The first ever spomenik guidebook, with over 75 examples alongside map references and information on why they exist and who built them. Spomenik' the Serbo-Croat/Slovenian word for 'monument' - refers to a series of memorials built in Tito's Republic of Yugoslavia from the 1960s-1990s, marking the horror of the occupation and the defeat of Axis forces during World War II. Hundreds were built across the country, from coastal resorts to remote mountains. Through these imaginative forms of concrete and steel, a classless, forward-looking, socialist society, free of ethnic tensions, was envisaged. Instead of looking to the ideologically aligned Soviet Union for artistic inspiration, Tito turned to the west and works of abstract expressionism and minimalism. As a result, Yugoslavia was able to develop its own distinct identity through these brutal monuments, which were used as political tools to articulate Tito's personal vision of a new tomorrow. Today, following the breakup of the country and the subsequent Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, some have been destroyed or abandoned. Many have suffered the consequences of ethnic tensions - once viewed as symbols of hope they are now the focus of resentment and anger. This book brings together the largest collection of spomeniks published to date. Each has been extensively photographed and researched by the author, to make this book the most comprehensive survey of this obscure and fascinating architectural phenomenon. A fold-out map on the reverse of the dust jacket shows the exact location of each spomenik using GPS coordinates.

The fourth edition of this classic book provides a comprehensive treatise on the design and construction of swimming pools, both public and private. Significantly revised, it covers planning, materials, design, construction and finishing, water circulation and treatment, energy conservation, maintenance and repairs. This is a standard book for all civil engineers who need to design and construct swimming pools, and a useful reference on the design of water-retaining structures.

The life of Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926) was full of complexity and contradictions. As a young man he joined the Catalonian nationalist movement and was critical of the church; toward the end of his life he devoted himself completely to the construction of one single spectacular church, La Sagrada Familia. In his youth, he courted a glamorous social life and the demeanor of a dandy. By the time of his death in a tram accident on the streets of Barcelona, his clothes were so shabby that passersby assumed he was a beggar. Gaudi's incomparable architecture channels much of this multifaceted intricacy. From the shimmering surface textures and skeletal forms of Casa Batllo to the Hispano-Arabic matrix of Casa Vicens, his work merged the influences of Orientalism, natural forms, new materials, and religious faith into a unique Modernista aesthetic. Today, his buildings enjoy global popularity and acclaim; his magnum opus, the Sagrada Familia, is the most-visited monument in Spain and seven of his works are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Packed full of expert texts and hundreds of full-color illustrations, including new photography, this book presents Gaudi's complete oeuvre. Like a personal tour through Barcelona, we explore his residential, religious, and public projects. We see how the "Dante of architecture" was a builder in the truest sense of the word, crafting extraordinary constructions out of minute and mesmerizing details, transforming fantastical visions into realities on the city streets. About the series TASCHEN is 40! Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible publishing, helping bookworms around the world curate their own library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia at an unbeatable price. Today we celebrate 40 years of incredible books by staying true to our company credo. The 40 series presents new editions of some of the stars of our program-now more compact, friendly in price, and still realized with the same commitment to impeccable production.

This collection of newly published essays examines our relationship to physical objects that invoke, commemorate, and honor the past. The recent destruction of cultural heritage in war and controversies over Civil War monuments in the US have foregrounded the importance of artifacts that embody history. The book invites us to ask: How do memorials convey their meanings? What is our responsibility for the preservation or reconstruction of historically significant structures? How should we respond when the public display of a monument divides a community? This anthology includes coverage of the destruction of Palmyra and the Bamiyan Buddhas, the loss of cultural heritage through war and natural disasters, the explosive controversies surrounding Confederate-era monuments, and the decay of industry in the U.S. Rust Belt. The authors consider issues of preservation and reconstruction, the nature of ruins, the aesthetic and ethical values of memorials, and the relationship of cultural memory to material artifacts that remain from the past. Written by a leading group of philosophers, art historians, and archeologists, the 23 chapters cover monuments and memorials from Dubai to Detroit, from the instant destruction of Hiroshima to the gradual sinking of Venice.

The Academy celebrates the architect John Simpson's newly finished building for the School of Architecture at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana: the Walsh Family Hall. The language of John Simpson's architecture, which derives from the fifth century BC, has been daringly applied to new uses and an instant landmark of exceptional interest has been created. Through a judicious combination of Classical richness and warehouse-like workspace the Walsh Family Hall provides a humane and joyous series of spaces, which elevates the spirits of those entering and passing through it. This book describes not only the architecture of the Walsh Family Hall but the process whereby it came into existence, with written contributions from the generous donors, Matt and Joyce Walsh; Dean Michael Lykoudis, who commissioned the building; and some of the students who work in these uplifting surroundings. Further educational works by John Simpson such as his new 'yard' for Eton College and major new improvements to the Royal College of Music in London are described, with an essay by Simpson describing his approach. All these works are presented and explored with full colour commissioned photography, drawn plans and original sketches throughout. John Simpson Architects believes that Classicism can enhance life in the twenty-first century by creating inspirational spaces that relate to the proportions of the human body - a view of architecture that is triumphantly demonstrated in the Academy that is the Walsh Family Hall.

Current Standards for Indoor Air Temperature are inappropriate in many regions of the world. This forces designers to use highly serviced buildings to achieve air temperatures that accord with the standards to the detriment of the local and global environment. Standards for Thermal Comfort brings together contributions from around the world, reflecting new approaches to the setting of standards which can apply to all climates and cultures.

This new edition of this standard work adds several new information the book, so that sound engineering and architects can better assess the acoustic value of a Rock and Pop Venue. In particular, new insights to the influence of sound absorbers in reflected and important ISO standards are included into the new edition. Based on the first ever scientific investigations on recommendable acoustics for amplified music conducted by the author, this book sets forward precise guidelines for acoustical engineers to optimize the acoustics in existing or future halls for amplified music. It Gives precise guidelines on how to design the acoustics in venues that present amplified music Debates essential construction details, including placement of sound system and use of possible building materials, in the architectural design of new venues or the renovation of old ones Portrays 75 well-known European Rock & Pop venues, their architecture and acoustic properties. 20 venues were rated for their acoustics by music professionals leading to an easy-to-use assessment methodology

Shajar al-Durr-known as "Tree of Pearls"-began her remarkable career as a child slave, given as property to the Ayyubid Sultan Salih of Egypt. She became his favorite concubine, was manumitted, became the sultan's wife, served as governing regent, and ultimately rose to become the legitimately appointed sultan of Egypt in 1250 after her husband's death. Shajar al-Durr used her wealth and power to add a tomb to his urban madrasa; with this innovation, madrasas and many other charitably endowed architectural complexes became commemorative monuments, a practice that remains widespread today. A highly unusual case of a Muslim woman authorized to rule in her own name, her reign ended after only three months when she was forced to share her governance with an army general from the ranks of the Mamluks (elite slave soldiers) and for political expediency to marry him. Despite the fact that Shajar al-Durr's story ends tragically with her assassination and hasty burial, her deeds in her lifetime offer a stark alternative to the continued belief that women in the medieval period were unseen, anonymous, and inconsequential in a world that belonged to men. This biography-the first ever in English-will place the rise and fall of the sultan-queen in the wider context of the cultural and architectural development of Cairo, the city that still holds one of the largest and most important collections of Islamic monuments in the world. D. Fairchild Ruggles also situates the queen's extraordinary architectural patronage in relation to other women of her own time, such as Aleppo's Ayyubid regent. Tree of Pearls concludes with a lively discussion of what we can know about the material impact of women of both high and lesser social rank in this period, and why their impact matters in the writing of history.

Vast sums of money spent to design, construct, and maintain museum additions demand great accountability of museum leaders and design professionals towards visitors and employees. Museum visitors today come not only to view works of art, but also to experience museum architecture itself, resulting in most major cities competing to build new museum additions or new museum buildings to become world class tourist destinations. Shedding New Light on Art Museum Additions presents post-occupancy evaluations of four high-profile museums and their additions in the United States and helps museum stakeholders understand their successes, shortcomings, and how their designs affect both visitors and employees who use them every day. The book helps decision-makers assess the short-term and long-term impacts of future proposals for new museum additions and illuminates the critical importance of investing in employee work environments, and giving serious consideration to lighting, wayfinding, accessibility, and the effects of museum fatigue that arise from the lack of public amenities. Museum leaders, curators, architects, designers, consultants, patrons of the arts and museum visitors will find this book to be a useful resource when planning and evaluating new building additions.

Peter Murray's compelling and highly readable biography of the building presents both sides of the story. Using previously unpublished files and papers, Murray has managed to unravel one of the most intriguing architectural controversies of recent times - what really happened when they built Sydney Opera House...

This book brings together research working at the boundary between design knowledges and mobilities, offering a novel collection for both theorists and practitioners. Drawing upon detailed case studies, it demonstrates the diverse roles of design in shaping mobility at different spaces and scales: across cities; within different types of buildings and infrastructures; and through commuting, work and leisure activities. A range of international scholars illustrate the designed mobilities of car parks, traffic lights, street benches, pedestrian wayfinding systems and accessible design in the urban environment; they examine spaces within hospitals, airports and train stations and investigate design practices for bicycles, future urban vehicles and MotoGP motorcycle racing. Other contributions explore overlooked mobile artefacts such as television and video game remote controls, 3D printing and the types of packaging which enable objects themselves to move around. This book demonstrates how the tools, assumptions and processes of design shape spaces of mobility, and also illuminates how shifts in the fluidity and circulation of people, practices and materials in turn reconfigure practices of design. Mobilising Design develops multi-disciplinary understandings of design, drawing upon diverse literatures including design history, product design, architecture and cultural geography. By highlighting often invisible artefacts and associated knowledges and controversies, the book foregrounds the taken-for-granted ways in which everyday mobility is designed. It will be of interest to scholars in geography, sociology, economic history, architecture, design and urban theory.

Architects and healthcare clients are increasingly coming to recognize that, once built, healthcare facilities are almost immediately subject to physical alterations which both respond to and affect healthcare practices. This calls into question the traditional ways in which these facilities are designed. If functions and practices are subject to alteration, the standard approach of defining required functions and practices before acquiring facilities is obsolete. We need other starting points, working methods, and ways of collaborating. Healthcare Architecture as Infrastructure presents these new approaches. Advocating an infrastructure theory of built environment transformation in which design and investment decisions are organized hierarchically and transcend short-term use, the book draws the practice and research of a number of architects from around the world. Written by experts with experience in policy making, designing, building, and managing complex healthcare environments, it shows professionals in architecture, engineering, healthcare and facilities management how to enhance the long-term usefulness of their campuses and their building stock and how to strengthen their physical assets with the capacity to accommodate a quickly evolving healthcare sector.

Winner of the Publication Award for Popular Culture and Entertainment for 2009 from the Metropolitan Chapter of the Victorian Society in America Named to Pop Matters list of the Best Books of 2009 (Non-fiction) From the lights that never go out on Broadway to its 24-hour subway system, New York City isn't called "the city that never sleeps" for nothing. Both native New Yorkers and tourists have played hard in Gotham for centuries, lindy hopping in 1930s Harlem, voguing in 1980s Chelsea, and refueling at all-night diners and bars. The slim island at the mouth of the Hudson River is packed with places of leisure and entertainment, but Manhattan's infamously fast pace of change means that many of these beautifully constructed and incredibly ornate buildings have disappeared, and with them a rich and ribald history. Yet with David Freeland as a guide, it's possible to uncover skeletons of New York's lost monuments to its nightlife. With a keen eye for architectural detail, Freeland opens doors, climbs onto rooftops, and gazes down alleyways to reveal several of the remaining hidden gems of Manhattan's nineteenth- and twentieth-century entertainment industry. From the Atlantic Garden German beer hall in present-day Chinatown to the city's first motion picture studio-Union Square's American Mutoscope and Biograph Company-to the Lincoln Theater in Harlem, Freeland situates each building within its historical and social context, bringing to life an old New York that took its diversions seriously. Freeland reminds us that the buildings that serve as architectural guideposts to yesteryear's recreations cannot be re-created-once destroyed they are gone forever. With condominiums and big box stores spreading over city blocks like wildfires, more and more of the Big Apple's legendary houses of mirth are being lost. By excavating the city's cultural history, this delightful book unearths some of the many mysteries that lurk around the corner and lets readers see the city in a whole new light.

First published in 1979, this book examines key planning policy areas such as land use planning, land values, housing and slum clearance, urban transport, industrial and regional economic location policies, and policies inner city policies to explain why particular policies have been adopted at particular times - assessing the role of political parties, bureaucrats and interests in setting the national policy agenda. Policy is also placed in the broader economic and social context and the question of whether, given contemporaneous constraints, a coherent national urban policy is possible is examined. Its focus on political parties' role in urban change at the start of Thatcher-era upheavals makes this book especially valuable to students of urban sociology and the history of planning.

In the late nineteenth century, the urban department store arose as a built artifact and as a social institution in the United States. While the physical building type is the foundation of this comprehensive architectural study, Louisa Iarocci reaches beyond the analysis of the bricks and mortar to reconsider how the 'spaces of selling' were culturally-produced spaces, as well as the product of interrelated economic, social, technological and aesthetic forces. The agenda of the book is three-fold; to address the lack of a comprehensive architectural study of the nineteenth century department store in the United States; to expand the analysis of the commercial city as a built and represented entity; and to continue recent scholarly efforts that seek to understand commercial space as a historically specific and a conceptually perceived construct. The Urban Department Store in America, 1850-1930 acts as a corrective to a current imbalance in the historiography of this retailing institution that tends to privilege its role as an autonomous 'modern' building type. Instead, Iarocci documents the development of the department store as an urban institution that grew out of the built space of the city and the lived spaces of its occupants.

"Winner of the Southeast Chapter of the American Society of Architectural Historians' Annual Book Award Kentucky emerged as a prime site for theatrical activity in the early nineteenth century. Most towns, even quite small ones, constructed increasingly elaborate opera houses, which stood as objects of local pride and symbols of culture. These theaters often hosted amateur performances, providing a forum for talent and a focus for community social life. As theatrical attendance rose, performance halls began offering everything from drama to equestrian shows to burlesque. Today many architects believe that the design of a theater should not detract from the stage or screen. Marilyn Casto shows that nineteenth-century Kentucky audiences, however, not only expected elaborate decor but considered it a delightful part of the theatergoing experience. Embellished arches and painted and gilded walls and ceilings enhanced the theatricality of the performance while adding to the excitement of an evening out. In Actors, Audiences, and Historic Theaters of Kentucky, Casto investigates the social and architectural history of Kentucky theaters, paying special attention to the actors who performed in them and the audiences who saw it all. A captivating glimpse into a disappearing slice of American popular culture, her work examines what people considered entertaining, what they hoped to gain from theatergoing, and how they chose and experienced the theaters' architectural settings. In the social and physical design of these theaters, Casto explores nearly two centuries of the state's and nation's cultural history.

Here is a sumptuous banquet of the hospitality world's finest offerings in places to eat and drink. Tour more than 200 designer and boutique hotels from around the world, along with classics such as The Ritz in London, The Oriental Bangkok, the New York Palace Hotel, and the HA'tel Plaza AthA (c)nA (c)e in Paris. Top hotel and restaurant design firms from around the world are included, with industry leaders such as David Rockwell, Ian Schrager, Robert DiLeonardo, and Adam Tihany. Plus, there is work by design world icons Karl Lagerfeld, Pierre Court, Patrick Jouin, and Philippe Starck. The visual banquet includes classic European designs dripping in decorative molding and custom paneling, gold leaf and crystal chandeliers. There are starkly modern designs, fashionable Asian Fusion and eclectic settings, and tropical paradises, as well as playful and erotic designs. A resource guide provides contact information for design and architectural firms, as well as the beautiful establishments shown. This is an inspiring book for anyone planning or designing a place of hospitality and consumption.

- Introduces environment-behavior studies for healthcare design research - Explores how evidence-based design theories can be applied and integrated into healthcare design practice - Presents specific environment-behavior theories in the healthcare environment with case studies - Each chapter includes summary, key terms and study questions

An in-depth history of the Stalinist skyscraper In the early years of the Cold War, the skyline of Moscow was forever transformed by a citywide skyscraper building project. As the steel girders of the monumental towers went up, the centuries-old metropolis was reinvented to embody the greatness of Stalinist society. Moscow Monumental explores how the quintessential architectural works of the late Stalin era fundamentally reshaped daily life in the Soviet capital. Drawing on a wealth of original archival research, Katherine Zubovich examines the decisions and actions of Soviet elites-from top leaders to master architects-and describes the experiences of ordinary Muscovites who found their lives uprooted by the ambitious skyscraper project. She shows how the Stalin-era quest for monumentalism was rooted in the Soviet Union's engagement with Western trends in architecture and planning, and how the skyscrapers required the creation of a vast and complex infrastructure. As laborers flooded into the city, authorities evicted and rehoused tens of thousands of city residents living on the plots selected for development. When completed in the mid-1950s, these seven ornate neoclassical buildings served as elite apartment complexes, luxury hotels, and ministry and university headquarters. Moscow Monumental tells a story that is both local and broadly transnational, taking readers from the streets of interwar Moscow and New York to the marble-clad halls of the bombastic postwar structures that continue to define the Russian capital today.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

a[Duranteas] guidebook is a perfect walking-tour accompaniment to help New Yorkers and visitors find, identify and better appreciate statues famous and obscure (honoring, among others, the afather of gynecologya and the general who had an unremarkable military and business career but composed taps, the bugle call). . . . Durante winsomely places 54 monuments in historical and artistic perspective. We learn that a trumpet is an allegory for announcing fame, that the monument to Admiral Farragut in Madison Square Park altered the course of American sculpture, that the figure with the winged hat atop Grand Central Terminal is Mercury and that the statue of Atlas at Rockefeller Center was reviled when it was unveiled in 1937 because it supposedly resembled Mussolini. Letas hope Ms. Durante follows up in the other four boroughs.a
--"The New York Times"

aOutdoor Monuments of Manhattan is a primer on getting to know our city's monuments. . . . Each entry has a uniform structure. It contains a photo, vital stats (year dedicated, size, materials), an aAbout the Sculpturea section, and an aAbout the Subjecta section, as well as a carefully chosen boxed quotation culled from an old book or newspaper that pertains to the subject. . . . Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan is well written, well researched, well thought-out, funny, and often refreshingly original, and will help any interested New Yorker know about the wondrous monuments that dot the city.a
--"New York Sun"

aAnyone whose curiosity has ever been piqued by the peculiar mixture of historical statues that ornament the grounds of Central Park will find Outdoor Monuments byDianne Durante a satisfying read. . . . The entries provide background on each workas origin, explaining, for example, how a statue of the medieval Polish king Jagiello came to be in New York alongside more predictable allegorical and American patriotic figures. A brief history of the subject is also provided, including enough lively anecdotes and obscure facts to entice all readers.a
--"Sculpture Magazine"

a[Durante] tackles her task in the manner of a walking tour. . . . The language of the book is friendly and chatty, as if the author were in front of you, conducting an on-site lecture. . . . The purpose of the book is to encourage people to go and see the wealth of outdoor sculpture in Manhattan, and the book treats this purpose with the enthusiasm the subjects deserve.a
--"The Art Book"

Stop, look, and discover--the streets and parks of Manhattan are filled with beautiful historic monuments that will entertain, stimulate, and inspire you. Among the 54 monuments in this volume are major figures in American history: Washington, Lincoln, Lafayette, Horace Greeley, and Gertrude Stein; more obscure figures: Daniel Butterfield, J. Marion Sims, and King Jagiello; as well as the icons of New York: Atlas, Prometheus, and the Firemen's Memorial. The monuments represent the work of some of America's best sculptors: Augustus Saint Gaudens' Farragut and Sherman, Daniel Chester French's Four Continents, and Anna Hyatt Huntington's Jose Marti and Joan of Arc.

Each monument, illustrated with black-and-white photographs, is located on a map of Manhattan and includes easy-to-follow directions. All the sculptures are considered both as historical mementos and as art. We learn offurious General Sherman court-martialing a civilian journalist, and also of exasperated Saint Gaudens' proposing a hook-and-spring device for improving his assistants' artistic acuity as they help model Sherman. We discover how Lincoln dealt with a vociferous Confederate politician from Ohio, and why the Lincoln in Union Square doesn't rank as a top-notch Lincoln portrait. Sidebars reveal other aspects of the figure or event commemorated, using personal quotes, poems, excerpts from nineteenth-century periodicals ("New York Times," "Harper's Weekly"), and writers ranging from Aeschylus, Washington Irving, and Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi to Mark Twain and Henryk Sienkiewicz.

As a historical account, Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan: A Historical Guide is a fascinating look at figures and events that changed New York, the United States and the world. As an aesthetic handbook it provides a compact method for studying sculpture, inspired by Ayn Rand's writings on art. For residents and tourists, and historians and students, who want to spend more time viewing and appreciating sculpture and New York history, this is the start of a unique voyage of discovery.

From the legendary Ebbets Field in the heart of Brooklyn to the amenity-packed Houston Astrodome to the "retro" Oriole Park at Camden Yards, stadiums have taken many shapes and served different purposes throughout the history of American sports culture. In the early twentieth century, a new generation of stadiums arrived, located in the city center, easily accessible to the public, and offering affordable tickets that drew mixed crowds of men and women from different backgrounds. But in the successive decades, planners and architects turned sharply away from this approach. In Modern Coliseum, Benjamin D. Lisle tracks changes in stadium design and culture since World War II. These engineered marvels channeled postwar national ambitions while replacing aging ballparks typically embedded in dense urban settings. They were stadiums designed for the "affluent society"-brightly colored, technologically expressive, and geared to the car-driving, consumerist suburbanite. The modern stadium thus redefined one of the city's more rambunctious and diverse public spaces. Modern Coliseum offers a cultural history of this iconic but overlooked architectural form. Lisle grounds his analysis in extensive research among the archives of teams, owners, architects, and cities, examining how design, construction, and operational choices were made. Through this approach, we see modernism on the ground, as it was imagined, designed, built, and experienced as both an architectural and a social phenomenon. With Lisle's compelling analysis supplemented by over seventy-five images documenting the transformation of the American stadium over time, Modern Coliseum will be of interest to a variety of readers, from urban and architectural historians to sports fans.

China's rise as an economic superpower has been inescapable. Statistical hyperbole has been accompanied by a plethora of highly publicized architectural forms that brand the regeneration of its increasingly globalized urban centres. Despite the sizeable body of literature that has accompanied China's modernization, the essence and trajectory of its contemporary cityscape remains difficult to grasp. This volume addresses a less explored aspect of China's urban rejuvenation - the prominence of the shopping mall as a keystone of its public spaces. Here, the presence of the built form most representative of Western capitalism's excess is one that makes explicit the tensions between China's Communist state and its ascent within the 'free' market. This book examines how these interrelationships are manifested in the culturally hybrid built form of the shopping mall and its role in contesting the 'public' space of the modern Chinese city. By viewing these interrelationships as collisions of global and local narratives, a more nuanced understanding of the shopping mall typology is explored. Much architectural criticism has failed to address the levels of meaning implicit within the shopping mall, yet it is a building type whose public popularity has guaranteed its endurance. Consequently, if architecture is to remain a relevant social art, a more holistic understanding of this phenomenon will be indispensable to the process of adapting to globalizing forces. This examination of Chinese shopping malls offers a timely and relevant case study of what is happening in all our cities today.

The extraordinary Watts Towers were created over the course of three decades by a determined, single-minded artist, Sabato Rodia, a highly remarkable Italian immigrant laborer who wanted to do "something big." Now a National Historic Landmark and internationally renowned destination, the Watts Towers in Los Angeles are both a personal artistic expression and a collective symbol of Nuestro Pueblo-Our Town/Our People. Featuring fresh and innovative examinations that mine deeper and broader than ever before, Sabato Rodia's Towers in Watts is a much anticipated revisitation of the man and his towers. In 1919, Sabato Rodia purchased a triangular plot of land in a multiethnic, working-class, semi-rural district. He set to work on an unusual building project in his own yard. By night, Rodia dreamed and excogitated, and by day he built. He experimented with form, color, texture, cement mixtures, and construction techniques. He built, tore down, and re-built. As an artist completely possessed by his work, he was often derided as an incomprehensible crazy man. Providing a multifaceted, holistic understanding of Rodia, the towers, and the cultural/social/physical environment within which the towers and their maker can be understood, Sabato Rodia's Towers in Watts compiles essays from twenty authors, offering perspectives from the arts, the communities involved in the preservation and interpretation of the towers, and the academy. Most of the contributions originated at two interdisciplinary conferences held in Los Angeles and in Italy: "Art & Migration: Sabato Rodia's Towers in Watts, Los Angeles" and "The Watts Towers Common Ground Initiative: Art, Migrations, Development." The Watts Towers are wondrous objects of art and architecture as well as the expression and embodiment of the resolve of a singular artistic genius to do something great. But they also recount the heroic civic efforts (art and social action) to save them, both of which continue to this day to evoke awe and inspiration. Sabato Rodia's Towers in Watts presents a well-rounded tribute to one man's tenacious labor of love. A portion of royalties from this book will go to support the work of the Watts Towers Arts Center.

Fluid Space and Transformational Learning presents a critique of the interlocking questions of 'school architecture' and education and attempts to establish a field of questioning that aspectualises and intersects concepts, theories and practices connected with the contemporary school building and the deschooling of learning and of the space within and through which it takes place. Tying together the historicity of architectural theory, criticism and practice and the plural dynamic of social fields and sciences, this book outlines the qualities and modalities of experiential fields of transformational learning. The three qualities of space that are highlighted along the way - activated, polyphonic and playful space - as they emerge (without being instrumentalised) through architecturalised spatial modalities - flexibility, variability, interactivity, taut fluid polyphony, multiplicity, transcendence of boundaries - tend to construct and establish a school environment rich in heretical socio-spatial codes. Meshing cooperative, participatory, intrapsychic and interpsychic dimensions, they invite the factors of learning to a creative, imponderable, transformational disorder and deconstruct dominant conditioned reflexes of a disciplinary, methodical and productive order.