Kairos is the history of the first design of architecture - in its most elevated sense - for a space project. Between 2008 and 2011, the Brazilian architect and urban planner Emanuel Dimas de Melo Pimenta designed a building to be permanently in orbit of planet Earth. Beyond an architectural design it also is a reflection on the human condition, on the possibility of the end of wars, of the leap of Humanity to the Universe and on a civilizational metamorphosis. But it also is a technical and technological questioning, and an artwork. With additional texts by the architects Carlos Zibel and Bruno Padovano, of the astrophysicist Amancio Friaca, and a poem of the hypermedia artist Artur Matuck - all from USP University of Sao Paulo, Emanuel Pimenta's book also tells the history of the design of space stations, from the 19th century to now, in a fabulous trip with the reader.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

He was a brawny, blue-eyed, Irish-American religious convert who became a holy warrior in the name of Islam -- until the holy war began to change.
Aukai Collins grew up hard: abandoned, surviving in the streets and running with thugs. While serving time, he converted to Islam, and went to fight with the Muslims who were targeted for genocide in Chechnya and Bosnia. This led him to Usama bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan. As terrorist attacks on civilians around the world intensified, Aukai was asked to lead a mission that included hostage taking and the killing of civilians -- something he would not do.
Disillusioned by those who used Islam for their own ends or to attack innocents, Aukai offered his services to the FBI and CIA as a counter-terrorist operative, even getting close to one of the leaders of the September 11 attacks. Yet his greatest strength -- providing insight into the problems surrounding the U.S. government's fight against something it doesn't understand -- was ignored by inept members of the American intelligence community.
"My Jihad" is an insider's story about the greatest threat to world peace and stability in modern times, told by an unforgettable true-life warrior who has walked the walk, fought the fights, and lived to tell about it.

At just over forty, David Adjaye is one of the world's most exciting and accomplished architects, and has built many highly acclaimed houses and public buildings in the UK and USA. Over a ten-year period, the Tanzanian born, London-based architect has visited 53 major African cities and photographed thousands of buildings, sites and places that few of us will ever be able to visit. This 7-volume slipcased edition documents Adjaye's tribute to African metropolitan architecture. The individual volumes present cities according to the terrain in which they are situated - the Maghreb, Desert, The Sahel, Savannah and Grassland, Mountain and Highveld, and Forest. Each city is shown in a concise urban history, fact file, maps and satellite imagery, along with Adjaye's personal travel notes and dozens of photographs of the city's civic, commercial and residential architecture. All six `terrain' volumes feature an introductory essay by Adjaye, and a separate volume is dedicated to essays by leading academics and commentators on Africa.

Key Modern Architects provides an accessible and thought-provoking introduction to the work of the most significant architects of the modern era. Fifty short chapters introduce fifty key architects, from Le Corbusier to Aldo Van Eyck to Zaha Hadid, exploring their most influential buildings and developing a critique of each architect's work within a broader cultural and historical context. The selection represents the most influential architects working from 1890 to the present, those most likely to be taught on survey courses in modern architectural history, along with some lesser-known names with an equal claim to influence. Emphasis is placed on a critical and interpretative approach, allowing the student to position each architect in a cultural and intellectual context quickly and easily. Artistic, technical, social, and intellectual developments are brought to the fore - built and unbuilt projects, writings and influences. This approach brings to light the ideology behind architectural work, offering insights into each architect's working practice. - Helps students to develop a critical approach to understanding modern architectural history. - One chapter per architect - meaning chapters may be read individually as a concise resource for the study of an architect, or together as a coherent book-length history of the whole period of modern architecture. - Chapters are supported by boxed lists of each architect's most significant projects, along with suggestions for further reading as a springboard to further study and research. Combining the clarity and accessibility of a textbook with in-depth reading and a critical approach, Key Modern Architects provides an invaluable resource for both the classroom and for independent study in architectural and art history.

This richly illustrated monograph delves into the innovative output of one of the world's most prolific international design and architecture practitioners, Tokyo-based Shigeru Ban. Canvassing an enormous compilation of works, this title is a significant contribution to IMAGES' stable of works showcasing renowned architects from around the globe. This book features an array of innovative projects, from commercial and residential innovation strategies to humanitarian works, such as emergency shelters made from paper and modular shelters for earthquake victims. Shigeru Ban's visionary residential design philosophies encompass timber hybrid structures, including a building constructed from cardboard tubes; the tallest hybrid timber structure in the world for a residential tower in Vancouver; as well as the new home designed for the Aspen Art Museum, which features woven wooden cladding. His innovation extends to the industrial design of an architect's scale pen used for drawing. This book also helps to relay Shigeru Ban's contemporary discourse on architectural culture, and how it is moving in new directions. This title is a must-have for any serious aficionado of modern architecture, innovative thinking, and design.

What does it mean to build a house? How can it change a life? What happens if the builder is a woman, a teacher and a writer, a woman unaccustomed to tools? How does such a woman come to build at all? What happens, then, if that first house, whose every nail is known, is sold? How does one leave such a house, leave and go on to build another? This is a building story, but more it is a story of a woman builder and those without whom she could not have built. It is about how building changed not only that woman but also her sense of what a house is, how she came to know that building houses of wood builds the house of the spirit.

A pulse-pounding real-life chase for an ancient masterpiece of immeasurable value . . .

Sotheby's. New York City. June 19, 1990.

Nothing of its kind had been sold to the public in more than a century. On a warm June evening on Manhattan's Upper East Side, with the auction-house showroom crammed with the wealthy, the curious, and the press, history was made when an anonymous man in a green golf sweater paid an unprecedented three quarters of a million dollars to win the twenty-five-hundred-year-old chalice. After that night, this historical artifact disappeared, its whereabouts a mystery. "Until now."

It is among the most prized of antiquities: the Greek artist Euphronios's wine cup depicting the death of Zeus's son Sarpedon at Troy. Lost for more than two millennia, the chalice--one of only six of its kind found intact--mysteriously surfaced in the collection of a Hollywood producer, who then sold it to a Texas billionaire. Coveted by obsessed private collectors, dealers, and museum curators, it was also of intense interest to the Italian police, who believed it belonged to their country, where it had first been dug up earlier in the twentieth century.

In this breathtaking tale of history, adventure, and intrigue, archaeologist and journalist Vernon Silver pieces together the extraordinary tale of the lost cup and offers a portrait of the modern antiquities trade: a world of tomb raiders, smugglers, wealthy collectors, ambitious archaeol-ogists, rapacious dealers, corrupt curators, and international law enforcement. Spanning twenty-five hundred years, "The Lost Chalice" moves from the mythic battlefield of the Trojan War to the countryside of twentieth-century Tuscany, the dusty libraries of Oxford University to the exhibition halls of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the cramped law-enforcement offices of the Carabinieri to the tony rooms of New York's auction houses to solve the mystery of the world's rarest masterpiece.

As Silver learns, the discovery of the chalice exposes another riddle--and an even greater missing treasure. Epic and thrilling, "The Lost Chalice" is a driving true-life detective story that illuminates a big-money, high-stakes, double-dealing world, which is as fascinating as it is unforgettable. Silver's thrilling tale opens a window onto Italian history, culture, and life rarely seen.

"Bertie's story is a testament to the 3 T's--tenacity, talent, and triumph. She just kept on fighting and we are all the better for it.--Willa Sorensen, retired principal and school board member.

The definitive volume on Gaetano Pesce's incomparable life and career, as told in the iconoclastic artist-designer's own words. In a category all his own, Gaetano Pesce is widely considered one of the most important, and elusive, creative figures of the last half century. Bridging numerous key art and design movements, while never truly belonging to any of them, Pesce's singular practice has remained steadfastly provocative, defying widely held notions of convention, utility, and good taste. Yet as New York magazine demonstrated in its feature on the 'Pope of Gloop' upon the opening of his recent solo show at acclaimed gallery Salon 94, the world has arguably caught up to Gaetano Pesce. Now in his eighth decade, Pesce recounts his life and career to renowned design curator and critic Glenn Adamson, generating discussion conducted over several years that is as informative as it is surprising. Discussing his incomparable decades-long career which includes the creation of the classic articles of his UP series, the effusively postmodern design for Chiat/Day's headquarters, and countless works of furniture and design objects in his signature poured resin - Pesce shares his wide-ranging thoughts on art, design, and architecture. Always forward-looking, Pesce's process of reinterpreting and transforming the premises of modern design to create idiosyncratic and deeply personal works beat a path for multidisciplinary design practice seen everywhere today. Particularly in his exploration of introducing imperfections, if not 'defects' into the traditionally uniform systems of mass fabrication, Pesce turns out to be much more of a prophet of modern design than a curious detractor. Gaetano Pesce: The Complete Incoherence is the long overdue summary of an irreverent, wildly inventive career that should inspire practitioners across all creative disciplines.

An all-inclusive panorama of the many achievements of Gustave Eiffel, one of the 19th century's most remarkable architectsGustave Eiffel was the man behind the landmark that became the symbol par excellence of Paris, and so the dominant image of France around the world. However, the work of Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923) is not limited to the tower that bears his name. From 1856, when he was commissioned to design a railway bridge in Bordeaux (his first large-scale metal construction), he imposed his style all around the world. The bridge across the Douro in Portugal, the Garabit viaduct, the church in Manila, the Manaus Municipal Market in Brazil, and even the framework of the Statue of Liberty are just some of his more than 300 masterpieces. Then, disaster struck in 1892, when a report directly linked him to the Panama scandal that had come to light three years before. This was the start of a nightmare that would ultimately turn out to be completely unjustified. Deeply wounded, Eiffel withdrew, cloaking himself in his pride. His eldest daughter stuck by him, not only offering support, but also building up a remarkable collection of memorabilia and documents, a precious legacy which she left to her nephew Philippe Couperie-Eiffel. For the first time, to mark the 90th anniversary of his famous ancestor's death, Couperie-Eiffel has updated this treasure trove and offers us the chance to get to know the great architect and family man through a wide range of previously unpublished archives. This year also marks the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Panama Canal, whose lock gates Eiffel designed and patented.

Thinking About Remodeling? Whether it's big or small, a room addition, a new kitchen, an in-law suite, a new facade, a porch, whole house makeover - or whatever - this unique book will help you arrive at the correct design solution for your specifi c home. Written and illustrated by a licensed architect, nationally recognized for his expertise in the fi eld, this book is specifi cally written to help steer you clear of the many pitfalls encountered in remodeling. Whether you're a do-it-yourselfer, or you intend to engage professional contractors, this is a step by step guide organized to help you make the correct design choices for your home. With over 1000 illustrations and 300 different plans there is likely a plan, or many different plans, that should satisfy your budget as well as your needs.

American Brad Washburn's impact on his proteges and imitators was as profound as that of any other adventurer in the twentieth century. Unquestionably regarded as the greatest mountaineer in Alaskan history and as one of the finest mountain photographers of all time, Washburn transformed American attitudes toward wilderness and revolutionized the art of mountaineering and exploration in the great ranges. In The Last of His Kind, National Geographic Adventure contributing editor David Roberts goes beyond conventional biography to reveal the essence of this man through the prism of his extraordinary exploits from New England to Chamonix, and from the Himalayas to the Yukon. An exciting narrative of mountain climbing in the twentieth century, The Last of His Kind brings into focus Washburn's deeds in the context of the history of mountaineering, and provides a fascinating look at an amazing culture and the influential icon who shaped it.

Das Berliner Zimmer ist seit jeher Zumutung und Angebot zugleich: dunkel, schwer zu beheizen, ohne klar definierte Funktion. Ein Raum, der zur kreativen Aneignung einladt, der geliebt und gehasst wird - aber bisher kaum erforscht wurde. Jan Herres leistet in diesem Buch Pionierarbeit. Er zeigt auf, wie das Berliner Zimmer ab dem 18. Jahrhundert entstand und warum es bis heute Eingang in den Berliner Wohnungsbau findet. Die architekturgeschichtliche Beschreibung wird durch Fallstudien und Bildstrecken zu heutigen Formen der Nutzung und Moeblierung erganzt. Durch die Erfassung von Grundrissen, Groessen und Wohnpraktiken liegt mit Das Berliner Zimmer. Geschichte, Typologie, Nutzungsaneignung die erste Anthologie des Berliner Zimmers vor, die zugleich ein Pladoyer dafur ist, Wohnarchitektur nutzungsoffen und wandelbar fur kunftige Anforderungen zu planen.

Since he followed it all of his life, Richard Neutra (1892-1970) must have relished the maxim of the Greek philosopher Socrates: "The unexamined life is not worth living." In his books, articles, lectures, correspondence, and even casual conversations, Neutra constantly examined, not only his own life, but the lives of others - present and past - and the human and natural world they inhabited. Nowhere was this truer than in his autobiography "Life and Shape," first published in 1962, which now, after years of being out of print, has again happily come back to life.

As opposed to "Survival Through Design" (1954), his superb collection of densely philosophical essays, Neutra took a different tack in "Life and Shape," following a lighter and more deliberately relaxed approach. It was as if the usually serious and intense Neutra was giving himself permission to reveal his richly ironic sense of humor and to probe areas in his personal experience which he had not examined as closely before. These included hitherto unrecorded memories of his parents, siblings, and his childhood and education in imperial Vienna, his numbing experiences as an Austrian artillery officer in World War I, and the beginnings of his architectural consciousness in his response to the work of Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, Erich Mendelsohn, Louis Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright.

As in the autobiographies of Sullivan and Wright, "Life and Shape" concentrates on Neutra's earlier years, both in Europe and America. While he naturally recounts his memories of such well-known commissions as the Lovell Health House (1929), his own Van der Leeuv Research House (1933) and the von Sternberg House (1935), he also muses on such less famous buildings as the small, and now virtually forgotten, Mosk House (1933). "Life and Shape" also confirms Neutra's obsession with the passage of time and his firm resolution never to waste it.

Like Sullivan and Wright, Neutra eschewed writing a factual chronicle, and - at the age of 70 - composed instead a meditation on the aspects of his life and work that seemed, in retrospect, to be the most interesting and significant. He felt no need to try to "include everything" but rather to present an honest recounting of his memory of his life. In writing my own "Richard Neutra and the Search for Modern Architecture" Oxford University Press, 1982; Rizzoli Press, 2006], I relied on "Life and Shape" when I wanted an account of Neutra's experiences told in his own authentic voice. For future generations of architects, historian, and readers, it is good to have it back.

- Thomas S. Hines, UCLA Professor Emeritus of History and Architecture

The twin sisters Selma Mikou and Salwa Mikou founded their own Paris office in 2006 - after working for many years for Jean Nouvel and Renzo Piano. Each project primarily aims to liberate itself from preconceived forms in order to create original solutions that focus on the dimension of an emotional spatial experience. The architects have produced numerous prominent buildings in this way, including the Balsaneo Aquatics Center in Chateauroux (2021), which was developed as a dynamic figure that spans the boulevard like a bridge to overlook the unique landscape of the Indre region. Text in English and German.

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, THE LAST VERMEER, STARRING GUY PEARCE: A revelatory biography of the world's most famous forger--a talented Mr. Ripley armed with a paintbrush--and a deliciously detailed story of deceit in the art world. It's a story that made Dutch painter Han van Meegeren famous worldwide when it broke at the end of World War II: A lifetime of disappointment drove him to forge Vermeers, one of which he sold to Hermann Goering in mockery of the Nazis. And it's a story that's been believed ever since. Too bad it isn't true. Jonathan Lopez has drawn on never-before-seen documents from dozens of archives for this long-overdue unvarnishing of Van Meegeren's legend. Neither unappreciated artist nor antifascist hero, Van Meegeren emerges as an ingenious, dyed-in-the-wool crook. Lopez explores a network of illicit commerce that operated across Europe: Not only was Van Meegeren a key player in that high-stakes game in the 1920s and '30s, landing fakes with famous collectors such as Andrew Mellon, but he and his associates later cashed in on the Nazi occupation.