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Books > Arts & Architecture > Architecture > Theory of architecture
This anthology of selected works outlines three critical instigators of architecture, all tied directly to the tectonic makeup of our built environment - place, material, and assembly. These catalysts provide the organizational framework for a collection of essays discussing their significant influence on the processes of architectural design and construction. With content from a diverse collection of notable architects, historians, and scholars, this book serves as a theoretical structure for understanding the tectonic potential of architecture. Each chapter is thematically driven, consisting of a pair of essays preceded by an introduction highlighting the fundamental issues at hand and comparing and contrasting the points of view presented. Situate, Manipulate, Fabricate offers an opportunity to explore the essential topics that affect the design and construction, as well as the experiential qualities, of our built environment.
The Optimum Imperative examines architecture's multiple entanglements within the problematics of Socialist lifestyle in postwar Czechoslovakia. Situated in the period loosely bracketed by the signing of the Munich accords in 1938, which affected Czechoslovakia's entrance into World War II, and the Warsaw Pact troops' occupation of Prague in 1968, the book investigates three decades of Czech architecture, highlighting a diverse cast of protagonists. Key among them are the theorist and architect Karel Honzik and a small group of his colleagues in the Club for the Study of Consumption; the award-winning Czechoslovak Pavilion at the 1958 World Expo in Brussels; and SIAL, a group of architects from Liberec that emerged from the national network of Stavoprojekt offices during the reform years, only to be subsumed back into it in the wake of Czechoslovak normalization. This episodic approach enables a long view of the way that the project of constructing Socialism was made disciplinarily specific for architecture, through the constant interpretation of Socialist lifestyle, both as a narrative framework and as a historical goal. Without sanitizing history of its absurd contortions in discourse and in daily life, the book takes as its subject the complex and dynamic relationships between Cold War politics, state power, disciplinary legitimating narratives, and Czech architects' optimism for Socialism. It proposes that these key dimensions of practicing architecture and building Socialism were intertwined, and even commensurate at times, through the framework of Socialist lifestyle.
• Examines architecture that tie water, as a physical and symbolic property, with the sacred • All chapters are based on original archival studies, historical documents, and field visits to the sites and buildings • A stellar group of scholars and practitioners from the US, Canada, Europe, Asia, and Africa • Includes 173 black and white illustrations
• Examines architecture that tie water, as a physical and symbolic property, with the sacred • All chapters are based on original archival studies, historical documents, and field visits to the sites and buildings • A stellar group of scholars and practitioners from the US, Canada, Europe, Asia, and Africa • Includes 173 black and white illustrations
In the wake of an unparalleled housing crisis at the end of the Second World War, Glasgow Corporation rehoused the tens of thousands of private tenants who were living in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions in unimproved Victorian slums. Adopting the designs, the materials and the technologies of modernity they built into the sky, developing high-rise estates on vacant sites within the city and on its periphery. This book uniquely focuses on the people's experience of this modern approach to housing, drawing on oral histories and archival materials to reflect on the long-term narrative and significance of high-rise homes in the cityscape. It positions them as places of identity formation, intimacy and well-being. With discussions on interior design and consumption, gender roles, children, the elderly, privacy, isolation, social networks and nuisance, Glasgow examines the connections between architectural design, planning decisions and housing experience to offer some timely and prescient observations on the success and failure of this very modern housing solution at a moment when high flats are simultaneously denigrated in the social housing sector while being built afresh in the private sector. Glasgow is aimed at an academic readership, including postgraduate students, scholars and researchers. It will be of interest to social, cultural and urban historians particularly interested in the United Kingdom.
Socially engaged architecture is a broad and emerging architectural genre that promises to redefine architecture from a market-driven profession to a mix of social business, altruism, and activism that intends to eradicate poverty, resolve social exclusion, and construct an egalitarian global society. The Routledge Companion to Architecture and Social Engagement offers a critical enquiry of socially engaged architecture's current context characterized by socio-economic inequity, climate change, war, increasing global poverty, microfinance, the evolving notion of professionalism, the changing conception of public, and finally the growing academic interest in re-visioning the social role of architecture. Organized around case studies from the United States, Brazil, Venezuela, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Nepal, Pakistan, Iran, Thailand, Germany, Australia, Taiwan, and Japan the book documents the most important recent developments in the field. By examining diverse working methods and philosophies of socially engaged architecture, the handbook shows how socially engaged architecture is entangled in the global politics of poverty, reconstruction of the public sphere, changing role of the state, charity, and neoliberal urbanism. The book presents debates around the issue of whether architecture actually empowers the participators and alleviates socio-economic exclusion or if it instead indirectly sustains an exploitive capitalism. Bringing together a range of theories and case studies, this companion offers a platform to facilitate future lines of inquiry in education, research, and practice.
Both architecture and anthropology emerged as autonomous theoretical disciplines in the 18th-century enlightenment. Throughout the 19th century, the fields shared a common icon-the primitive hut-and a common concern with both routine needs and ceremonial behaviours. Both could lay strong claims to a special knowledge of the everyday. And yet, in the 20th century, notwithstanding genre classics such as Bernard Rudofsky's Architecture without Architects or Paul Oliver's Shelter, and various attempts to make architecture anthropocentric (such as Corbusier's Modulor), disciplinary exchanges between architecture and anthropology were often disappointingly slight. This book attempts to locate the various points of departure that might be taken in a contemporary discussion between architecture and anthropology. The results are radical: post-colonial theory is here counterpoised to 19th-century theories of primitivism, archaeology is set against dentistry, fieldwork is juxtaposed against indigenous critique, and climate science is applied to questions of shelter. This publication will be of interest to both architects and anthropologists. The chapters in this book were originally published within two special issues of Architectural Theory Review.
In 1935, the Russian-born Jewish architect Berthold Lubetkin and his firm Tecton designed Highpoint, a block of flats in London, which Le Corbusier called 'revolutionary'. Three years later, Lubetkin completed a companion design. Yet Highpoint II felt very different, and the sense that the ideals of modernism had been abandoned seemed hard to dispute. Had modern architecture failed to take root in England? This book challenges the belief that English architecture was on hiatus during the 1930s. Using Highpoint II as a springboard, Deborah Lewittes takes us on a journey through the defining moments of modern English architecture - the 'high points' of the period surrounding Highpoint II. Drawing on Lubetkin's work and his writings, the book argues that he advanced influential, lasting theories which were rooted in his design for Highpoint II. Lubetkin's work is explored within the context of wider Jewish emigration to London during the interwar years as well as the anti-Semitism that pervaded Britain during the 1930s. As Lewittes demonstrates, this decade was anything but quiet. Providing a new perspective on twentieth-century English architecture, this book is of interest to students and scholars in architectural history, urban studies, Jewish studies, and related fields.
The seventh edition of the highly successful The City Reader juxtaposes the very best classic and contemporary writings on the city. Sixty-three selections are included: forty-five from the sixth edition and eighteen new selections, including three newly written exclusively for The City Reader. The anthology features a Prologue essay on "How to Study Cities", eight part introductions as well as individual introductions to each of the selected articles. The new edition has been extensively updated and expanded to reflect the latest thinking in each of the disciplinary and topical areas included, such as sustainable urban development, globalization, the impact of technology on cities, resilient cities, and urban theory. The seventh edition places greater emphasis on cities in the developing world, the global city system, and the future of cities in the digital transformation age. While retaining classic writings from authors such as Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs, and Louis Wirth, this edition also includes the best contemporary writings of, among others, Peter Hall, Manuel Castells, and Saskia Sassen. New material has been added on compact cities, urban history, placemaking, climate change, the world city network, smart cities, the new social exclusion, ordinary cities, gentrification, gender perspectives, regime theory, comparative urbanization, and the impact of technology on cities. Bibliographic material has been completely updated and strengthened so that the seventh edition can serve as a reference volume orienting faculty and students to the most important writings of all the key topics in urban studies and planning. The City Reader provides the comprehensive mapping of the terrain of Urban Studies, old and new. It is essential reading for anyone interested in studying cities and city life.
This book proposes a new critical relationship between computation and architecture, developing a history and theory of representation in architecture to understand and unleash potential means to open up creativity in the field. Historically, architecture has led spatial representation. Today, computation has established new representational paradigms that can be compared to spatial representations, such as the revolution of perspective in the Renaissance. Architects now use software, robotics, and fabrication tools with very little understanding and participation in how these tools influence, revolutionize, and determine both architecture and its construction today. Why does the discipline of architecture not have a higher degree of authorship in the conception and development of computational technologies that define spatial representation? This book critically explores the relationship between history, theory and cultural criticism. Lorenzo-Eiroa positions new understandings through parallel historical sections and theories of many revolutionary representational architecture canons displaced by conventional spatial projection. He identifies the architects, artists, mathematicians, and philosophers that were able to revolutionise their disciplines through the development of new technologies, new systems of representation, and new lenses to understand reality. This book frames the discussion by addressing new means to understand and expand architecture authorship in relation to survey, information, representation, higher dimensional space, Big Data, and Artificial Intelligence - in the pursuit of activating an architecture of information. This will be important reading for upper-level students and researchers of architecture and architectural theory, especially those with a keen interest in computational design and robotic fabrication.
The Spatialities of Radio Astronomy examines the multidisciplinary overlap between the spatial disciplines and the studies of science and technology through a comparative study of four of the world’s most important radio telescopes. Employing detailed analysis, historical research, interviews, personal observations, and various conceptual manoeuvres, Guy Trangoš reveals the depth of spatial process active at these scientific sites and the territories they traverse. Through the conceptual frameworks of territory, hyper-concentration, and contingency, Trangoš interprets the telescope as exploded across space and time, present in multiple connected sites simultaneously, and active in the production of space. He develops a historiographic and contemporary analysis of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA, Chile); the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST, China); the Arecibo Observatory (Puerto Rico); and the MeerKAT/SKA (South Africa). These case studies are global exemplars of the different spatial transformations that occur through science. Their relationships to surrounding communities and landscapes reveal deeper constitutional processes embodied in each institutional and spatial form. This book spans the modern history of architecture and science, the studies of science, technology and society, and urban theory. It is of specific interest to architects and designers expanding their analysis of spatial production, scholars in the study of geography, landscape, science, technology, and astronomy, and people fascinated with how these radio telescopes were conceptualised, built, and operate today.
Perspective as Logic offers an architectural examination of the filmic screen as an ontologically unique element in the discipline’s repertoire. The book determines the screen’s conditions of possibility by critically asking not what a screen means, but how it can mean anything of architectural significance. Based on this shift of enquiry towards the question of meaning, it introduces Jacques Lacan and Alain Badiou in an unprecedented way to architecture—since they exemplify an analogous shift of perspective towards the question of the subject and the question of being accordingly. The book begins by positing perspective projection as being a logical mapping of space instead of a matter of sight (Alberti & Lacan). Secondly, it discusses the very nature of architecture’s view and relation to the topological notion of outside between immediacy and mediation (Diller and Scofidio, The Slow House). It examines the limitation of pictorial illusion and the productive negativity in the suspension of architecture’s signified equivalent to language’s production of undecidable propositions (Eisenman & Badiou). In addition, the book outlines the difference between the point of view and the vanishing point by introducing two different conceptions of infinity (Michael Webb, Temple Island). Finally, a series of design experiments playfully shows how the screen exemplifies architecture’s self-reflexive capacity where material and immaterial components are part of the spatial conception to which they refer and produce. This book will be particularly appealing to scholars of architectural theory, especially those interested in the domains of philosophy, psychoanalysis and the linguistic turn of architecture.
This book investigates the architectural history of China in the Mao era (1949–1976), focusing on the rise of modernism in the last seven years of the Cultural Revolution from 1969 to 1976. It highlights the new architecture of this period, exemplified by three clusters of buildings for foreign affairs, namely buildings for foreign diplomacy in Beijing, buildings for foreign trade in Guangzhou and China’s foreign aid projects overseas. The emergence of new architecture in the early 1970s is closely associated with China’s political and diplomatic shift of the time, from a radical emphasis on ideological struggle to a dynamic balance between leftist ideology and pragmatic concerns. In this context, China’s relations with the West quickly improved, culminating with American president Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972. The increasing foreign affairs brought new opportunities to Chinese architects who referenced both Western modernism and Chinese architectural traditions to create a new version of Chinese modernism. The book brings dimensions of form, politics and knowledge to the analysis of architecture, to construct an understanding of architectural design as an aesthetic, political and intellectual practice. Modernism in Late-Mao China will be an enriching and useful reference for students and scholars who are interested in the global architectural history of the twentieth century, especially Cold War modernism.
Through a collection of 13 chapters, Peggy Deamer examines the profession of architecture not as an abstraction, but as an assemblage of architectural workers. What forces prevent architects from empowering ourselves to be more relevant and better rewarded? How can these forces be set aside by new narratives, new organizations and new methods of production? How can we sit at the decision-making table to combat short-term real estate interests for longer-term social and ethical value? How can we pull architecture-its conceptualization, its pedagogy, and its enactment-into the 21st century without succumbing to its neoliberal paradigm? In addressing these controversial questions, Architecture and Labor brings contemporary discourses on creative labor to architecture, a discipline devoid of labor consciousness. This book addresses how, not just what, architects produce and focuses not on the past but on the present. It is sympathetic to the particularly intimate way that architects approach their design work while contextualizing that work historically, institutionally, economically, and ideologically. Architecture and Labor is sure to be a compelling read for pre-professional students, academics, and practitioners.
Trajectories in Architecture: Plan, Sensation, Temporality presents a compelling examination of underlying issues in late twentieth century architecture. Three formal preoccupations and conceptual orientations are used as guiding threads or trajectories. These three trajectories - the plan as conceptual device, a logic of sensation, and temporalities - serve to organise individual chapters in the central sections of the book and provide a new lens to the study of period work, revealing architectural conditions and consequent spatial effects little explored to date. Trajectories in Architecture adds to scholarship and expands our understanding of the role of conceptual and formal criteria in the analysis and creation of works of architecture. The book provides potentially transformative new interpretations of influential architects and key projects from the last half of the twentieth century to reveal new alignments and potentialities in architecture's recent past as a contribution to identifying future possibilities. In so doing the book argues for the still latent potential in modern architecture's traditions and design principles and their future expression. Trajectories in Architecture includes analysis of significant projects of Le Corbusier, Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid, John Hejduk, Louis I. Kahn, and I. M. Pei.
Rhetoric provides a repertoire of different methods for original and innovative creation by introducing notions of surprise, the unexpected, and conflict. The myths of "inspiration" and "the brilliant idea" dominate explanations of the genesis of many architectural and creative projects. Nevertheless, perhaps the most original ideas and innovative designs could be explained as transpositions of the classical figures or colours of rhetoric. This possibility brings up several questions. Is rhetoric a kind of repertoire of different ways in which one can be "original"? Can the creative process be facilitated and enriched if creators become more aware of the system that they often use intuitively? Do architects make conscious or unconscious use of some of the figures of thought, tropes, and colours when creating and discussing architecture? Can metonymies, hyperbatons, oxymorons, antitheses, and puns, among many other rhetorical figures, be identified in spatial and visual disciplines? Can rhetorical mechanisms be applied to architecture to coordinate social action? These are some of the key questions addressed in this book, which revolves around an inventory of rhetorical figures found in architecture and visual arts.
This innovative study of memorial architecture investigates how design can translate memories of human loss into tangible structures, creating spaces for remembering. Using approaches from history, psychology, anthropology and sociology, Sabina Tanovic explores purposes behind creating contemporary memorials in a given location, their translation into architectural concepts, their materialisation in the face of social and political challenges, and their influence on the transmission of memory. Covering the period from the First World War to the present, she looks at memorials such as the Holocaust museums in Mechelen and Drancy, as well as memorials for the victims of terrorist attacks, to unravel the private and public role of memorial architecture and the possibilities of architecture as a form of agency in remembering and dealing with a difficult past. The result is a distinctive contribution to the literature on history and memory, and on architecture as a link to the past.
The architectures of capitalist development's present phase manifest themselves through a very diverse range of episodes: data centers, warehouses, container terminals, logistics parks. Generally considered as mediocre and banal examples that sit outside of pre-established disciplinary canons, these artifacts are extremely relevant. They are relevant not for their formal or historic qualities, but for what they represent - for the implicit system of values they embed. They express specific power relations, exacerbate issues of labor, and generate processes of subjectivity. Most importantly, these architectures, despite their formal and typological diversity, share a common ground. They depict a sort of inner and extended paradigm: the EXTERIORLESS. How can an architecture of the EXTERIORLESS be defined? How does it differentiate from examples and manifestations of the past? How do notions of legibility, form vs. function, typological articulation, come into play? In situating the architectures of contemporary capitalism within the larger debate on Anthropocene, Post- Anthropocene and Capitalocene, this book attempts to answer those questions by delineating three main characteristics for an architecture of the EXTERIORLESS: its physical and symbolic role as interface; its ambiguous condition of being at the same time local and global, isolated and connected, compressed and expanded; and, lastly, its contribution to new forms of urbanity in absence of the traditional city. These three aspects-Interface, Expanded Domains, and New Forms of Urbanity-constitute the three main sections of the book. Each section includes two chapters and examines one specific aspect of the EXTERIORLESS paradigm. Defining its three main characteristics, this book covers a wide spectrum of themes and examples. It describes the influence that the experimental architecture of the 1960s has exerted on late-capitalist spatial products; it analyzes the impact of logistics on the redesign of the territory; it introduces new forms of global urbanity generated by the EXTERIORLESS. Written for students and scholars of architectural history, theory and criticism, Stefano Corbo contextualizes the concept of EXTERIORLESS and its role in contemporary architecture, its obedience to macro-economic dynamics, and its possible future.
The book investigates speculative filmic architectural projects and animations that go beyond representing buildings, touching upon issues concerning medium, act of representation, or conducting criticism on history, culture, society, or urban politics, along with the mediated character of contemporary spatial experience – interpreting it primarily through protocols of architectural imaging. The book centres on the influence of simulation and cinematic design on visionary or speculative architecture.  It outlines the impact of film and animation in architectural representation through key projects. The opening analysis is useful in contextualizing speculative architectural projects, while the later chapters link the theory to the imagery. Stasiowski uses a diverse collection of interesting case studies that are easy to read and well-chosen to support his argument. This is a well-researched work and comprehensive review of speculative architecture and various media that describe it. Stasiowski makes a thorough argument about the use of cinema and animation as a method of architectural visualization. Stasiowki’s book sets itself apart from other work in the same area by in discussing speculative projects in relation to cinema. and specifically, the effect that modern technologies are having on the subject now and in its potential futures. The borderline between material environment and spatialized imagery becomes progressively more blurred, while demand for visionary works that would make sense of this merging, has never been greater. It will appeal primarily to architects and designers, filmmakers and academics. It may also be of interest to artists, set designers, and film production designers.
This book critically examines the philosophy of the term 'transgression' and how it shapes the utopian vision of contemporary urban design scenarios. The aim of this book is to provide scholarly yet accessible graphic novel illustrations to inform narratives of urban manifestos. Through four select case studies from the UK, Cyprus and Germany, the book highlights the paradoxes and contradictions in architecture and provides detailed evaluation of the limits and contemporary forms of sustainable urban regeneration. The book proposes an 'utopian urban vision' approach to social, political and cultural relations, trends and tensions both locally and globally, and seeks to inspire an awakening in architectural discourse. The book argues that the philosophical undermining of transgression is the result of a phenomenon from a different perspective - its philosophical background, its social construction, its experimental research process and its design implications on the city. As such, the book provides a critical examination of how architectural design interventions contribute to sustainable urban regeneration, gentrification and can impact local communities. This book provides a significant contribution to both undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as early career researchers working in architecture, planning and sustainable urban design. It offers effective guidance on adopting the state-of-the-art graphical illustrations into their own design projects, while considering contradictions between architectural discourse and the philosophy of transgression.
The Routledge Companion to Biology in Art and Architecture collects thirty essays from a transdisciplinary array of experts on biology in art and architecture. The book presents a diversity of hybrid art-and-science thinking, revealing how science and culture are interwoven. The book situates bioart and bioarchitecture within an expanded field of biology in art, architecture, and design. It proposes an emergent field of biocreativity and outlines its historical and theoretical foundations from the perspective of artists, architects, designers, scientists, historians, and theoreticians. Includes over 150 black and white images.
This book traces the ideal of total environmental control through the intellectual and geographic journey of Knud Loenberg- Holm, a forgotten Danish architect who promoted a unique systemic, cybernetic, and ecological vision of architecture in the 1930s. A pioneering figure of the new objectivity and international constructivism in Germany in 1922 and a celebrated peer of radical figures in De Stijl, the Bauhaus, and Russian constructivism, when he emigrated to Detroit in 1923 he introduced the vanguard theory of productivism through his photography, essays, designs, and pedagogy. By following Loenberg- Holm's ongoing matrix of relations until the postwar era with the European vanguards in CIAM and former members of the Structural Study Associates (SSA), especially Fuller, Frederick Kiesler, and C. Theodore Larson, this study shows how their definition of building as a form of environmental control anticipated the contemporary disciplines of industrial ecology, industrial metabolism, and energy accounting.
The theory of buildings was introduced by J Tits in order to focus on geometric and combinatorial aspects of simple groups of Lie type. Since then the theory has blossomed into an extremely active field of mathematical research having deep connections with topics as diverse as algebraic groups, arithmetic groups, finite simple groups, and finite geometries, as well as with graph theory and other aspects of combinatorics. This volume is an up-to-date survey of the theory of buildings with special emphasis on its interaction with related geometries. As such it will be an invaluable guide to all those whose research touches on these themes. The articles presented here are by experts in their respective fields and are based on talks given at the 1988 Buildings and Related Geometries conference at Pingree Park, Colorado. Topics covered include the classification and construction of buildings, finite groups associated with building-like geometries, graphs and association schemes.
This book offers a diverse understanding and practical approach towards the growing area of atmosphere research, in the context of philosophy, geography and architecture. It begins by tracing back to the model of experience called the "pathic". Drawing on the phenomenology of theorists Hermann Schmitz and Gernot Boehme, introductory chapters offer a grounding for the beginnings of pathic research. The chapters go on to apply pathic framework to a range of practical cases from theatre studies to education. Atmospheres are often defined as affects one feels in a "lived space" and researchers are becoming more interested in the emotions we feel in natural and artificial environments across day to day life. By providing a critical re-evaluation of phenomenology and aesthetics, the book brings a series of unexplored and controversial subjects to light, opening up a new context for thinking about our everyday life and experiences inscribed within aesthetics, politics, literature, spatial practices and pedagogy and effectively merging abstract philosophy and concrete practice. This book is particularly poignant in the emerging field of Atmosphere and New Aesthetics research. Practitioners, academics and researchers working within Cultural Geography, Aesthetics, Art and Philosophy will find this book extremely valuable.
Cognition and the Built Environment argues that interacting with our built environment, as users and as architects, is a cognitive process. It claims that architecture, in its form and meaning, is a basic, embodied level of human cognition. The assumption is that we and our built environment together form an intelligent system, a cognitive feedback loop between us and the world of which we are part. With this as a vantage point, the book discusses the meaning and intelligence of concrete architectural environments as well as the agency of the architect, of his client and of the user. The inquiry oscillates between abstract thought, topological models and cognitive semiotics, between pragmatist philosophy and the professional practice of planning cities, developing projects and using objects. Architecture serves more complex purposes than our caves, paths and landmarks did. Written for students and academics of urban design, urban planning and architectural theory, Cognition and the Built Environment argues that human cognition feeds on the interaction between thought, agency and built environment, and that architecture is the spatial form of this interaction. |
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