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Books > Arts & Architecture > Architecture > Theory of architecture
By linking building theory to the emancipatory project of critique advanced by radical thinkers in our time, this work investigates the key conceptual and historical elements that culminate in an emancipatory theory of building entitled: 'Toward a philosophy of shelter'. Taking Marx as its only resource, this work proceeds with the conviction that our era is contemporaneous to Marx's historical era. This means 'not judging the validity of Marx from the perspective of the historical situation', but rather, 'demonstrating the validity of a Marxian perspective for a singular historical situation', as ours. This work will therefore translate this perspective into seeing the situation of architecture through the eyes of Marx. All those concerned with the predicament in our current condition in which architecture must play a major social role in upholding the universal value of what Alain Badiou calls 'generic humanity' will take an interest in this work. In particular, architects, critics, scholars, and students inside the field of architecture who would be seeking the application of this universal value to a new theory of building will be a welcoming audience for this work.
Architectural design can play a role in helping make the past present in meaningful ways when applied to preexisting buildings and places that carry notable and troubling pasts. In this comparative analysis, Rumiko Handa establishes the critical role architectural designs play in presenting difficult pasts by examining documentation centers on National Socialism in Germany. Presenting Difficult Pasts Through Architecture analyzes four centers - Cologne, Nuremberg, Berlin, and Munich - from the point of view of their shared intent to make the past present at National Socialists' perpetrator sites. Applying original frameworks, Handa considers what more architectural design could do toward meaningful representations and interpretations of difficult pasts. This book is a must-read for students, practitioners, and academics interested in how architectural design can participate in presenting the difficult pasts of historical places in meaningful ways.
This book traces the historical identity of Kashmir within the context of Islamic religious architecture between early fourteenth and mid-eighteenth century. It presents a framework of syncretism within which the understanding of this architectural tradition acquires new dimensions and possibilities in the region. In a first, the volume provides a detailed overview of the origin and development of Islamic sacred architecture while contextualizing it within the history of Islam in Kashmir. Covering the entirety of Muslim rule in the region, the book throws light on Islamic religious architecture introduced with the establishment of the Muslim Sultanate in the early fourteenth century, and focuses on both monumental and vernacular architecture. It examines the establishment of new styles in architecture, including ideas, materials and crafts introduced by non-Kashmiri missionaries in the late-fourteenth to fifteenth century. Further, it discusses how the Mughals viewed Kashmir and embellished the land with their architectural undertakings, coupled with encounters between Kashmir's native culture, with its identity and influences introduced by Sufis arriving from the medieval Persianate world. The book also highlights the transition of the traditional architecture to a pan-Islamic image in the post-Independence period. With its rich illustrations, photographs and drawings, this book will interest students, researchers, and professionals in architecture studies, cultural and heritage studies, visual and art history, religion, Islamic studies and South Asian studies. It will also be useful to professional architecture institutes, public libraries, museums, cultural and heritage bodies as well as the general reader interested in the architectural and cultural history of South Asia.
This book tells the history of the many analogies that have been
made between the evolution of organisms and the human production of
artefacts, especially buildings. It examines the effects of these
analogies on architectural and design theory and considers how
recent biological thinking has relevance for design.
Architects and designers have looked to biology for inspiration
since the early 19th century. They have sought not just to imitate
the forms of plants and animals, but to find methods in design
analogous to the processes of growth and evolution in nature.
This new revised edition of this classic work adds an extended Afterword covering recent developments such as the introduction of computer methods in design in the 1980s and '90s, which have made possible a new kind of 'biomorphic' architecture through 'genetic algorithms' and other programming techniques.
A Philosophy of Landscape Construction outlines a philosophy of values in landscape construction, demonstrating how integral structures, such as pavements and walls, constitute a key element to how people interact with and inhabit the final design. The book discusses how these structures enable, assist and care for people, negotiating between the dynamic processes of site ecosystems and the soil on which they are founded. They articulate spatial, functional, cultural and ecological meanings. Within this theoretical framework, designers will learn to recognize and insert a set of core values into the most technical design stages to reach their full potential. By offering a new perspective on landscape construction, moving away from the exclusively technical characteristics, this book allows landscape architects to realise the ideal vision for their designs. It is abundantly illustrated with examples from which designers can learn both successes and failures and will be an essential companion to any study of built landscapes.
A Philosophy of Landscape Construction outlines a philosophy of values in landscape construction, demonstrating how integral structures, such as pavements and walls, constitute a key element to how people interact with and inhabit the final design. The book discusses how these structures enable, assist and care for people, negotiating between the dynamic processes of site ecosystems and the soil on which they are founded. They articulate spatial, functional, cultural and ecological meanings. Within this theoretical framework, designers will learn to recognize and insert a set of core values into the most technical design stages to reach their full potential. By offering a new perspective on landscape construction, moving away from the exclusively technical characteristics, this book allows landscape architects to realise the ideal vision for their designs. It is abundantly illustrated with examples from which designers can learn both successes and failures and will be an essential companion to any study of built landscapes.
Architecture is a Verb outlines an approach that shifts the fundamental premises of architectural design and practice in several important ways. First, it acknowledges the centrality of the human organism as an active participant interdependent in its environment. Second, it understands human action in terms of radical embodiment-grounding the range of human activities traditionally attributed to mind and cognition: imagining, thinking, remembering-in the body. Third, it asks what a building does-that is, extends the performative functional interpretation of design to interrogate how buildings move and in turn move us, how they shape thought and action. Finally, it is committed to articulating concrete situations by developing a taxonomy of human/building interactions. Written in engaging prose for students of architecture, interiors and urban design, as well as practicing professionals, Sarah Robinson offers richly illustrated practical examples for a new generation of designers.
Architecture is a Verb outlines an approach that shifts the fundamental premises of architectural design and practice in several important ways. First, it acknowledges the centrality of the human organism as an active participant interdependent in its environment. Second, it understands human action in terms of radical embodiment-grounding the range of human activities traditionally attributed to mind and cognition: imagining, thinking, remembering-in the body. Third, it asks what a building does-that is, extends the performative functional interpretation of design to interrogate how buildings move and in turn move us, how they shape thought and action. Finally, it is committed to articulating concrete situations by developing a taxonomy of human/building interactions. Written in engaging prose for students of architecture, interiors and urban design, as well as practicing professionals, Sarah Robinson offers richly illustrated practical examples for a new generation of designers.
First published in 2009, Transformative Pedagogy in Architecture and Urbanism is a detailed round of pedagogical dialogue on architecture and urbanism that reset the stage for debating future visions of transformative pedagogy and its impact on design education. Structured in five chapters the book presents a wide range of innovative concepts and practical methodologies for teaching architectural and urban design. It traces the roots of architectural education and offers several contrasting ideas and strategies of design teaching practices. Transformative Pedagogy in Architecture and Urbanism will appeal to those with an interest in architectural and urban design, and architectural and design education.
A theoretical history of anthropomorphism and proportion in modern architecture, this volume brings into focus the discourse around proportion with current problems of post-humanism in architecture alongside the new possibilities made available through digital technologies. The book examines how the body and its ordering has served as a central site of architectural discourse in recent decades, especially in attempts to reformulate architecture's relationship to humanism, modernism and technology. Challenging some concepts and categories of architectural history and situates current debates within a broader cultural and technological context, Hight makes complex ideas easily accessible. Extensively illustrated and written without academic jargon for an informed but non-specialized architectural audience, this book elucidates the often obscure debates of avant-garde architectural discourse and design, while demonstrating how these debates have affected everyday places and concepts of architecture. As a result, it will appeal to professional architects, academics and students, combining as it does an insightful introduction to the fundamental issues of architectural history and theory over the past fifty years with entirely new formulations of what that history is and means.
Balbus: Or the Future of Architecture by Christian Barman This volume discusses the history and future of architecture by examining key social movements which have influenced architecture and town and country planning, such as the emancipation of women and urban traffic management in major European and American cities. 76pp Heraclitus: Or the Future of Films by Ernest Betts This volume traces the development of the film from its astonishing beginnings as a "show" to its future as one of the artistic marvels of the world, arguing that the film as an art form began without any inspiration. Euterpe Or The Future of Art by Lionel R McColvin In this volume the author suggests that the nature and amount of popular interest in The Arts is governed largely by economic and commercial influences and that these are not leading to the development of the best artistic life. This essay analyses the various factors responsible for this and suggests ways in which more people may be led to enjoy the beautiful. The visual and performing arts, literature and architecture are all considered. The Future of Futurism by John Rodker This volume considers the literature of the future in terms of the Futurism which had so great an effect on modern art and music. He forecasts what that literature will be and the sources from which it will draw its inspiration and special material.
Specifically for architects, the third title in the Thinkers for Architects series examines the relevance of Luce Irigaray's work for architecture. Eight thematic chapters explore the bodily, spatio-temporal, political and cultural value of her ideas for making, discussing and experiencing architecture. In particular, each chapter makes accessible Irigaray's ideas about feminine and masculine spaces with reference to her key texts. Irigaray's theory of 'sexed subjects' is explained in order to show how sexuality informs the different ways in which men and women construct and inhabit architecture. In addition, her ideas about architectural forms of organization between people, exterior and interior spaces, touch and vision, philosophy and psychoanalysis are explored. The book also suggests ways in which these strategies can enable architectural designers and theorists to create ethical architectures for the user and his or her physical and psychological needs. Concisely written, this book introduces Irigaray's work to practitioners, academics, undergraduate and postgraduate students in architectural design and architectural history and theory, helping them to understand the value of cross- and inter-disciplinary modes of architectural practice.
By linking building theory to the emancipatory project of critique advanced by radical thinkers in our time, this work investigates the key conceptual and historical elements that culminate in an emancipatory theory of building entitled: 'Toward a philosophy of shelter'. Taking Marx as its only resource, this work proceeds with the conviction that our era is contemporaneous to Marx's historical era. This means 'not judging the validity of Marx from the perspective of the historical situation', but rather, 'demonstrating the validity of a Marxian perspective for a singular historical situation', as ours. This work will therefore translate this perspective into seeing the situation of architecture through the eyes of Marx. All those concerned with the predicament in our current condition in which architecture must play a major social role in upholding the universal value of what Alain Badiou calls 'generic humanity' will take an interest in this work. In particular, architects, critics, scholars, and students inside the field of architecture who would be seeking the application of this universal value to a new theory of building will be a welcoming audience for this work.
Beyond Sustainable discusses the relationship between human-beings and the constructed environments of habitation we create living in the Anthropocene, an increasingly volatile and unpredictable landscape of certain change. This volume accepts that human-beings have reached a moment beyond climatological and ecological crisis. It asks not how we resolve the crisis but, rather, how we can cope with, or adapt to, the irreversible changes in the earth-system by rethinking how we choose to inhabit the world-ecology. Through an examination of numerous historical and contemporary projects of architecture and art, as well as observations in philosophy, ecology, evolutionary biology, genetics, neurobiology and psychology, this book reimagines architecture capable of influencing and impacting who we are, how we live, what we feel and even how we evolve. Beyond Sustainable provides students and academics with a single comprehensive overview of this architectural reconceptualization, which is grounded in an ecologically inclusive and co-productive understanding of architecture.
A handbook for navigating our troubled and precarious times intended to help readers imagine and make their world anew. In search of new knowledge practices that can help us make the world livable again, this book takes the reader on a journey across time-from the deep past to the unfolding future. The authors search beyond human knowledge to establish negotiated partnerships with forms of knowledge within the planet itself, examining how we have manipulated these historically through an anthropocentric focus. The book explores the many different kinds of knowledge, and the diversity of instruments needed to invoke and actuate the potency of human and nonhuman agencies. Four key phases in our ways of knowing are identified: material, strengthening, reconfiguring and extending, which are exemplified through case studies that take the form of worlding experiments. This pioneering work will inspire architects, artists and designers as well as students, teachers and researchers across arts and design disciplines.
Speed, acceleration and rapid change characterize our world, and as we design and construct buildings that are to last at least a few decades and sometimes even centuries, how can architecture continue to act as an important cultural signifier? Focusing on how an important nineteenth-century architect addressed the already shifting relation between architecture, time and history, this book offers insights on issues still relevant today-the struggle between imitation and innovation, the definition (or rejection) of aesthetic experience, the grounds of architectural judgment (who decides and how), or fundamentally, how to act (i.e. build) when there is no longer a single grand narrative but a plurality of possible histories. Six drawings provide the foundation of an itinerary through Charles Robert Cockerell's conception of architecture, and into the depths of drawings and buildings. Born in England in 1788, Cockerell sketched as a Grand Tourist, he charted architectural history as Royal Academy Professor, he drew to build, to exhibit, to understand the past and to learn from it, publishing his last work in 1860, three years before his death. Under our scrutiny, his drawings become thresholds into the nineteenth century, windows into the architect's conception of architecture and time, complex documents of past and projected constructions, great examples that reveal a kinetic approach to ornamentation, and the depth of architectural representation.
In this fresh and authoritative account John Macarthur presents the eighteenth century idea of the picturesque - when it was a risky term concerned with a refined taste for everyday things, such as the hovels of the labouring poor - in the light of its reception and effects in modern culture. In a series of linked essays Macarthur shows: what the concept of picture does in the picturesque and how this relates to modern theories of the image; how the distaste that might be felt today at the sentimentality of the picturesque was already at play in the eighteenth century; how visual values such as 'irregularity' become the basis of modern architectural planning; how the concept of appropriating a view moves from landscape design into urban design; and why movement is fundamental to picturing the stillness of buildings, cities and landscapes.Drawing on examples from architecture, art and broader culture, John Macarthur's account of this key topic in cultural history, makes engaging reading for all those studying architecture, art history, cultural history or visual studies.
This volume on urban planning within the book series 'Nordic World' outlines the preconditions, the development, the challenges and the actual appearances of the changing welfare city. From solidarity to competition, from green-field development to transformation of already urbanised areas - and from its utilitarian outset over its crisis to the differentiated models in the 1980s and the flexicurity models in the 1990s on to today. The current competitive welfare city is more likely to be described as an urban landscape characterised by, on the one hand, a division of functions, and on the other by mutual competition. The role of the state has been minimized, turning the municipalities into the new major agents in attracting taxpayers and providing goods - both by means of urban planning.
Interior design has shifted significantly in the past fifty years from a focus on home decoration within family and consumer sciences to a focus on the impact of health and safety within the interior environment. This shift has called for a deeper focus in evidence-based research for interior design education and practice. Research Methods for Interior Design provides a broad range of qualitative and quantitative examples, each highlighted as a case of interior design research. Each chapter is supplemented with an in-depth introduction, additional questions, suggested exercises, and additional research references. The book's subtitle, Applying Interiority, identifies one reason why the field of interior design is expanding, namely, all people wish to achieve a subjective sense of well-being within built environments, even when those environments are not defined by walls. The chapters of this book exemplify different ways to comprehend interiority through clearly defined research methodologies. This book is a significant resource for interior design students, educators, and researchers in providing them with an expanded vision of what interior design research can encompass.
The Victorian Art School documents the history of the art school in the nineteenth century, from its origins in South Kensington to its proliferation through the major industrial centres of Britain. Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Glasgow School of Art, together with earlier examples in Manchester and Birmingham demonstrate an unprecedented concern for the provision of plentiful light and air amidst the pollution of the Victorian city. As theories of design education and local governance converged, they also reveal the struggle of the provincial city for cultural independence from the capital. Examining innovations in the use of new technologies and approaches in the design of these buildings, The Victorian Art School offers a unique and explicitly environmental reading of the Victorian city. It examines how art schools complemented civic 'Improvement' programmes, their contribution to the evolution of art pedagogy, the tensions that arose between the provincial schools and the capital, and the role they would play in reimagining the relationship between art and public life in a rapidly transforming society. The architects of these buildings synthesised the potential of art with the perfection of the internal environment, indelibly shaping the future cultural life of Britain.
Framing Places is an account of the nexus between place and power, investigating how the built forms of architecture and urban design act as mediators of social practices of power. Explored through a range of theories and case studies, this examination shows how lives are 'framed' within the clusters of rooms, buildings, streets and cities. These silent framings of everyday life also mediate practices of coercion, seduction and authorization as architects and urban designers engage with the articulation of dreams; imagining and constructing a 'better' future in someone's interest. This second edition has been thoroughly revised and updated to include a look at the recent Grollo Tower development in Melbourne and a critique on Euralille, a new quarter development in Northern France. The book draws from a broad range of methodology including: analysis of spatial structure discourse analysis phenomenology. These approaches are woven together through a series of narratives on specific cities - Berlin, Beijing and Bangkok - and global building types including the corporate tower, shopping mall, domestic house and enclave.
This book explores the notion of affective space in relation to architecture. It helps to clarify the first-person, direct experience of the environment and how it impacts a person's emotional states, influencing their perception of the world around them. Affective space has become a central notion in several discussions across philosophy, geography, anthropology, architecture and so on. However, only a limited selection of its key features finds resonance in architectural and urban theory, especially the idea of atmospheres, through the work of German phenomenologist Gernot Boehme. This book brings to light a wider range of issues bound to lived corporeal experience. These further issues have only received minor attention in architecture, where the discourse on affective space mostly remains superficial. The theory of atmospheres, in particular, is often criticized as being a surface-level, shallow theory as it is introduced in an unsystematic and fragmented fashion, and is a mere "easy to use" segment of what is a wider and all but impressionistic analytical method. This book provides a broader outlook on the topic and creates an entry point into a hitherto underexplored field. The book's theoretical foundation rests on a wide range of non-architectural sources, primarily from philosophy, anthropology and the cognitive sciences, and is strengthened through cases drawn from actual architectural and urban space. These cases make the book more comprehensible for readers not versed in contemporary philosophical trends.
A theoretical history of anthropomorphism and proportion in modern architecture, this volume brings into focus the discourse around proportion with current problems of post-humanism in architecture alongside the new possibilities made available through digital technologies. The book examines how the body and its ordering has served as a central site of architectural discourse in recent decades, especially in attempts to reformulate architecture's relationship to humanism, modernism and technology. Challenging some concepts and categories of architectural history and situates current debates within a broader cultural and technological context, Hight makes complex ideas easily accessible. Extensively illustrated and written without academic jargon for an informed but non-specialized architectural audience, this book elucidates the often obscure debates of avant-garde architectural discourse and design, while demonstrating how these debates have affected everyday places and concepts of architecture. As a result, it will appeal to professional architects, academics and students, combining as it does an insightful introduction to the fundamental issues of architectural history and theory over the past fifty years with entirely new formulations of what that history is and means.
The work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari has been inspirational for architects and architectural theorists in recent years. It has influenced the design work of architects as diverse as Greg Lynn and David Chipperfield, and is regularly cited by avant-gardist architects and by students, but usually without being well understood. The first collaboration between Deleuze and Guattari was Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, which was taken up as a manifesto for the post-structuralist life, and was associated with the spirit of the student revolts of 1968. Their ideas promote creativity and innovation, and their work is wide-ranging, complex and endlessly stimulating. They range across politics, psychoanalysis, physics, art and literature, changing preconceptions along the way. Deleuze & Guattari for Architects is a perfect introduction for students of architecture in design studio at all levels, students of architecture pursuing undergraduate and postgraduate courses in architectural theory, academics and interested architectural practitioners.
Informing the designs of architects as diverse as Peter Zumthor, Steven Holl, Hans Scharoun and Colin St. John Wilson, the work of Martin Heidegger has proved of great interest to architects and architectural theorists. The first introduction to Heidegger 's philosophy written specifically for architects and students of architecture introduces key themes in his thinking, which has proved highly influential among architects as well as architectural historians and theorists. This guide familiarizes readers with significant texts and helps to decodes terms as well as providing quick referencing for further reading. This concise introduction is ideal for students of architecture in design studio at all levels; students of architecture pursuing undergraduate and postgraduate courses in architectural theory; academics and interested architectural practitioners. Heidegger for Architects is the second book in the new Thinkers for Architects series. |
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