to understand the history and cultural heritage of the city as a result of fluctuating coexistence. Divided into three themed sections,- the essays consider additional material, new transcriptions, and perspectives that contribute to more nuanced understandings of traditional texts or events. The volume places this cultural history and these new readings into current scholarly debates and invites its readers to do the same.

"Sites Unseen" examines the complex intertwining of race and architecture in nineteenth and early-twentieth century American culture, the period not only in which American architecture came of age professionally in the U.S. but also in which ideas about architecture became a prominent part of broader conversations about American culture, history, politics, and&#8212although we have not yet understood this clearly&#8212race relations. This rich and copiously illustrated interdisciplinary study explores the ways that American writing between roughly 1850 and 1930 concerned itself, often intensely, with the racial implications of architectural space primarily, but not exclusively, through domestic architecture.

In addition to identifying an archive of provocative primary materials, "Sites Unseen" draws significantly on important recent scholarship in multiple fields ranging from literature, history, and material culture to architecture, cultural geography, and urban planning. Together the chapters interrogate a variety of expressive American vernacular forms, including the dialect tale, the novel of empire, letters, and pulp stories, along with the plantation cabin, the West Indian cottage, the Latin American plaza, and the "Oriental" parlor. These are some of the overlooked plots and structures that can and should inform a more comprehensive consideration of the literary and cultural meanings of American architecture. Making sense of the relations between architecture, race, and American writing of the long nineteenth century&#8212in their regional, national, and hemispheric contexts&#8212"Sites Unseen" provides a clearer view not only of this catalytic era but also more broadly of what architectural historian Dell Upton has aptly termed the social experience of the built environment.