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Books > Arts & Architecture > Architecture > Theory of architecture
"Trace elements" are minerals that exist in minute quantities necessary for the growth and development of cells. Exposure to excessive quantities is toxic, but without them our bodies would atrophy. They are the crystalline structures that support life. Over the past decade, Aranda\Lasch has focused obsessively on these structures as a form of both organization and expression for architecture. Their projects explore the interplay between rule-based systems and human ritual. In scale, this work lies somewhere between furniture and building, so that what is built, drawn, and projected gives human measure to procedural thinking. Published on the occasion of the studio's exhibition "Meeting the Clouds Halfway" at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Tucson, this book is a collection of recent explorations into modularity, craft, pattern, rhythm, material, and memory. Trace Elements documents a wide-ranging and yet sharply focused body of work from an office dedicated both to intellectual exploration and the honing of a distinct design sensibility.
The first practical yet in-depth exploration of how to reclaim the post-industrial landscape, this volume includes excellent case studies by practitioners and policy makers from around the US, giving first rate practical examples. The book addresses new thinking about landscape, which applies new techniques to the task of transforming outdated and disused post-extraction landscapes through design. In the USA alone, there are nearly 500,000 abandoned mines in need of reclamation and this book provides the first in-depth guidance on this real and pressing issue. Drawing on the work of the well-known Project for Reclamation Excellence at Harvard's Graduate School of Design, this volume outlines the latest design thinking, theory and practice for landscape planners, landscape architects and designers and others interested in maximizing the future potential of reclaimed land.
Susannah Hagan boldly discusses the fraught relationship between
key dominating areas of architectural discourse - digital design,
environmental design, and avant-garde design. Digitalia firstly demonstrates that drawing such firm lines
between architectural spheres is damaging and foolish, particularly
as both environmental and avant-garde practices are experimenting
with the digital, and secondly remonstrates with an avant-garde
that has repudiated the social/ethical agenda of the modernist
avant-garde because it failed the first time round. It is
environmental architecture that has picked up the social/ethical
ball and is running with it, using the digital to very different,
and more far-reaching, ends. As the debates rage, this book is a key read for all who are involved or intrigued.
Critical Architecture examines the relationship between critical practice in architecture and architectural criticism. Placing architecture in an interdisciplinary context, the book explores architectural criticism with reference to modes of criticism in other disciplines - specifically art criticism - and considers how critical practice in architecture operates through a number of different modes: buildings, drawings and texts. With forty essays by an international cast of leading architectural academics, this accessible single source text on the topical subject of architectural criticism is ideal for undergraduate as well as post graduate study.
Harry Francis Mallgrave combines a history of ideas about architectural experience with the latest insights from the fields of neuroscience, cognitive science and evolutionary biology to make a powerful argument about the nature and future of architectural design. Today, the sciences have granted us the tools to help us understand better than ever before the precise ways in which the built environment can affect the building user's individual experience. Through an understanding of these tools, architects should be able to become better designers, prioritizing the experience of space - the emotional and aesthetic responses, and the sense of homeostatic well-being, of those who will occupy any designed environment. In From Object to Experience, Mallgrave goes further, arguing that it should also be possible to build an effective new cultural ethos for architectural practice. Drawing upon a range of humanistic and biological sources, and emphasizing the far-reaching implications of new neuroscientific discoveries and models, this book brings up-to-date insights and theoretical clarity to a position that was once considered revolutionary but is fast becoming accepted in architecture.
How do people avoid the stresses of the digital age? Urban dwellers must now turn to nature to recover, restore and rebalance after the stresses brought on by relentless digital connectivity. It is easy to task nature as the cure, with technology as the ailment. In Network Nature, Richard Coyne challenges the definitions of both the natural and the artificial that support this time-worn narrative of nature's benefits. In the process, he attacks the counter-claim that nature must succumb to the sovereignty of digital data. Covering a spectrum of issues and concepts, from big data and biohacking to animality, numinous spaces and the post-digital, he draws on the rich field of semiotics as applied to natural systems and human communication, to enhance our understanding of place, landscape and architecture in a digital world.
With a practical approach to theory, Designing the City of Reason offers new perspectives on how differing belief systems and philosophical approaches impact on city design and development, exploring how this has changed before, during and after the impact of modernism in all its rationalism. Looking at the connections between abstract ideas and material realities, this book provides a social and historical account of ideas which have emerged out of the particular concerns and cultural contexts and which inform the ways we live. By considering the changing foundations for belief and action, and their impact on urban form, it follows the history and development of city design in close conjunction with the growth of rationalist philosophy. Building on these foundations, it goes on to focus on the implications of this for urban development, exploring how public infrastructures of meaning are constructed and articulated through the dimensions of time, space, meaning, value and action. With its wide-ranging subject matter and distinctive blend of theory and practice, this book furthers the scope and range of urban design by asking new questions about the cities we live in and the values and symbols which we assign to them.
In a world of increasing globalisation, where one high street becomes interchangeable with the next, Identity by Design addresses the idea of place-making and the concept of identity, looking at how these things can be considered as an integral part of the design process.Structured around a series of case studies including Prague, Mexico, Malaysia and Boston, the authors discuss an array of design approaches to explain and define the complex interrelated concepts. The concluding sections of the book suggest ideas for practical application in future design processes. With full colour images throughout, this book takes the discussion of place-identity to the next level, and will be valuable reading for all architects, urban designers, planners and landscape architects.
This book presents and analyses the results of the use and adaptation of ancient Egyptian architecture in modern times. It traces the use of ancient Egyptian motifs and constructions across the world, from Australia, the Americas and Southern Africa to Western Europe. It also inquires into the cultural, economic and social contexts of this practice. Imhotep Today is exceptional not only in its global coverage, but in its analyses of thorny questions such as: what was it about Ancient Egypt that inspired such Egyptianizing monuments, and was it just one idea, or several different ones which formed the basis of such activities? The book also asks why only certain images, such as obelisks and sphinxes, were incorporated within the movement. The contributors explore how these 'monuments' fitted into the local architecture of the time and, in this context, they investigate whether 'Egyptianizing architecture' is an ongoing movement and, if so, how it differs from earlier, similar activities.
A manual, monograph, and call to action, Toward an Urban Ecology points to the future of landscape architecture's role in making resilient, sustainable, and community-oriented spaces. Kate Orff, 2017 MacArthur Fellow, has an optimistic and transformative message about our world: we can bring together social and ecological systems to sustainably remake our cities and landscapes. Part monograph, part manual, part manife-sto, Toward an Urban Ecology reconceives urban landscape design as a form of activism, demonstrating how to move beyond familiar and increasingly outmoded ways of thinking about environmental, urban, and social issues as separate domains; and advocating for the synthesis of practice to create a truly urban ecology. In purely practical terms, SCAPE has already generated numerous tools and techniques that designers, policy makers, and communities can use to address some of the most pressing issues of our time, including the loss of biodiversity, the loss of social cohesion, and ecological degradation. Toward an Urban Ecology features numerous projects and select research from SCAPE, and conveys a range of strategies to engender a more resilient and inclusive built environment.
This book examines the ways in which a historic, and so-called
"traditional" city quietly mutated into one that was modern in its
own terms not only in form but also in its use and meaning. Through
a study of Delhi, the author challenges some prevalent dichotomies
and myths in architecture and urbanism and identifies an
interpretation of modernism that expands upon conventional
understandings of it. Conventional discourse in the West defines
modern as the antithesis of that which is 'not-modern' or is
'traditional.' Many scholars have debated the significance of the
words and most agree that the very word 'tradition' was a modernist
creation that variously implied threatened by change, backwardness,
resistance to innovation.
Crosses disciplinary boundaries to explore German Romantic writing about visual experience and the interplay of text and image in Romantic epistemology. The work of the groundbreaking writers and artists of German Romanticism -- including the writers Tieck, Brentano, and Eichendorff and the artists Caspar David Friedrich and Philipp Otto Runge -- followed from the philosophical arguments of the German Idealists, who placed emphasis on exploring the subjective space of the imagination. The Romantic perspective was a form of engagement with Idealist discourses, especially Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Fichte's Science of Knowledge. Through an aggressive, speculative reading of Kant, the Romantics abandoned the binary distinction between the palpable outer world and the ungraspable space of the mind's eye and were therefore compelled to develop new terms for understanding the distinction between "internal" and "external." In this light, Brad Prager urges a reassessment of some of Romanticism's major oppositional tropes, contending that binaries such as "self and other," "symbol and allegory," and "light and dark," should be understood as alternatives to Lessing's distinction between interior and exterior worlds. Prager thus crosses the boundaries between philosophy,literature, and art history to explore German Romantic writing about visual experience, examining the interplay of text and image in the formulation of Romantic epistemology. Brad Prager is Associate Professor of Germanat the University of Missouri, Columbia.
Today there are more tools for communication than ever before, yet very little in the way of reflection on how these are being used and even less on what exactly is being conveyed. This issue of AD looks at how architecture is communicated from a cultural perspective. Do the identities of practices or their business-driven branding and promotional efforts resonate with the critical acclaim many architects seek? Has slick image-led media coverage sold the profession short? How is it possible to convey the less visual and haptic qualities of architecture? Can architects be more creative in their communication efforts, making these joyous on their own terms as Le Corbusier did so memorably? Is there really a need to succumb to the world of corporate marketing processes and managerial business jargon? The issue explores notions of editing and curating work in an age of data deluge, and discusses social media as a genuinely alternative space for communication rather than for just repurposing and regurgitating information relayed. The Identity of the Architect encourages the promotion of practices as an integral extension of the very culture they hope to engender through their work. Contributors: Stephen Bayley, Caroline Cole, Adam Nathaniel Furman, Gabor Gallov, Jonathan Glancey, Justine Harvey, Owen Hopkins, Crispin Kelly, Jay Merrick, Robin Monotti, Juhani Pallasmaa, Vicky Richardson, Jenny Sabin, and Austin Williams. Featured architects: Ian Ritchie, BIG, MVRDV, IF_DO and Zaha Hadid Architects
How do we think about architecture historically and theoretically? Forty Ways to Think about Architecture provides an introduction to some of the wide-ranging ways in which architectural history and theory are being approached today. The inspiration for this project is the work of Adrian Forty, Professor of Architectural History at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UCL), who has been internationally renowned as the UK s leading academic in the discipline for 40 years. Forty s many publications, notably Objects of Desire (1986), Words and Buildings (2000) and Concrete and Culture (2012), have been crucial to opening up new approaches to architectural history and theory and have helped to establish entirely new areas of study. His teaching at The Bartlett has enthused a new generation about the exciting possibilities of architectural history and theory as a field. This collection takes in a total of 40 essays covering key subjects, ranging from memory and heritage to everyday life, building materials and city spaces. As well as critical theory, philosophy, literature and experimental design, it refers to more immediate and topical issues in the built environment, such as globalisation, localism, regeneration and ecologies. Concise and engaging entries reflect on architecture from a range of perspectives. Contributors include eminent historians and theorists from elsewhere such as Jean-Louis Cohen, Briony Fer, Hilde Heynen, Mary McLeod, Griselda Pollock, Penny Sparke and Anthony Vidler as well as Forty s colleagues from the Bartlett School of Architecture including Iain Borden, Murray Fraser, Peter Hall, Barbara Penner, Jane Rendell and Andrew Saint. Forty Ways to Think about Architecture also features contributions from distinguished architects, such as Tony Fretton, Jeremy Till and Sarah Wigglesworth, and well-known critics and architectural writers, such as Tom Dyckhoff, William Menking and Thomas Weaver. Many of the contributors are former students of Adrian Forty. Through these diverse essays, readers are encouraged to think about how architectural history and theory relates to their own research and design practices, thus using the work of Adrian Forty as a catalyst for fresh and innovative thinking about architecture as a subject.
'Makiya was Baghdad and Baghdad was Makiya.' These words sum up the life of one of the Middle East's most famous architects. Mohamed Makiya's career spanned seven decades and included projects in more than ten countries. He was a master of incorporating traditional and classical styles into modern architecture. For Makiya, the continuity of tradition as a 'living dimension' was the justification for his work. Makiya was revered as a teacher of architecture in Iraq, where he set up the first Department of Architecture at Baghdad University in 1959. Makiya was also a promoter of Iraqi art, which he displayed at his Kufa Gallery in London that was set up to build a bridge between the East and the West. This compelling biography reveals the life of a visionary who achieved remarkable feats in Iraq and whose philosophy and humanity crossed all borders and cultures.
The evolution of an urban self-consciousness in London in the early nineteenth century played a fundamental role in the shaping of the city. In this volume Dana Arnold explores the responses to the city among the urban bourgeoisie and their influence on the experience and development of London. Each of the chapters re-presents the metropolis through a thematic consideration of the urban infrastructure and architecture including public open spaces, new roads and bridges, public monuments, and buildings for show including museums, galleries and townhouses. These discrete 'walks' around London cohere into a kaleidoscopic view of the metropolis as a continually evolving entity. The nature and perception of urban experience and social life are mapped against this changing image of London revealing at once the modernity of the metropolis and the importance of the past - especially antiquity - to the construction of this transient present. Evidence of attitudes towards the metropolis is drawn from a range of contemporary visual and written sources including commentaries, guidebooks, literature and parliamentary reports and enquiries. The study of sensory responses to the city allows the exploration of the dynamic between city and society and a broader cultural understanding of urban form. London is re-presented as a matrix of key architectural, social and cultural themes and as the emblematic expression of different kinds of identities relating to gender,class and nationhood.
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.
This volume is the first to consider the golden century of Gothic ivory sculpture (1230-1330) in its material, theological, and artistic contexts. Providing a range of new sources and interpretations, Sarah Guerin charts the progressive development and deepening of material resonances expressed in these small-scale carvings. Guerin traces the journey of ivory tusks, from the intercontinental trade routes that delivered ivory tusks to northern Europe, to the workbenches of specialist artisans in medieval Paris, and, ultimately, the altars and private chapels in which these objects were venerated. She also studies the rich social lives and uses of a diverse range of art works fashioned from ivory, including standalone statuettes, diptychs, tabernacles, and altarpieces. Offering new insights into the resonances that ivory sculpture held for their makers and viewers, Guerin's study contributes to our understanding of the history of materials, craft, and later medieval devotional practices.
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