Once regarded a secondary consideration, in recent years, materiality has emerged as a powerful concept in architectural discourse and practice. Prompted in part by developments in digital fabrication and digital science, the impact of materiality on design and practice is being widely reassessed and reimagined. Materiality and Architecture extends architectural thinking beyond the confines of current design literatures to explore conceptions of materiality across the field of architecture. Fourteen international contributors use elucidate the problems and possibilities of materiality-based approaches in architecture from interdisciplinary perspectives. The book includes contributions from the professions of architecture, art, architectural history, theory and philosophy, including essays from Gernot Boehme, Jonathan Hill and Philip Ursprung. Important 'immaterial' aspects such as presentation, agency, ecology and concept are examined, deepening our understanding of materiality's role in architectural processes, the production of cultural identities, the pursuit of political agendas, and the staging of everyday environments and atmospheres. In-depth illustrated case studies examine works by Herzog & de Meuron, Zaha Hadid, and Lacaton & Vassal, interspersed with visual essays and interviews with architects such as MVRDV providing a direct connection to practice. Materiality and Architecture is an important read for researchers and students with an interest in architectural theory and related fields such as art, art history, or visual and cultural studies.

This book provides an extended exploration of the multimodal analysis of spatial (three-dimensional) texts of the built environment, culminating in a holistic approach termed Spatial Discourse Analysis (SpDA). Based on existing frameworks of multimodal analysis, this book applies, adapts, and extends these frameworks to spatial texts. The authors argue that choices in spatial design create meanings about what we perceive and how we can or should behave within spatial texts, influence how we feel in and about those spaces, and enable these texts to function as coherent wholes. Importantly, a spatial text, once built, is also a resource which is then used, and an essential aspect of understanding these texts is to consider what users themselves contribute to the meaning potential of these texts. The book takes the metafunctional approach familiar from Systemic-Functional Linguistics (SFL) and foregrounds each metafunction in turn (textual, interpersonal, experiential, and logical), in relation to the detailed analysis of a particular spatial text.

"Informal Architectures: Space and Contemporary Culture" is a compilation of new and classic writing and visual art on spatial culture in modernity post 9/11. This collection creates an alternative perspective on the built environment through contemporary culture by focusing on the works and writing of international artists such as Dan Graham, Marjetica Potrc, and Gordon Matta-Clark. Particular attention is paid to spaces that are in some way temporary, contingent, marginal, or fictional in order to critically analyse the meaning of art, and to provide a tenable counter-narrative to architecture's dominant ideologies concerning the monumental and technological imperatives. Diverse perspectives are mobilised in order to question paradigms of modernity and postmodernity, such as progress, irony and rationalism.

Klaus von Beyme is a distinguished German political scientist and recipient of the Mattei Dogan Award of Political Science (2012). In honour of his 80th birthday this book addresses political culture, cultural policy, art and politics. The first part on transformation theory analyses: "Historical Memories in Political Theories", "Historical Memory in Nation-Building and the Building of Ethnic Subsystems", "The Concept of Totalitarianism - A Reassessment After the Breakdown of Soviet Rule", "Political Culture - A Concept from Ideological Refutation to Acceptance in the Soviet Social Sciences", "Institutions and Political Culture in Post-Soviet Russia" and "Political and Economic Consolidation in Eastern Europe. Evidence from Empirical Data". The second part on cultural policies addresses "Why is There No Political Science of the Arts?", "Historical Memory and the Arts in the Era of the Avantgardes: Archaisme and Passeisme as a 'passeisme of the future'", and "Capital-building in Post-war Germany".

If participation has been an ideal in politics since ancient democracy, in art it became central only with the avant-gardes emerging from WWI and the Russian Revolution. Politics and aesthetics are still catching up with each other. In the 21st century, since the revolutionary unrest of the 1960s, participation in art and architecture has lost its utopian glow and become the focus of a fierce debate: does 'participatory' art and architecture shape social reality, or is it shaped by it? Contemporary critics see in participation only technocratic control, while others embrace it as a viable politics in an era of global capitalism. This innovative book breaks the impasse by looking at how participants themselves exert power, rather than being victimized or liberated from it. From artists hijacking Google Earth to protesters setting up a museum of the revolution in Cairo, art, architecture and daily life are explored in their participatory dimension.

Welcome to the hybrid home, in which the bathroom has become a temple of wellness, the living room an online couch, and the kitchen a lounge. Everything appears tidy and chic, perfect for social media. In the Instagram Age, even micro-apartments are mutating into semi-public places. The German journalist Oliver Herwig has been studying the transformation of living spaces and dream interiors for years. In this book, he portrays a society in the throes of digital transformation. The lines between work, leisure and rest have been blurred, as our homes become temporary, multipurpose work, fun and multimedia spaces; the office has invaded the home, and the world of smart shopping is always just a word away thanks to Alexa. Nothing quite fits anymore, yet everything must have its place. Welcome to the hybrid home. Easy reading about the difficult transitions in our living spaces Smart and analytical, the book reveals the hidden desires that shape how we live Designed and illustrated by Studio fur Gestaltung, Cologne Available in German and English

Sandy Isenstadt examines how architects, interior designers, and landscape designers worked to enhance spatial perception in middle class houses visually. The desire for spaciousness reached its highest pitch where it was most lacking, in the small, single-family houses that came to be the cornerstone of middle class life in the nineteenth century. In direct conflict with actual dimensions, spaciousness was linked to a tension unique to the middle class - between spatial aspirations and financial limitations. Although rarely addressed in a sustained fashion by theorists and practitioners, and the inhabitants of houses themselves, Isenstadt argues that spaciousness was central to the development of modern American domestic architecture, with explicit strategies for perceiving space being pivotal to modern house design. Through professional endorsement, concern for visual space found its way into discussion of real estate and law.

Bauingenieur zu sein ist ein erfullender Beruf. Bauingenieure gestalten nachhaltige Infrastruktur. Wir errichten Hauser, Strassen, Brucken, Tunnel, Kulturstatten, Turme und vieles mehr. Dafur bringen wir haufig die ganze Ingenieurskunst auf, um solide Loesungen zu erreichen. Und haufig noch mehr, was jenseits der technischen Ingenieurskunst liegt. Das Buch schaut uber die technischen Loesungen hinaus in das weitere Umfeld des Bauingenieurs und reflektiert seinen Beruf und die eigene Einstellung aus unterschiedlichsten Perspektiven. "Bruckenbau beginnt im Kopf" bedeutet, sich darauf einzulassen, Verbindungen zu suchen - zu einem ganzheitlichen Berufsbild und seinem Standort als Ingenieur. Wenn der sichere Bruckenschlag zum Umfeld des Ingenieurs gelingt, heisst Ingenieursein mehr als perfekte Technik anzuwenden.

In this text, Ford offers an account of the relationship between urban architecture - especially vernacular architecture - and the spatial arrangement and development of cities in North America. From office towers in the central business district to commercial strips in the "edge city", Ford shows how changes in the built environment parallel changes in urban economies and human culture. Focusing on ordinary structures rather than famous landmarks, the book aims to provide a guide to understanding the changing character of any urban landscape. Ford describes how the idea - as well as the appearance - of the modern city has changed with the evolution of buildings such as skyscrapers, skid-row hotels, single family bungalows and ranches, large apartment buildings, public-housing towers, motels, mini-malls and festival market-places. Through illustrated case studies of specific building types in particular places, Ford explores the conflicting forces of decline, revitalization and preservation that constantly transform the urban scene.

The Institute of Architecture and Planning at University of Liechtenstein in Vaduz pursues highly innovative approaches in architectural education. A focus on practice and bringing students together with craftsmen and their businesses are a key part of this. Model Workshop documents one of these programs at the institute. Students are confronted with different aspects of construction at a scale of 1:1, ranging from experimental wood structures through assembly techniques to questions of manufacturing. Complementing theoretical groundwork, the students' design ideas are produced by timber construction firms as prototypes at a scale of 1:1, tested for functionality, and further developed. The book introduces this design work and direct transition into practice and analyses the learning process of building at full scale. It also offers guidance through texts and images for an in-depth engagement with these didactic methods in close cooperation with local trades businesses. Text in English and German.

The Olympiapark in Munich is one of the most famous projects of the landscape architect Günther Grzimek (1915–1996), yet his entire oeuvre has proved to be pioneering and timeless. He advocated for a new form of urban green space in Germany, a “demokratisches Grün� (democratic green space), while also campaigning for practice-oriented training in landscape architecture. Grzimek’s biography offers a wellspring of new discoveries. It traverses the history of modern Germany and encompasses his collaborations with famous architects, town planners, and designers – including Otl Aicher, who developed the basic outline of this volume together with Grzimek in the 1980s. Featuring plans, images, texts, and excerpts from Grzimek’s own writings, this comprehensive new book offers a vivid and in-depth encounter with this major innovator and illustrates the lively history of landscape architecture in Germany from the 1930s in Berlin to the 1990s in Munich.

This study peers behind the veil of architectural styles to the underlying social microcosm of the 'building world' of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to examine how the fragile authority of the architect took root there. Bringing to architectural history methods more familiar from studies of the social content of poetry and painting, Brian Hanson is able to establish often surprising relationships between many of the key figures of the period - including Chambers, Soane, Barry, Pugin, Scott and Street - shedding light also on lesser figures, and on agencies as diverse as Freemasonry and magazine publishing. John Ruskin in particular emerges here in a different light, as do his arguments concerning 'The Nature of Gothic'. In line with rethinking of the pace of industrialization, and the dynamic between the metropolitan centres and the more slowly evolving 'fringes', Hanson concludes that in some respects Ruskin was closer to William Chambers than to William Morris.

Many literary critics seem to think that an hypothesis about obscure and remote questions of history can be refuted by a simple demand for the production of more evidence than in fact exists. The demand is as easy to make as it is impossible to satisfy. But the true test of an hypothesis, if it cannot be shown to con?ict with known truths, is the number of facts that it correlates and explains. Francis M. Cornford [1914] 1934, 220. It was in the autumn of 1997 that the research project leading to this publication began. One of us [GH], while a visiting fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science (University of Pittsburgh), gave a talk entitled, "Proportions and Identity: The Aesthetic Aspect of Symmetry". The presentation focused on a confusion s- rounding the concept of symmetry: it exhibits unity, yet it is often claimed to reveal a form of beauty, namely, harmony, which requires a variety of elements. In the audience was the co-author of this book [BRG] who responded with enthusiasm, seeking to extend the discussion of this issue to historical sources in earlier periods. A preliminary search of the literature persuaded us that the history of symmetry was rich in possibilities for new insights into the making of concepts. John Roche's brief essay (1987), in which he sketched the broad outlines of the history of this concept, was particularly helpful, and led us to conclude that the subject was worthy of monographic treatment.

Bringing together the reflections of an architectural theorist and a philosopher, this book encourages philosophers and architects, scholars and designers alike, to reconsider what they do as well as what they can do in the face of challenging times. It does so by exploring the notion that architecture and design can (and possibly should), in their own right, make for a distinctive form of ethical investigation. The book is less concerned with absolutist understandings of the two components of ethics, a theory of 'the good' and a theory of 'the right', than with remaining open to multiple relations between ideas about the built environment, design practices and the plurality of kinds of human subjects (inhabitants, individuals and communities) accommodated by buildings and urban spaces. The built environment contributes to the inculcation of all sorts of values (good and bad). Thus, this book aims to change the way people commonly think about ethics, not only in relation to the built environment, but to themselves, their ways of thinking and modes of behaviour.

The theme of “modernity� was the launching pad for architecture in the 20th century, to the point of completely revolutionising our way of life. By causing in its development absolutisations and misunderstandings, actual motives linked to the profound desire to improve everyone’s life were reconsidered. Against the theory that the 20th century connected the objective of modernity to that of the Modern Movement, this book deals with the theme of a present continuity by revealing those “open visions� that characterised modernity at the end of the 19th century. By critically reviewing the main stages of development over time—as well as the intense debates of architectural historians, architects and contemporary scholars—the thesis of modernity as tradition, research, criticism, place of contradictions is supported. Further echoed by that of “architecture tout court,� enhancing the present environment in its current fragility of views—even more so today with the appearance of a virus capable of undermining our way of living. These are “contemporary modernisms� aimed at recovering the essence of a recent past to project it into the present, restoring to architecture that long-neglected role of critical construction and formation of society in an era, ultimately defined as “of Rembrandt beauty.�

Your eyes meet with the memory of everything you have heard and this has a huge in uence on your opinion of the place where you live. The summary of your story in a city will have slowly crystallized, not into emotional richness but into a single powerful image known as Supernapoli.

This book offers the first comprehensive overview of alternative approaches to architectural practice.

At a time when many commentators are noting that alternative and richer approaches to architectural practice are required if the profession is to flourish, this book provides multiple examples from across the globe of how this has been achieved and how it might be achieved in the future.

Particularly pertinent in the current economic climate, this book offers the reader new approaches to architectural practice in a changing world. It makes essential reading for any architect, aspiring or practising.

Modern Architectural Theory is the first book to provide a comprehensive survey of architectural theory, primarily in Europe and the United States, during three centuries of development. In this synthetic overview, Harry Mallgrave examines architectural discourse within its social and political context. He explores the philosophical and conceptual evolution of its ideas, discusses the relation of theory to the practice of building, and, most importantly, considers the words of the architects themselves, as they contentiously shaped Western architecture. He also examines the compelling currents of French rationalist and British empiricist thought, radical reformation of the theory during the Enlightenment, the intellectual ambitions and historicist debates of the nineteenth century, and the distinctive varieties of modern theory in the twentieth century up to the profound social upheaval of the 1960s. Modern Architectural Theory challenges many assumptions about architectural modernism and uncovers many new dimensions of the debates about modernism.

Concrete Vaulted Construction in Imperial Rome examines methods and techniques that enabled builders to construct some of the most imposing monuments of ancient Rome. Focusing on structurally innovative vaulting and the factors that influenced its advancement, Lynne Lancaster also explores a range of related practices, including lightweight pumice as aggregate, amphoras in vaults, vaulting ribs, metal tie bars, and various techniques of buttressing. She provides the geological background of the local building stones and applies mineralogical analysis to determine material provenance, which in turn suggests trading patterns and land use. Lancaster also examines construction techniques in relation to the social, economic, and political contexts of Rome, in an effort to draw connections between changes in the building industry and the events that shaped Roman society from the early empire to late antiquity. This book was awarded the James R. Wiseman Book Award from the Archaeological Institute of America in 2007.

Portrait of Studio Hani Rashid Building on the previous volume Re: Futures (2017), Re: Action presents a selection of innovative designs by Studio Hani Rashid at the University of Applied Arts Vienna's Institute of Architecture. The selected projects address architectural strategies for ensuring vitality in cities and ecosystems as well as sustainable urban growth. In his studio, Hani Rashid, co-founder of the visionary New York firm Asymptote Architecture, focuses on architecture that responds to current and future ecological changes. Bringing together projects, texts, and conversations, the book highlights creative ways in which architecture can contribute to the development of a sustainable, progressive, and livable urban future. Innovative experimental architectural designs for vibrant cities and ecosystems Explores how architecture can respond to ecological changes With contributions by Hani Rashid, Anab Jain, Greg Lynn, Timothy Morton, Claudia Pasquero, and others

This is a scholarly examination of the theoretical work of one of the most important architects of early modern Europe. Trained as a scientist, Wren applied the seventeenth-century scientific methods to his study of ancient, medieval, Renaissance and contemporary architecture. From his study of ancient buildings, he posited a new version of the origins and development of the Classical style, thereby becoming one of the first to challenge theoretical principles of architecture that had been upheld since the Renaissance. Rejecting the idea of beauty as absolute and innate, Wren formulated an empirical definition, based on visual perception and custom. His acceptance of the relativity of beauty also led him to recognize the Gothic style, then disparaged by himself and his contemporaries throughout Europe, as a legitimate one that evolved within particular cultural circumstances. This edition of Wren's writings includes accurate, annotated transcriptions of the texts.

The ancient cathedral was the pinnacle of medieval society's spiritual and cultural life employing the best designers, artists, craftsmen and materials that available money could buy. They developed into enclaves of worship, learning, hospitality, art, music, agriculture and medicine in an often chaotic and violent outside world. A change of religion, rulers and constitution has meant they have constantly been rebuilt and altered throughout their 1,700 year history. Many will be overwhelmed by their size and beauty, baffled by their layout and symbolism. They may well ask: Why were they built here and what is so special about the site? Who were the patrons and organizations that commissioned their building? How did they raise the finance to build them? What was the purpose of a cathedral and why were they so big? Where did the design ideas come from and who were the designers? How was it built and by whom? How has it changed over the years and is it still used today? This book aims to answer these and many other frequently asked questions. Overriding themes will cover English history, architecture, building technology and religion, all written in plain English with any specialist terms being fully explained in the glossary. The book includes contemporary accounts of building work at Canterbury and Ely cathedrals, the laying of the first stone at Salisbury Cathedral, the damage done to the cathedrals, abbeys and monasteries by the Reformation and the Puritans following their victory in the English Civil Wars. There are portraits of some of the key-figures in our narrative: the working lives, wealth and training of the monks, bishops, priors, master masons and other craftsmen.

The modes of diffusion of ideas that shape planned environments, and the ways these ideas are realised, have been gaining prominence as subjects of study and discussion among planning historians and others. However, most studies have focused on the diffusion that has occurred within the sphere of the so-called First World, where the participants have been considered as relatively equal partners. On the other hand, where the diffusion took place between the First and Third Worlds, these exchanges have often been projected as one-way impositions where the receivers are silent, oppressed, impotent – if not outright invisible.

More recently, some researchers have begun to approach the relations between actors and stakeholders in processes of planning diffusion in a more complex and ambiguous way. To begin with, the natives in developing countries, whether colonial or post-colonial, are being recognised as fully-fledged actors in the shaping of the built environment, with a variety of roles to play and means to play them, even if they frequently face many constraints to their actions. Moreover, the planning influences have started to be acknowledged as going in multiple directions, including back to the source of dissemination. Adaptation, hybridisation, mimicry and appropriation are just some of the forms of diffusion and adoption that are relevant. The specific traits of the indigenous also came to be viewed as something that is not necessarily evident: ultimately, who are the ‘locals’?

Urbanism – Imported or Exported? is the first book to examine the full complexity of these issues in detail. It raises conceptual questions concerning the identities of locals, the roles of relevant actors, and the modes of diffusion, as well as investigating the methodological implications for historians of the city-building process. Using examples from around the world, with a particular emphasis on Mediterranean countries, it offers a bold new approach to the concepts and methods of the study of planning history.