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Books > Arts & Architecture > Architecture > Theory of architecture
American philosopher Nelson Goodman (1906-1998) was one of the foremost analytical thinkers of the twentieth century, with groundbreaking contributions in the fields of logic, philosophy of science, epistemology, and aesthetics. This book is an introduction to the aspects of Goodman's philosophy which have been the most influential among architects and architectural theorists. Goodman specifically discussed architecture in his major work on aesthetics, The Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols (1968), and in two essays "How Buildings Mean" (1985), and "On Capturing Cities" (1991). His main philosophical notions in Ways of Worldmaking (1978) also apply well to architecture. Goodman's thought is particularly attractive because of its constructive aspect: there is not a given and immutable world, but both knowledge and reality are constantly built and rebuilt. Whereas other theories, such as deconstruction, implicitly entail an undoing of modern precepts, Goodman's conception of world-making offers a positive, constructive way to understand how a plural reality is made and remade. Goodman's approach to architecture is not only relevant thinking in providing new insights to understanding the built environment, but serves also as an illustration of analytical thinking in architecture. This book shows that the methods, concepts, and ways of arguing characteristic of analytical philosophy are helpful tools to examine buildings in a novel and fruitful way and they will certainly enhance the architect's critical skills when designing and thinking about architecture.
With a practical approach to theory, Designing the City of Reason offers new perspectives on how differing belief systems and philosophical approaches impact on city design and development, exploring how this has changed before, during and after the impact of modernism in all its rationalism. Looking at the connections between abstract ideas and material realities, this book provides a social and historical account of ideas which have emerged out of the particular concerns and cultural contexts and which inform the ways we live. By considering the changing foundations for belief and action, and their impact on urban form, it follows the history and development of city design in close conjunction with the growth of rationalist philosophy. Building on these foundations, it goes on to focus on the implications of this for urban development, exploring how public infrastructures of meaning are constructed and articulated through the dimensions of time, space, meaning, value and action. With its wide-ranging subject matter and distinctive blend of theory and practice, this book furthers the scope and range of urban design by asking new questions about the cities we live in and the values and symbols which we assign to them.
Designers around the world are carving out opportunities for new kinds of engagement, new kinds of collaboration, new kinds of design outcomes, and new kinds of practice; overturning the inherited assumptions of the design professions. Seventeen conversations with practitioners from the fields of architecture, policy, activism, design, education, research, history, community engagement and more, each representing an emergent role for designers to occupy. Whether the "civic entrepreneur," the "double agent," or the "strategic designer," this book offers a diverse spectrum of approaches to design, each offering a potential future for architectural practice. With a foreword by Dan Hill and interviews with Steve Ashton, ARM; Bryan Boyer, Helsinki Design Lab; Camila Bustamante; Mel Dodd, muf_aus; DUS Architects; Jeanne Gang, Studio Gang; Reinier de Graaf and Laura Baird, AMO; Conrad Hamann; Natalie Jeremijenko, xClinic; Indy Johar, 00: /;Bruce Mau; Arjen Oosterman and Lilet Breddels, Volume; Todd Reisz; Wouter Vanstiphout, Crimson; Matt Webb, BERG; Marcus Westbury, Renew Newcastle; and Liam Young, Unknown Fields
How to Read Architecture is based on the fundamental premise that reading and interpreting architecture is something we already do, and that close observation matters. This book enhances this skill so that given an unfamiliar building, you will have the tools to understand it and to be inspired by it. Author Paulette Singley encourages you to misread, closely read, conventionally read, and unconventionally read architecture to stimulate your creative process. This book explores three essential ways to help you understand architecture: reading a building from the outside-in, from the inside-out, and from the position of out-and-out, or formal, architecture. This book erodes boundaries between the frequently compartmentalized fields of interior design, landscape design, and building design with chapters exploring concepts of terroir, scenography, criticality, atmosphere, tectonics, inhabitation, type, form, and enclosure. Using examples and case studies that span a wide range of historical and global precedents, Singley addresses the complex interaction among the ways a building engages its context, addresses its performative exigencies, and operates as an autonomous aesthetic object. Including over 300 images, this book is an essential read for both undergraduate and postgraduate students of architecture with a global focus on the interpretation of buildings in their context.
How should we train? What should we learn? What is our value? Disruptive technologies have increased speculation about what it means to be an architect. Innovations simultaneously offer great promise and potential risk to design practice. This volume identifies the game-changing trends driven by technology, and the opportunities they provide for architecture, urbanism and design. It advocates for an approach of intelligent control that transforms practice with specialist knowledge of technological models and systems. It features new developments in automation, generative design, augmented reality, videogame urbanism, artificial intelligence and robotics, as well as lived experiences within a continually shifting landscape. Showcasing evolving research, it discusses the cultural, social, environmental and political implications of various technological trajectories. In doing so it speculates upon future urban, spatial, aesthetic and formal possibilities within architecture. The future is already here. Now is the time to act. Features: Austrian Institute of Technology AiT - City Intelligence Lab CiT, Bryden Wood, Mollie Claypool, Soomeen Hahm, Hawkins\Brown, LASSA Architects, The Living, Danil Nagy, Odico Construction Robotics, Stefana Parascho, Luke Caspar Pearson, SHoP Architects, Kostas Terzidis, Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen and Sandra Youkhana.
This book explores contemporary urban experiences and how they are connected to practices of sharing and collaboration. There is a growing discussion on the cultural meaning and politics of urban commons, and Stavrides uses examples from Europe and Latin America to support the view that a world of mutual support and urban solidarity emerges today in, against and beyond existing societies of inequality. The concept of space commoning is discussed and considered in terms of its potential to promote emancipation. This is an exciting book, which explores the cultural meaning and politics of common spaces in conjunction with ideas connected with neighbourhood and community, justice and resistance, in order to trace elements of a different emancipating future. -- .
City Riffs traces the changing perspectives of urban design within an ever-changing global context. Moving between sixteen cities, the book also considers trans-disciplinary aspects of urbanism; formal and informal growth in Kumasi and Caracas, post-colonial structures in New Delhi and Prague, post-urban phenomena in Detroit and Brussels; cultural transitions in Antwerp and Salzburg; the changing nature of place in Seoul and Mostar; and new ecological realities in New York and Rome. Urbanism is viewed as the production of space-integrating aspects of design, ecology, and engineering, as well as other influences on urban cognition such as social, economical, and psychological interactions. As it covers a wide range of places and methods, this book will be an asset to anyone who works on, lives in, or thinks about cities.
Based on the recent discovery of his fully-preserved private archive-models, photos, letters, business files, and drawings-this book tells the story of Theodore Conrad (1910-1994), the most prominent and prolific architectural model-maker of the 20th century. Conrad's innovative models were instrumental in the design and realization of many icons of American Modernism-from the Rockefeller Center to Lever House and the Seagram Building. He revolutionized the production of architectural models and became a model-making entrepreneur in his own right. Yet, despite his success and the well-known buildings he helped to create, until now little has been known about Conrad's work and his impact on 20th century architectural history. With exclusive access to Conrad's archive, as well as that of model photographer Louis Checkman-both of which have lain undiscovered in private storage for decades-this book examines Conrad's work and legacy, accompanied by case studies of his major commissions and full-color photographs of his works. Set against the backdrop of the surge in model-making in the 1950s and 1960s-which Jane Jacobs called "The Miniature Boom"-it explores how Conrad's models prompt broader scholarly questions about the nature of authorship in architecture, the importance of craftsmanship, and about the translation of architectural ideas between different media. The book ultimately presents an alternative history of American modern architecture, highlighting the often-overlooked influence of architectural models and their makers.
CARTHA magazine is a non-commercial magazine dedicated to architectural theory. It is a curated platform for sharing different forms of critical thinking regarding architecture and society. Through opinions, experiences, and works it aims to map the contemporary architectural landscape and to bridge gaps between academic discourse and practical work. This new special edition in the series of books edited by the CARTHA magazine derives from the platform's collaboration with the German pavilion at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennial in 2016. The German contribution, titled 'Making Heimat: Germany, Arrival Country', looked at requirements, challenges, and opportunities in architecture and urban design posed by the huge influx of refugees the country saw in 2015. CARTHA - On Making Heimat also reflects on migration movements, their consequences and their potential. A carefully selected multidisciplinary group of people was asked to share views and opinions on the questions raised by the 2016 exhibition at Germany's pavilion in Venice. The book also features interviews with eminent figures, such as Iverna McGowan, Amnesty International's Head of European Institutions Office and Advocacy Director; David Harvey, Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the Graduate Center of City University of New York; Saskia Sassen, Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and visiting Professor at London School of Economics; and Giovanna Borasi, architect and the Canadian Center for Architecture's curator for contemporary architecture. Essays are contributed, among others, by German architect Arno Brandlhuber, international design studio Urban ThinkTank, and by architectural researcher and critic Marina Otero Verzier.
Existentialism; Urbanism; Aporia; Deontic; Tabula Rasa; Hyperspace; Heterotopia; Metareality; Structuralisma ] What does it all mean? The unique language used in architectural theory, in either speech or writing, can appear daunting and confusing, particularly to new architectural students.
Decoding Theoryspeak provides an accessible guide to the specialized language of contemporary design for the next generation of thinkers, architects and design leaders. An essential pocket-sized resource for students and practitioners alike.
A vision of architecture that transcends concerns of form and function and finds the connections between the architect's wish to design a beautiful world and architecture's imperative to provide a better place for society. The forced polarity between form and function in considerations of architecture-opposing art to social interests, ethics to poetic expression-obscures the deep connections between ethical and poetical values in architectural tradition. Architecture has been, and must continue to be, writes Alberto Perez-Gomez, built upon love. Modernity has rightly rejected past architectural excesses, but, Perez-Gomez argues, the materialistic and technological alternatives it proposes do not answer satisfactorily the complex desire that defines humanity. True architecture is concerned with far more than fashionable form, affordable homes, and sustainable development; it responds to a desire for an eloquent place to dwell-one that lovingly provides a sense of order resonant with our dreams. In Built upon Love Perez-Gomez uncovers the relationship between love and architecture in order to find the points of contact between poetics and ethics-between the architect's wish to design a beautiful world and architecture's imperative to provide a better place for society. Eros, as first imagined by the early lyric poets of classical Greece, is the invisible force at the root of our capacity to create and comprehend the poetic image. Perez-Gomez examines the nature of architectural form in the light of eros, seduction, and the tradition of the poetic image in Western architecture. He charts the ethical dimension of architecture, tracing the connections between philia-the love of friends that entails mutual responsibility among equals-and architectural program. He explores the position of architecture at the limits of language and discusses the analogical language of philia in modernist architectural theory. Finally, he uncovers connections between ethics and poetics, describing a contemporary practice of architecture under the sign of love, incorporating both eros and philia.
This book presents a series of contemporary, diverse and innovative design strategies that vary in form, function and design intent. The common denominator of all projects is the alternative and/or experimental approach of combining both private and public spaces. Diverse, innovative design approaches with complex programme are combined with socially and financially sustainable strategies. 'Innovative Architecture Strategies' aims to help understand the different design approa ches that can be followed when called to propose a concept and design for an innovative mixed-use building. It's also a guide, point of reference, and inspiration book. The book demonstrates an analytical and clear way to conceptualize, explain and present a mixed-use design project. Each project in the book is selected for its different form, function, technique and design intent. They all offer a clear example of a de sign project. The diverse design approaches are presented in ten chapters. Each chapter begins with explaining the main concept behind the specific design approach and with a reference to a built precedent.
Designing Post-Virtual Architectures: Wicked Tactics and World-Building explores, describes, and demonstrates theories and strategies for design in a post-virtual world. This book reveals affinities among social, mathematical, philosophical, and language expressions integrated into a theoretical framework, facilitating design across physical and virtual space. This experience-driven framework forms the basis for data-driven, experience design methodologies. The implementation of these methodologies takes design work beyond the stylistic expressions of parameters, to data-driven, multi-modal, parametric processes of transformation. With this book as a resource, architects and designers have a handbook of technical and philosophical concepts to lend rigor to their design work. Numerous diagrams delineate complex ideas while also acting as templates for creating, assessing, and communicating the meaning and value of designed solutions. As a handbook, the intention is to provide a guide to support the application of interdisciplinary tactics across strategic fields. Such novel approaches open up new ways of developing singular solutions and new ways to serve the distributed behaviours systemized through architectures. In an evolving contemporary condition, a foundation of rigorous human-centred design is central to moving the discipline of design into the future. Providing a range of rigorous methodologies for those looking to develop project-specific strategies, Designing Post-Virtual Architectures: Wicked Tactics and World-Building is a tool to facilitate the creation of innovative and meaningful architectures, and is an ideal resource for postgraduate students of architectural theory, design theory and design methods, as well as academics and professionals practicing the field.
Critical Architecture examines the relationship between critical practice in architecture and architectural criticism. Placing architecture in an interdisciplinary context, the book explores architectural criticism with reference to modes of criticism in other disciplines - specifically art criticism - and considers how critical practice in architecture operates through a number of different modes: buildings, drawings and texts. With forty essays by an international cast of leading architectural academics, this accessible single source text on the topical subject of architectural criticism is ideal for undergraduate as well as post graduate study.
People involved in architecture need to be familiar with construction methods in order to be in control of their designs. New technical requirements impact on our buildings and call for up-to-date specialist knowledge, which leads to new forms of architecture. This handbook uses clearly comprehensible 3D isometric diagrams to introduce the world of contemporary construction, from concept through to the detail; photographs are used to illustrate the content. The three main chapters deal with the structure, the building envelope, and the fit-out, starting with a clear introduction to the construction principles of modern building methods. Using drawings of selected built examples at scales of 1:10 and 1:20, a deeper examination of details is possible.
This book provides a detailed historical and design analysis of the development of parks and modern landscape architecture in late 20th century China. It questions whether the fusion of international influences with the local Chinese design vocabulary in late 20th century China has created a distinctive and novel approach to the design of public parks. Hybrid Modernity proposes a new theory for examining the design of public parks built in post-Mao China since the reforms and sets the various processes for China's late 20th century socio-cultural context. Drawing on modernization theory, research on China's modernity, local and global cultural trends, it illustrates through a range of case studies ways hybrid modernity defines a new design genre and language for the spatial forms of parks that emerged in China's secondary cities. Featured case studies include the Living Water Park in Chengdu, Sichuan province, Zhongshan Shipyard Park in Guangdong Province, Jinji Lake Landscape Master Plan in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, and the West Lake Southern Scenic Area Master Plan in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. This book argues that these forms represent a new stage in China's history of landscape architecture. The work reveals that as a new profession, landscape architecture has greatly contributed to China's massive urban experiment. This book is an ideal read for students enrolled in landscape architecture, architecture, fine arts and urban planning programs who are engaged in learning the arts and international design education.
Unlike books that concentrate on the monuments and other artefacts that architects produce, Constructing the Architect focuses on architecture as a disciplinary and professional process, an institution of society, and a career of learning and mastery. In doing so, it offers a lens into the architecture of architecture. Mapping architecture as a coherent whole, Leonard Bachman shows that the field must be understood as four mutually reinforcing modes of inquiry: design, research, strategy, and education. Within this framework, he explains how institutions and actors hold differing perspectives on the critical discourse that advances architecture and identifies the various tensions and leverage points for change within the discipline. Featuring over 100 illustrations to support understanding of this highly visual subject, this is an essential introduction for any student seeking to understand what it means to be an architect and to enter the professional discourse.
In 1811, architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe spurred American builders into action when he called for them to reject "the corrupt Age of Dioclesian, or the still more absurd and debased taste of Louis the XIV," and to emulate instead the ancient temples of Greece. In response, people in the antebellum trans-Appalachian region embraced the clean lines, intricate details, and stately symmetry of the Grecian style. On newly built public buildings, private homes, and religious structures, references to classical Greek architecture became the preferred ornamentation. Several antebellum cities and towns adopted the moniker of "Athens," styling themselves as centers of culture, education, and sophistication. As the trend grew, American citizens understood the name as a link between the Grecian style and the founding principles of democracy - signaling a change of taste in service to the larger American cultural ideal. In Athens on the Frontier, Patrick Lee Lucas examines the material culture of Grecian-style buildings in antebellum America to help recover nineteenth-century regional identities. As communities worked to define their built landscape and develop a shared Western identity, Lucas's study invites readers to question many of the assumptions Americans have made about divisions and cultural formation in antebellum society.
This book captures concepts and projects that reshape the discipline of architecture by prioritizing people over buildings. In doing so, it uncovers sophisticated approaches that go beyond standard architectural protocols to explore experience-based aesthetics, encounters, action-based research, critical practices, and social engagement. If these are widely understood as singular or incompatible approaches, the book reveals that they form a growing network of interrelations and generate levels of flexibility and dynamism that are reshaping the discipline. The thirteen chapters analyze thought-provoking projects - branded museums, restaged exhibitions, home/work spaces, multi-cultural spaces, ageing apartment blocks, abandoned homes, and urban slums amongst them. Together, they enliven the stalled debate about a single architectural response to the complex challenges of the contemporary world by highlighting pluralistic perspectives on architecture that offer fresh solutions on how architecture can improve people's lives. Featuring essays from an international range of authors, this book makes a vital contribution to our understanding of the wider conditions under which, and in relation to which, contemporary architecture is produced.
What Architecture Means introduces you to architecture and allows you to explore the connections between design ideas and values across time, space, and culture. It equips you to play an active and informed role in architecture either as a professional or as a consumer, client, and citizen. By analyzing famous and everyday buildings while presenting and questioning the positions of important architects and theorists, this book will help you to evaluate and decide what qualities, ideas, and values you believe are important in architecture. You'll learn: -How various definitions of "architecture" establish different relationships with all buildings, and even non-buildings; -How buildings express and accommodate ideas of the sacred, the family, and the community; -What an architect is, and what priorities they bring to design and construction; -How an architect's expertise relates to that of the engineer, and why these are distinct disciplines; -About values like beauty, originality, structural expression, and cultural memory and their purpose in architectural design; -About the interests and ethical values that architects, and architecture, serves and promotes. Topics include sacred spaces, the house, the city, architects and engineers, aesthetics and design, originality and method, technology and form, memory and identity, and power and politics.
It's widely accepted that our environment is in crisis. Less widely recognized is that three quarters of environmental damage is due to cities - the places where most of us live. As this powerful new book elucidates, global sustainability is therefore directly dependent on urban design. In Living Architecture, Living Cities Christopher Day and Julie Gwilliam move beyond the current emphasis on technological change. They argue that eco-technology allows us to continue broadly as before and only defers the impending disaster. In reality, most negative environmental impacts are due to how we live and the things we buy. Such personal choices often result from dissatisfaction with our surroundings. As perceived environment has a direct effect on attitudes and motivations, improving this can achieve more sustainable lifestyles more effectively than drastic building change - with its notorious performance-gap limitations. As it's in places that our inner feelings and material reality interact, perceived environment is place-based. Ultimately, however, as the root cause of unsustainability is attitude, real change requires moving from the current focus on buildings and technology to an emphasis on the non-material. Featuring over 400 high quality illustrations, this is essential reading for anyone who believes in the value and power of good design. Christopher Day's philosophy will continue to inspire students with an interest in sustainable architecture, urban planning and related fields.
It's widely accepted that our environment is in crisis. Less widely recognized is that three quarters of environmental damage is due to cities - the places where most of us live. As this powerful new book elucidates, global sustainability is therefore directly dependent on urban design. In Living Architecture, Living Cities Christopher Day and Julie Gwilliam move beyond the current emphasis on technological change. They argue that eco-technology allows us to continue broadly as before and only defers the impending disaster. In reality, most negative environmental impacts are due to how we live and the things we buy. Such personal choices often result from dissatisfaction with our surroundings. As perceived environment has a direct effect on attitudes and motivations, improving this can achieve more sustainable lifestyles more effectively than drastic building change - with its notorious performance-gap limitations. As it's in places that our inner feelings and material reality interact, perceived environment is place-based. Ultimately, however, as the root cause of unsustainability is attitude, real change requires moving from the current focus on buildings and technology to an emphasis on the non-material. Featuring over 400 high quality illustrations, this is essential reading for anyone who believes in the value and power of good design. Christopher Day's philosophy will continue to inspire students with an interest in sustainable architecture, urban planning and related fields.
The architects of ancient Rome developed a vibrant and enduring tradition, inspiring those who followed in their profession even to the present day. This original book is the first to explore their approach to design. Mark Wilson Jones draws on both new archaeological discoveries and his own analyzes of the monuments to reveal how Roman architects went about the creative process. Wilson Jones begins by outlining the state of knowledge regarding Roman architects, Vitruvius in particular, as well as the dynamics of design as illuminated by surviving architectural drawings and models. Then, in a series of thematic chapters dedicated to the plan, the elevation, and the principal distributive element of Roman buildings, the Corinthian column, he focuses on underlying patterns of design that transcend function and typology. The success of Roman architecture is shown to rest on a robust yet subtle synthesis of theory, beauty, content, and practicality. At the same time, it maintains a vital equilibrium between the apparently conflicting goals of rule and variety. The next part of the book focuses on two singularly enigmatic monuments, Trajan's Column and the Pantheon, to illustrate how architects might bend principles to circumstance. The author resolves long-standing controversies over their conception, showing how both structures came to be modified after work on the site had begun. Even the Romans' mighty building machine had to come to terms with the gap between ideals and the physical realities of construction.
In architecture, composition refers to the conception of a building according to principles of regularity and hierarchy, or according to the principles of obtaining equilibrium. However, it is not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that the notion of composition becomes truly associated with architectural conception, notably under the influence of Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand and his statement on the Marche a suivre dans la composition d'un project quelconque [Procedure to be followed in the composition of any project]. The concept quickly erodes during the twentieth century, with the adoption of neutral architectural devices, the use of aggregative processes, and the adoption of "objective" operations, all of which can be understood as an attempt to move beyond compositional principles. In Composition, Non-Composition, Jacques Lucan invites his readers to consider this novel historical perspective of architectural theory. The author describes the interaction of ideas that often clash with one another, with some that fade away as others emerge, thus offering invaluable keys to understanding contemporary architecture. Although this book is primarily addressed to students of architecture, it will also appeal to architects, historians of architecture, as well as to the interested public. |
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