A serious scholarly look at the work of R. Buckminster Fuller is long overdue. While Fuller himself wrote and published many volumes, and several biographies were written about him, there is little research that contributes to a critical understanding of his work and its historical significance. The 1,300-plus linear feet of material contained in the Fuller Archive at Stanford, including papers, photographs, audio and video recordings, and models, has been recently organized and described by the Department of Special Collections, and is ready to be explored by a new generation of scholars.
Fuller's work has often suffered from lopsided treatment. Some laud him as a planetary prophet whose design science work foretold sustainable architecture and nanotechnology; others dismiss him as a "delirious technician" with a talent for linguistic obfuscation. Between adulation and disdain must lie a balanced picture of Fuller's life and his work.
This volume paints that picture by taking a broader historical view, discussing Fuller and his work in the context of larger social and cultural patterns. Fuller is a common thread in a critical cultural history that will show him to be both a participant in and a product of his times. By placing Fuller and his work in a historical framework, we will arrive at a much richer understanding of both this self-made polymath and his times. This fresh, contextual look at Fuller's work from leading scholars in different fields is an important step toward filling the void of serious scholarship on Fuller.

A brilliantly conceived biography of Joseph Paxton, horticulturist to the Duke & Duchess of Devonshire at Chatsworth, architect of the Crystal Palace at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and one of the greatest unsung heroes of the Victorian Age In the nineteenth century, which witnessed a revolution in horticulture and urban planning and architecture, Joseph Paxton, a man with no formal education, strode like a colossus. Head gardener at Chatsworth by the age of twenty-three, and encouraged by the sixth Duke of Devonshire whose patronage soon flourished into the defining friendship of his life, Paxton set about transforming this Derbyshire estate into the greatest garden in England. Visitors there were astonished by the enormous glasshouses and ambitious waterworks he built, the collection of orchids, the largest in all England, the dwarf bananas and the gargantuan lily, the trees and plants brought back from all over the world. Queen Victoria came to marvel and, increasingly, with the development of the railway in which Paxton was also involved, daytrippers from all over the country. It was the Crystal Palace, home of the Great Exhibition in 1851, that secured Paxton's fame. His design, initially doodled on a piece of blotting paper, was the architectural triumph of its time. Two thousand men worked for eight months to complete it. It was six times the size of St Paul's Cathedral, enclosed a space of 18 acres, and entertained six million visitors. By the time of his death fourteen years later, 'the busiest man in England' according to Dickens, was friends with Brunel and Stevenson and in constant demand to design public parks and gardens. His last, seemingly most eccentric project was for a Great Boulevard under glass, a crystal arcade that would connect all the main railway termini in London. Drawing on exclusive access to Paxton's personal letters, Kate Colquhouns's remarkable biography is a compelling story of a man who typifies the Victorian ideal of self-improvement and a touching portrait of one of that era's great heroes.

Wright's Writings traces the discursive work of Frank Lloyd Wright through a set of essays by Kenneth Frampton. Originally written as a series of introductions to the five-volume collection of Wright's writing published in 1992, the essays are gathered here as a critical survey of the architect's written and spoken work-a body of text that testifies to Wright's staggering prolificacy, pleasure in argument, diversity of interests, and desire to engage with timely political debates. Alongside these five essays, Wright's Writings provides a visual record of Wright's literary output, demonstrating the range of media he employed in the act of making architecture. Read together, it presents a history of the architect through the essays, books, letters, lectures, and speeches he wrote as well as the material and social cultures he navigated.

Leonardo da Vinci's scientific explorations were virtually unknown during his lifetime, despite their extraordinarily wide range. He studied the flight patterns of birds to create some of the first human flying machines; designed military weapons and defenses; studied optics, hydraulics, and the workings of the human circulatory system; and created designs for rebuilding Milan, employing principles still used by city planners today. Perhaps most importantly, Leonardo pioneered an empirical, systematic approach to the observation of nature-what is known today as the scientific method.
Drawing on over 6,000 pages of Leonardo's surviving notebooks, acclaimed scientist and bestselling author Fritjof Capra reveals Leonardo's artistic approach to scientific knowledge and his organic and ecological worldview. In this fascinating portrait of a thinker centuries ahead of his time, Leonardo singularly emerges as the unacknowledged "father of modern science."

This book, conceived as a road trip, leads through the fascinating architectural heritage from the time of the tourism boom and of the Cold War in Croatia. Along the Adriatic high way, the picturesque coastal road from the 1960s, impressive hotel complexes and secret military posts emerged at the same time, which today share a similar fate: as ruins with a sea view. The authors from the research department of housing and design of TU Vienna outline routes to these hidden architectures, describe their development, their role in the non-aligned state of Yugoslavia, their decline, and their transformation. Eight removable folding maps examine special phenomena of the coastal area and make the book a practical guide on the journey to the hidden gems of the Croatian Adriatic coast.

Often called the father of landscape architecture, Frederick Law Olmsted was responsible for the design of Central Park and Prospect Park in New York City; Mount Royal Park in Montreal; the Belle Isle Park in Detroit; the Grand Necklace of Parks in Milwaukee; the Cherokee Park and entire parks system in Louisville, KY; and the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina, to name a few of his most famous projects. His landscape works are enjoyed in 25 states and 3 Canadian provinces. Most of these parks were created during and immediately after the Civil War. This title presents the opportunity to witness the evolution of Olmsted s design and social philosophies during a time of upheaval in American history.

Sixteen selections, dating from the 1850s to the 1890s, reveal Frederick Law Olmsted s youthful interests as well as his mature thinking on cities, small residential sites, the history and theory of urban parks, and landscape architecture in general. His writings directly addressed important issues of his day, but they remain as cogent as ever in today s environmental crisis."

Julian Abele, Architect and the Beaux Arts uncovers the life of one of the first beaux arts trained African American architects. Overcoming racial segregation at the beginning of the twentieth century, Abele received his architecture degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1902. Wilson traces Abele's progress as he went on to become the most formally educated architect in America at that time. Abele later contributed to the architectural history of America by designing over 200 buildings throughout his career including the Widener Memorial Library (1913) at Harvard University and the Free Library of Philadelphia (1917). Architectural history is a valuable resource for those studying architecture. As such this book is beneficial for academics and students of architecture and architectural historians with a particular interest in minority discussions.

Lewis Mumford and American Modernism examines the career and writings of America's leading critic of architecture. The author of numerous books on the history of architecture, Mumford focused on the roles that technology and urbanism have played in modern civilisation. One of the first to write appreciatively of the achievements of the Chicago school, he was also a fervent supporter of Frank Lloyd Wright, whose buildings embodied the organic, rather than technological, basis for modern architecture that Mumford strongly advocated. Indeed, his writings have proved to be prescient, forming the basis for architecture and urban planning at a time of transition and redefinition at the end of the twentieth century.

They ate garlic and didn't always bathe; they listened to Wagner and worshiped Diaghilev; they sent their children to coeducational schools, explored homosexuality and free love, vegetarianism and Post-impressionism. They were often drunk and broke, sometimes hungry, but they were of a rebellious spirit. Inhabiting the same England with Philistines and Puritans, this parallel minority of moral pioneers lived in a world of faulty fireplaces, bounced checks, blocked drains, whooping cough, and incontinent cats.

They were the bohemians.

Virginia Nicholson -- the granddaughter of painter Vanessa Bell and the great-niece of Virginia Woolf -- explores the subversive, eccentric, and flamboyant artistic community of the early twentieth century in this "wonderfully researched and colorful composite portrait of an enigmatic world whose members, because they lived by no rules, are difficult to characterize" (San Francisco Chronicle).

The first in-depth study of one of the seminal works of America's most renowned twentieth-century architect, first published in 1996, is now available in paperback. In this study, Joseph Siry examines the building in the light of Wright's earlier religious architecture, his methods of design, and his innovative construction techniques, particularly the use of reinforced concrete which was here exploited and expressively deployed for the first time. He also sets Unity Temple against the tradition of the liberal Unitarian and Universalist religious culture, the institutional history of the affluent Oak Park congregation that commissioned the building, as well as the social context in which structure was conceived and built. Throughout, Unity Temple is treated as a work of art that embodies both Wright's theory of architecture and his liberal religious ideals.

Erich Mendelsohn's buildings, erected throughout Germany between 1920 and 1932, epitomised architectural modernity for his countrymen. This study examines his department stores, office buildings, and cinemas, counterparts to the famous housing projects built during the same years in Frankfurt and Berlin. Demonstrating the degree to which their dynamic presence stemmed from Mendelsohn's attention to their consumer-oriented functions, James shows Mendelsohn to be more than an Expressionist, as he is usually characterised. James recounts how his architecture closely reflects the controversies over modernity, including relativity, consumerism, and urban planning, that raged during the years of the Weimar Republic. She also illustrates how much Mendelsohn's thriving practice depended on the patronage of fellow German Jews, many of whom shared his commitment to creating alternatives to the nationalistic historicism of the late Wilhelmine period.

After beginning his career as an architect in London, Calvert Vaux (1824-1895) came to the Hudson River valley in 1850 at the invitation of Andrew Jackson Downing, the reform-minded writer on houses and gardens. As Downing's partner, and after Downing's death in 1852, Vaux designed country and suburban dwellings that were remarkable for their well-conceived plans and their sensitive rapport with nature. By 1857, the year he published his book Villas and Cottages, Vaux had moved to New York City. There he asked Frederick Law Olmsted to join him in preparing a design for Central Park. He spent the next 38 years defending and refining their vision of Central Park as a work of art. After the Civil War, he and Olmsted led the nascent American park movement with their designs for parks and parkways in Brooklyn, Buffalo, and many other American cities. Apart from undertakings with Olmsted, Vaux cultivated a distinguished architectural practice. Among his clients were the artist Frederic Church, whose dream house, Olana, he helped create; and the reform politician Samuel Tilden, whose residence on New York's Gramercy Park remains one of the country's outstanding Victorian buildings. A pioneering advocate for apartment houses in American cities, Vaux designed buildings that mirrored the advance of urbanization in America, including early model housing for the poor. He planned the original portions of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History and conceived a stunning proposal for a vast iron and glass building to house the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. Especially notable are the many bridges and other charming structures that he designed for Central Park. Vaux considered the Park's Terrace, decorated by J. W. Mould, as his greatest achievement. An active participant in the cultural and intellectual life of New York, Vaux was an idealist who regarded himself as an artist and a professional. And while much has been written on Olmsted, comparatively little has been published about Vaux. The first in-depth account of Vaux's career, Country, Park, and City should be of great interest to historians of art, architecture, and urbanism, as well as preservationists and other readers interested in New York City's past and America's first parks.

This book tells the tale of the prolific Italian architect, inventor, farmer, writer, and engineer Gaetano Ciocca, whose career took him from the battlefronts of World War I to Stalin's Russia, Mussolini's Italy, FDR's America, and finally to postwar liberal-democratic Italy. Like celebrated counterparts such as Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, Ciocca was a visionary so confident in his vision of a future in which all aspects of life would be rationalized and modernized that no set of practical or political obstacles could ever stand in his way. Ciocca's endeavors included the development of "fast houses," a "theater for 20,000 spectators," the "guided roadway," and the rationalist pig farms referred to by Carlo Belli as "Ciocca's Grand Hotel for Pigs."

The pioneering British modernist architect Richard Seifert was one of the most successful and influential architects of his generation. During the 1960s and '70s he changed the face and fabric of London with a powerful series of highly visible and uncompromising brutalist buildings, including - most famously - Centre Point, the Nat West Tower and King's Reach Tower. Seifert is often described as a modernist version of Christopher Wren in terms of his impact upon the capital, building hundreds of towers, office buildings and hotels in London but also working in other parts of the UK and internationally. An enigmatic and determined figure, Seifert achieved much in his lifetime yet has remained a controversial and divisive figure due to his unwavering commitment to modernism. Both Seifert and his buildings have been attacked, with his work described as 'notorious' for its brutalist aesthetic and an arguable lack of contextuality. Yet in recent years there has been a noticeable upsurge of interest in brutalist architecture in general along with the beginnings of a re-evaluation of Seifert's extraordinary contribution to mid-century architecture and design: a number of buildings by Seifert and his associates have been listed in recognition of their architectural importance. Beautifully illustrated, this book records, analyses and celebrates a considered selection of Seifert's buildings, including Centre Point, the Nat West and King's Reach Towers, Space House, the Euston Station Buildings, the Park Lane Tower Hotel, Drapers Gardens, the International Press Centre, all in London, Wembley Conference Centre and Sussex Heights in Brighton, within the most extensive survey of his work to date.

The Melnikov House, a building designed by the architect Konstantin Melnikov in Moscow for his family (1927 - 1929), is an icon of the architectural avant-garde. The house was originally built as an experimental cylindrical house to test out Konstantin Melnikov's very own concept of mass construction of residential estate. The original layout, elegant spatial arrangement, and smart engineering techniques made this masterpiece world famous. According to the words of Melnikov, the essence of the house lies in its "even distribution of weight, light, air, and heat". Being of a unique architectural form, it still looks modern while retaining the authentic memorial atmosphere of the twentieth century, thus reflecting the tragic life of this maverick architect. This book covers the house in its current condition - during its transformation from a family home to the State Melnikovs Museum, awaiting an in-depth survey by specialists and conservation works. The book contains rich archival materials as well as recent photographs. It describes the challenges and choices that need to be made during the process of museumification. Many of the memorial objects from the house linked to the professional life of the architect will be published for the first time.

This fully illustrated monograph is dedicated to architect Pierre-Louis Faloci, 2018 Laureate of the Grand Prix national de l'architecture and author of the concept of "global village". The book highlights the career path of Faloci and explores the concept of "ecology of the gaze", which for him, together with that of "eco building", plays a key role in today's architecture. Text in English and French.

An expanded edition on the master of Modernism, Le Corbusier, by award-winning architectural historian William J. R. Curtis. Originally published in 1996 to critical fanfair, scholar William J.R. Curtis has re-issued his classic text with extensive new scholarship and contemporary research that continues the high standard of the original. Presented chronologically with a clear narrative, Curtis has worked tirelessly not only to document Le Corbusier's key projects in detail but to contextualize them within the architect's overarching philosophy of urbanism and art and the pervading culture of Le Corbusier's time. With full access to the renowned Le Corbusier archive, Curtis' text is lavishly illustrated with new photographs, plans and original sketches and a fresh new design. Praise for the first edition: "This is not only the best single work on Le Corbusier - a model of scholarship, erudite yet eminently readable - it is also an invaluable analysis of the creative architectural process. It should be read and re-read by every student of architecture." - Building Design "William J. R. Curtis is the best architectural historian writing in the English language." - Chicago Tribune

Digital Monuments radically explodes "iconic architecture" of the new millennium and its hijacking of the public imagination via the digital image. Hallucinatory constructions such as Rem Koolhaas's CCTV headquarters in Beijing, Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and Zaha Hadid's Performing Arts Centre in Abu Dhabi are all introduced to the world by immortal digital imagery that floods the internet-yet comes to haunt the actualised buildings. Like holograms, these "digital monuments," which violently push physics and engineering to their limits, flicker eerily between the real and the unreal-invoking fantasies of omnipotence, immortality and utopian cities. But this experience of iconic architecture as a digital dream on the ground conceals from the urban spectator the social reality of the buildings and the rigidity of their ideology. In 18 micro-essays, Digital Monuments exposes the stereotypes of iconic architecture while depicting the savagery of the industry, from the Greek and Spanish crises triggered by financialised iconic development to mass labour-deaths on construction sites in the UAE.

The most incisive texts on Rem Koolhaas / OMA The activities of Rem Koolhaas and his staff were widely discussed even before the foundation of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in 1975. Today, many contributions on the work of OMA can be found in the international architectural press, including Koolhaas' own writings. The book contains about 150 selected texts-interviews, feature articles, essays, lead articles, reviews, letters, introductions, appraisals, and competition reports that have been compiled for the first time. This compilation not only provides a fresh and critical view of the oeuvre of one the most important contemporary architects, but also represents an account of the debate on architectural and urban design in recent decades. The most incisive texts on the work of OMA/Rem Koolhaas, with many articles that have never before been translated into English An overview of notions, ideas, and debates in architectural discourse, theory, and criticism, from the 1970s until 2000, that remain relevant today Illustrated with more than 100 cover shoots

Steelworks

Pierre Koenig's modern materials

There are few images of 20th-century architecture more iconic than the nighttime view of Case Study House #22. At its eagle's nest promontory above Los Angeles, the building is a vision of streamlined glass and steel, its slick lines echoing the twinkling city boulevards below. With this and his other equally innovative build for the famous project of the Arts & Architecture magazine, American architect Pierre Koenig (1925-2004) became one of the leading figures of the Modern movement.

While still a student of architecture, Koenig designed and built his first exposed steel house in 1950, proving that the use of prefabricated materials could allow for spatial freedom in affordable houses. Throughout his career, he would champion socially responsible design, as well as buildings that responded deftly and directly to the Southern Californian climate. Through windows, water, terraces, skylights, and glazing, his buildings optimized the rapport between inside and outside, while aiming for a simplistic purity of appearance.

Through all of Koenig's major projects, including the Johnson House (1962) and Oberman House (1962), this book introduces an architect pioneering in method and material and iconic of his time, as fueled by experimentalism as the postwar optimism of the age.

Architect Albert Frey (1903-1998) saw a modernist utopia in the desert. Born in Zurich, he studied in Europe with Le Corbusier before moving to the United States in 1930, convinced it was the land of architectural opportunity. On a visit to Palm Springs, he fell under the desert spell. It was here, amid the arid and empty landscape, that he could truly envisage a perfect modern future. Like fellow Californian luminary, John Lautner, Frey would spend the rest of his career nurturing the consonance of architecture and nature: studying the fall of sunlight and rain, and merging aluminum, steel, and glass with the boulders and sands of the West Coast wilds. His vision centered in particular on Palm Springs, capitalizing on the city's postwar population boom to create a bastion of the sleek, leisurely modernism that defines midcentury California. In this dependable architect introduction, we follow Frey's long and prestigious career from his European beginnings through to the apogee of his Californian practice, taking in his notes on De Stijl, Le Corbusier, and Bauhaus, and exploring the stylistic, material, and geographic makings of his unique "desert modernism." About the series Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Architecture series features: an introduction to the life and work of the architect the major works in chronological order information about the clients, architectural preconditions as well as construction problems and resolutions a list of all the selected works and a map indicating the locations of the best and most famous buildings approximately 120 illustrations (photographs, sketches, drafts, and plans)

With her first monograph, Marina Tabassum intends to inspire people by spotlighting special architectural elements which pervade her work, such as Light and Spirituality, Brick and Materiality, Place and Memory, and People and Community. These elements will be examined by architects and scholars who have impacted her work- with whom Marina Tabassum had the opportunity to interact and share her works. The book will take a look at Tabassum's architectural journey from its early beginnings to future projects and ongoing research. As an architect listed in 2020 by Prospect magazine as the third-greatest thinker for the COVID-19 era, her perhaps most well-known feat is the Bait Ur Rouf Mosque in Dhaka, which won the Aga Khan Award for architecture in 2016. Her holistic involvement in this project, which she undertook on request of her grandmother but completed alone with self-sourced private funding, reveals her dedication to impactful architecture. Readers can look forward to the presentation of a wide variety of projects including early URBANA projects, such as the Independence Monument of Bangladesh and the Museum of Independence, the more recent and steadily ongoing research on the $2000 Home and the movable house, and Khudi Bari, modular mobile houses for victims vulnerable to climate change and Rohingya refugees. All projects are represented in text and photographs, from residential to museum architecture, with a focus on sustainability, sensitivity to both history, and the demands of modernity, atmosphere, and materiality. Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum is the founder and principal architect of Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA). She founded and heads FACE, the Foundation for Architecture and Community Equity, in Bangladesh. Tabassum has been honored with multiple awards such as the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, the Gold Medal of the French Academy of Architecture, the Victoria and Albert Museum's Jameel Prize, and the 2021 Soane Medal for architecture from the Sir John Soane Museum.

The first English-language overview of the contributions to Renaissance architectural culture of northern Italian architect Vincenzo Scamozzi (1548-1616), this book introduces Anglophone architects and historians to a little-known figure from a period that is recognized as one of the most productive and influential in the Western architectural tradition. Ann Marie Borys presents Vincenzo Scamozzi as a traveler and an observer, the first Western architect to respond to the changing shape of the world in the Age of Discovery. Pointing out his familiarity with the expansion of knowledge in both natural history and geography, she highlights that his truly unique contribution was to make geography and cartography central to the knowledge of the architect. In so doing, she argues that he articulated the first fully realized theory of place. Showing how geographic thinking influences his output, Borys demonstrates that although Scamozzi's work was conceived within an established tradition, it was also influenced by major cultural changes occurring in the late 16th century.