Bringing together ideas from the fields of sociology, economics, human geography, ethics, political and communications theory, this book deals with some key subjects in urban design: the multidimensional effects of the spatial form of cities, ways of appropriating urban space, and the different material factors involved in the emergence of social life. It puts forward an innovative conceptual framework to reconsider some fundamental features of city-making as a social process: the place of cities in encounters and communications, in the randomness of events and in the repetition of activities that characterise societies. In doing so, it provides fresh analytical tools and theoretical insights to help advance our understanding of the networks of causalities, contingencies and contexts involved in practices of city-making. In a systematic attempt to bring urban analysis and research from the social sciences together, the book is organised around three vital yet relatively neglected dimensions in the social and material shaping of cities: (i) Cities as systems of encounter: an approach to urban segregation as segregated networks; (ii) Cities as systems of communication: a view of shared spaces as a means to association and social experience; (iii) Cities as systems of material interaction: explorations on urban form as an effect of interactivity, and interactivity as an effect of form. Visit the author's website at: http://socialfabric.city/

Written as an advocacy of melancholy's value as part of landscape experience, this book situates the concept within landscape's aesthetic traditions, and reveals how it is a critical part of ethics and empathy. With a history that extends back to ancient times, melancholy has hovered at the edges of the appreciation of landscape, including the aesthetic exertions of the eighteenth-century. Implicated in the more formal categories of the Sublime and the Picturesque, melancholy captures the subtle condition of beautiful sadness. The book proposes a range of conditions which are conducive to melancholy, and presents examples from each, including: The Void, The Uncanny, Silence, Shadows and Darkness, Aura, Liminality, Fragments, Leavings, Submersion, Weathering and Patina.

First published in 1988, this book argues that discussions of urban development often neglect to consider that much of the urban environment is designed by architects and planners, and that the particular world-view of architects and planners is crucial for the way proposals are taken up, modified and carried out. The author explores the world-view of architects and planners, considering their approach to design and the factors which influence this - work patterns, career paths and the firms in which they operate. The author also studies their place in the political decision-making process as it affects urban questions and then explores how architects and planners roles are changing.

If architectural judgment were a city, a city of ideas and forms, then it is a very imperfect city. When architects judge the success or failure of a building, the range of ways and criteria which can be used for this evaluation causes many contentious and discordant arguments. Proposing that the increase in number and intensity of such arguments threatens to destabilize the very grounds upon which judgment is supposed to rest, this book examines architectural judgment in its historical, cultural, political, and psychological dimensions and their convergence on that most expressive part of architecture, namely: architectural character. It stresses the value of reasoned judgment in justifying architectural form -a judgment based on three sets of criteria: those criteria that are external to architecture, those that are internal to architecture, and those that pertain to the psychology of the architect as image-maker. External criteria include, philosophies of history or theories of modernity; internal criteria include architectural character and architectural composition; while the psychological criteria pertain to 'mimetic rivalry', or rivaling desires for the same architectural forms. Yet, although architectural conflicts can adversely influence judgment, they can at the same time, contribute to the advancement of architectural culture.

First published in 1977, this volume was intended as a sourcebook for designers and attempts to specify the ingredients necessary to develop a design program rather than postulate a model program for which no consensus exists. As such it filled a void in the existing literature which seldom covered programming with much depth and provides technical aids to guide designers. The author attempts to integrate the pioneering contributions from others in order to identify the substance of programming for designers and represents a culling of the strategies and techniques from the social, behavioural and management sciences - building on the developing efforts of other disciplines.

First published in 1991, this book is about applications and issues relating to the visual environment. The content pertains to the understanding of human behaviour in the environment by recording behaviour and actions or by direct interaction with people. The author examines research and planning methods that primarily stress the visual features of the physical environment. Traditionally, environmental research has relied on verbal descriptions and perceptions of the physical environment, virtually ignoring the visual component and the potential application of the social sciences for gathering this data. Various strategies that can expand the visual information base have been explored here: diagramming, photo-interviewing, photo-sorting, mapping, notation, simulation, videotaping, and CADD.

First published in 1999, this book presents a fresh and diverse set of perspectives representing key directions of research and practice in the field of environmental design research. Leading researchers in various areas of person-environment research, such as privacy, children's environment, post-occupancy evaluation, environmental cognition, environmental aesthetics, crime prevention, housing and environmental protection and environmental design present what they consider their best work. The book argues for the value of a multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary approach to problem-solving and outlines many important directions for methods, research and practice.

In The Empty Place: Democracy and Public Space Teresa Hoskyns explores the relationship of public space to democracy by relating different theories of democracy in political philosophy to spatial theory and spatial and political practice. Establishing the theoretical basis for the study of public space, Hoskyns examines the rise of representative democracy and investigates contemporary theories for the future of democracy, focusing on the Chantal Mouffe's agonistic model and the civil society model of Jurgen Habermas. She argues that these models of participatory democracy can co-exist and are necessarily spatial. The book then provides diverse perspectives on how the role of physical public space is articulated through three modes of participatory spatial practice. The first focuses on issues of participation in architectural practice through a set of projects exploring the 'open spaces' of a postwar housing estate in Euston. The second examines the role of space in the construction of democratic identity through a feminist architecture/art collective, producing space through writing, performance and events. The third explores participatory political democratic practice through social forums at global, European and city levels. Hoskyns concludes that participatory democracy requires a conception of public space as the empty place, allowing different models and practices of democracy to co-exist.

Demand from building control officials for structural calculations - even for very simple projects - means that today's architects must have a thorough understanding of everyday structural concepts. Structures for Architects satisfies the need for a basic introduction to the structural problems encountered by the architect, surveyor and builder. This third edition reflects advances in recent techniques and refers to current Building Regulations and Codes of Practice. Students of architecture, building and surveying at degree, diploma or professional (RIBA, RICS, CIOB) examination level will find this book a valuable course text. Professionals in these fields who must perform structural calculations to satisfy building control authorities will also find it a useful handbook.

What is tropical architecture? Instead of assuming it as a "natural" asocial, apolitical and ahistorical entity, this book provides the first thorough account of its formations and transformations historically.

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A Genealogy of Tropical Architecture" traces the origins of tropical architecture to eighteenth and early nineteenth century British colonial architectural knowledge and practices. It uncovers how systematic knowledge and practices on environmental technologies in the tropics such as ventilation and sun-shading were linked to military technologies, medical theories, cultural assumptions, and sanitary practices, and were manifested in building types such as military barracks, hospitals and housing.

Drawing on the interdisciplinary scholarships on postcolonial studies, science studies, and environmental history, Jiat-Hwee Chang argues that tropical architecture was inextricably entangled with the socio-historical constructions of tropical nature and the politics of colonial governance and postcolonial development. Drawing its main case studies from Singapore, these case studies are situated in relation to the production, circulation and reception of the knowledge and practices of tropical architecture across different time-spaces in the larger British colonial networks, from Britain to British India, from the West Indies to West Africa.

By bringing to light new historical materials through formidable research and tracing the history of tropical architecture beyond what is widely considered today as its "founding moment" in the mid-twentieth century, this important and original book bears not only upon our understanding of the colonial urban environment but also upon contemporary concerns with sustainable architecture. "

First published in 1992, this book is about making connections that may lead towards a new professionalism, since the past several decades have given rise mainly to new kinds of specialists in the areas of programming, evaluation, and participation. The implications for such integration are far reaching, with profound future effects on the physical environment, the design professions, and the education of designers. The book is split into four sections dealing with facility programming, several forms of evaluation, participatory design, and the application of Theory Z principles. This book will be of interest to students of architecture and design.

Over the last three decades, our understanding of the city worldwide has been revolutionized by three innovative theoretical concepts - globalisation, postcolonialism and a radically contested notion of modernity. The idea and even the reality of the city has been extended out of the state and nation and re-positioned in the larger global world. In this book Anthony King brings together key essays written over this period, much of it dominated by debates about the world or global city. Challenging assumptions and silences behind these debates, King provides largely ignored historical and cultural dimensions to the understanding of world city formation as well as decline. Interdisciplinary and comparative, the essays address new ways of framing contemporary themes: the imperial and colonial origin of contemporary world and global cities, actually existing postcolonialisms, claims about urban and cultural homogenisation and the role of architecture and built environment in that process. Also addressed are arguments about indigenous and exogenous perspectives, Eurocentricism, ways of framing vernacular architecture, and the global historical sociology of building types. Wide-ranging and accessible, Writing the Global City provides essential historical contexts and theoretical frameworks for understanding contemporary urban and architectural debates. Extensive bibliographies will make it essential for teaching, reference and research.

Over the last three decades, our understanding of the city worldwide has been revolutionized by three innovative theoretical concepts - globalisation, postcolonialism and a radically contested notion of modernity. The idea and even the reality of the city has been extended out of the state and nation and re-positioned in the larger global world. In this book Anthony King brings together key essays written over this period, much of it dominated by debates about the world or global city. Challenging assumptions and silences behind these debates, King provides largely ignored historical and cultural dimensions to the understanding of world city formation as well as decline. Interdisciplinary and comparative, the essays address new ways of framing contemporary themes: the imperial and colonial origin of contemporary world and global cities, actually existing postcolonialisms, claims about urban and cultural homogenisation and the role of architecture and built environment in that process. Also addressed are arguments about indigenous and exogenous perspectives, Eurocentricism, ways of framing vernacular architecture, and the global historical sociology of building types. Wide-ranging and accessible, Writing the Global City provides essential historical contexts and theoretical frameworks for understanding contemporary urban and architectural debates. Extensive bibliographies will make it essential for teaching, reference and research.

This book provides a definitive guide for the future direction of the practice and profession of architecture. In five parts, Cliff Moser provides you with all the tools and know-how to implement changes that will serve you and your practice in the short, medium and long term. Written at a crucial time for the industry, this is essential reading for every architect.

Architectural Theory of Modernism presents an overview of the discourse on function-form concepts from the beginnings, in the eighteenth century, to its peak in High Modernism. Functionalist thinking and its postmodern criticism during the second half of the twentieth century is explored, as well as today's functionalism in the context of systems theory, sustainability, digital design, and the information society. The book covers, among others, the theories of Carlo Lodoli, Gottfried Semper, Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Hannes Meyer, Adolf Behne, CIAM, Jane Jacobs, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Charles Jencks, William Mitchell, and Manuel Castells.

There are a number of recent texts that draw on psychoanalytic theory as an interpretative approach for understanding architecture, or that use the formal and social logics of architecture for understanding the psyche. But there remains work to be done in bringing what largely amounts to a series of independent voices, into a discourse that is greater than the sum of its parts, in the way that, say, the architect Peter Eisenman was able to do with the architecture of deconstruction or that the historian Manfredo Tafuri was able to do with the Marxist critique of architecture. The discourse of the present volume focuses specifically for the first time on the subject of the unconscious in relation to the design, perception, and understanding of architecture. It brings together an international group of contributors, who provide informed and varied points of view on the role of the unconscious in architectural design and theory and, in doing so, expand architectural theory to unexplored areas, enriching architecture in relation to the humanities. The book explores how architecture engages dreams, desires, imagination, memory, and emotions, how architecture can appeal to a broader scope of human experience and identity. Beginning by examining the historical development of the engagement of the unconscious in architectural discourse, and the current and historical, theoretical and practical, intersections of architecture and psychoanalysis, the volume also analyses the city and the urban condition.

The scale of ecological crises made us realize that every kind of politics has always been cosmopolitics, politics of a cosmos. Cosmos embraces everything, including the multifarious natural and material entities that make humans act. The book examines cosmopolitics in its relation to design practice. Abandoning the modernist idea of nature as being external to the human experience - a nature that can be mastered by engineers and scientists from outside, the cosmpolitical thinking offers designers to embark in an active process of manipulating and reworking nature 'from within.' To engage in cosmopolitics, this book argues, means to redesign, create, instigate, and compose every single feature of our common experience. In the light of this new understanding of nature, we set the questions: What is the role of design if nature is no longer salient enough to provide a background for human activities? How can we foster designers' own force and make present what causes designers to think, feel, and act? How do designers make explicit the connection of humans to a variety of entities with different ontology: rivers, species, particles, materials and forces? How do they redefine political order by bringing together stars, prions and people? In effect, how should we understand design practice in its relation to the material and the living world? In this volume, anthropologists, science studies scholars, political scientists and sociologists rethink together the meaning of cosmopolitics for design. At the same time designers, architects and artists engage with the cosmopolitical question in trying to imagine the future of architectural and urban design. The book contains original empirical chapters and a number of revealing interviews with artists and designers whose practices set examples of 'cosmopolitically correct design'.

The focus of this book is on understanding and explaining the way that our increasingly networked world impacts on the legibility of cities; that is how we experience and inhabit urban space. It reflects on the nature of the spatial effects of the networked and mediated world; from mobile phones and satnavs to data centres and wifi nodes and discusses how these change the very nature of urban space. It proposes that netspaces are the spaces that emerge at the interchange between the built world and the space of the network. It aims to be a timely volume for both architectural, urban design and media practitioners in understanding and working with the fundamental changes in built space due to the ubiquity of networks and media. This book argues that there needs to be a much better understanding of how networks affect the way we inhabit urban space. The volume defines five characteristics of netspaces and defines in detail the way that the spatial form of the city is affected by changing practices of networked world. It draws on theoretical approaches and contextualises the discussion with empirical case studies to illustrate the changes taking place in urban space. This readable and engaging text will be a valuable resource for architects, urban designers, planners and sociologists for understanding how of networks and media are creating significant changes to urban space and the resulting implications for the design of cities.

As advancements in transportation and technology continue to close the gap between architect, client, builder and site, critique and place, this book considers how architects, designers, theorists, and critics design, describe and critique future and past constructions in absentia. This book engages with remote practice, providing students, academics and professionals with the understanding and tools they need to rethink the role of the distant and disconnected in making, thinking and writing architecture - a skill which is becoming increasingly important in contemporary education and practice. Bringing together a collection of 16 essays and creative works from a diverse and respected group of scholars and designers, this book reflects upon the challenges and opportunities which remote practices occasion in architecture. Part One: Practice and Pedagogy investigates how a range of technological and economic advancements continue to redefine notions of connectedness in the practice of architecture at a distance and explores what it means to teach and study architecture at a distance from peer and place. Part Two: Critique and Performativity consists of a wide range of questions that unpack notions about situatedness, subjectivity, the body in space, and what occurs when disparate things are suddenly made proximate. The essays and creative works enable thematic as well as historically and culturally contextual understanding of the topic, highlighting important connections and changes across time.

What is landscape architecture? Is it gardening, or science, or art? In this book, Bruce Sharky provides a complete overview of the discipline to provide those that are new to the subject with the foundations for future study and practice. The many varieties of landscape practice are discussed with an emphasis on the significant contributions that landscape architects have made across the world in daily practice. Written by a leading scholar and practitioner, this book outlines the subject and explores how, from a basis in garden design, it 'leapt over the garden wall' to encapsulate areas such as urban and park design, community and regional planning, habitat restoration, green infrastructure and sustainable design, and site engineering and implementation. Coverage includes: The effects that natural and human factors have upon design, and how the discipline is uniquely placed to address these challenges Examples of contemporary landscape architecture work - from storm water management and walkable cities to well-known projects like the New York High Line and the London Olympic Park Exploration of how art and design, science, horticulture, and construction come together in one subject Thinking about Landscape Architecture is perfect for those wanting to better understand this fascinating subject, and those starting out as landscape architecture students.

This unique guide provides a systematic overview of the idea of architectural space. Bryan Lawson provides an ideal introduction to the topic, breaking down the complex and abstract terms used by many design theoreticians when writing about architectural space. Instead, our everyday knowledge is reintroduced to the language of design. Design values of 'space' are challenged and informed to stimulate a new theoretical and practical approach to design. This book views architectural and urban spaces as psychological, social and partly cultural phenomena. They accommodate, separate, structure, facilitate, heighten and even celebrate human spatial behaviour.

Judging from the debates taking place in both education and practice, it appears that architecture is deeply in crisis. New design and production techniques, together with the globalization of capital and even skilled-labour, have reduced architecture to a commodified object, its aesthetic qualities tapping into the current pervasive desire for the spectacular. These developments have changed the architect's role in the design and production processes of architecture. Moreover, critical architectural theories, including those of Breton, Heidegger and Benjamin, which explored the concepts of technology, modernism, labour and capital and how technology informed the cultural, along with later theories from the 1960s, which focused more on the architect's theorization of his/her own design strategies, seem increasingly irrelevant. In an age of digital reproduction and commodification, these theoretical approaches need to be reassessed. Bringing together essays and interviews from leading scholars such as Kenneth Frampton, Peggy Deamer, Bernard Tschumi, Donald Kunze and Marco Biraghi, this volume investigates and critically addresses various dimensions of the present crisis of architecture. It poses questions such as: Is architecture a conservative cultural product servicing a given producer/consumer system? Should architecture's affiliative ties with capitalism be subjected to a measure of criticism that can be expanded to the entirety of the cultural realm? Is architecture's infusion into the cultural the reason for the visibility of architecture today? What room does the city leave for architecture beyond the present delirium of spectacle? Should the thematic of various New Left criticisms of capitalism be taken as the premise of architectural criticism? Or alternatively, putting the notion of criticality aside is it enough to confine criticism to the production of insightful and pleasurable texts?

This book investigates architecture as a form of diplomacy in the context of the Second World War at six major European international and national expositions that took place between 1937 and 1959. The volume gives a fascinating account of architecture assuming the role of the carrier of war-related messages, some of them camouflaged while others quite frank. The famous standoffs between the Stalinist Russia and the Nazi Germany in Paris 1937, or the juxtaposition of the USSR and USA pavilions in Brussels 1958, are examples of very explicit shows of force. The book also discusses some less known - and more subtle - messages, revealed through an examination of several additional pavilions in both Paris and Brussels; of a series of expositions in Moscow; of the Universal Exhibition in Rome that was planned to open in 1942; and of London's South Bank Exposition of 1951: all of them related, in one way or another, to either an anticipation of the global war or to its horrific aftermaths. A brief discussion of three pre-World War II American expositions that are reviewed in the Epilogue supports this point. It indicates a significant difference in the attitude of American exposition commissioners, who were less attuned to the looming war than their European counterparts. The book provides a novel assessment of modern architecture's involvement with national representation. Whether in the service of Fascist Italy or of Imperial Japan, of Republican Spain or of the post-war Franquista regime, of the French Popular Front or of socialist Yugoslavia, of the arising FRG or of capitalist USA, of Stalinist Russia or of post-colonial Britain, exposition architecture during the period in question was driven by a deep faith in its ability to represent ideology. The book argues that this widespread confidence in architecture's ability to act as a propaganda tool was one of the reasons why Modernist architecture lent itself to the service of such different masters.

Is Landscape . . . ? surveys multiple and myriad definitions of landscape. Rather than seeking a singular or essential understanding of the term, the collection postulates that landscape might be better read in relation to its cognate terms across expanded disciplinary and professional fields. The publication pursues the potential of multiple provisional working definitions of landscape to both disturb and develop received understandings of landscape architecture. These definitions distinguish between landscape as representational medium, academic discipline, and professional identity. Beginning with an inquiry into the origins of the term itself, Is Landscape . . . .? features essays by a dozen leading voices shaping the contemporary reading of landscape as architecture and beyond.

First emerging at the beginning of the twentieth century, architectural reconstruction has increasingly become an instrument to visually revive a long bygone past. This book deals with the phenomenon of meticulous reconstruction in architecture. It argues that the politics of reconstruction go far beyond aesthetic considerations. Taking architecture as a major source of history and regional identity, the impact of large-scale reconstruction is deeply intertwined with political and social factors. Furthermore, memories and associations correlated with lost buildings of a bygone era are heavily influenced by their re-appearance, something which often contradicts historical events. Reconstruction has become an established way of building and dealing with the past, yet so far, there is no comprehensive scientific study on it. By bringing together eight case studies from Eastern Europe, France, Spain, China, Japan, Israel and Brazil, it provides valuable insights into this topic. The chapters analyse the political background of the reconstructions and identify the protagonists. In doing so, this volume adds to our understanding of the impact of reconstruction to memory and oblivion, as well as the critical power of reconstruction regarding contemporary architecture and urbanism.