Greg Penoyre and Sunand Prasad (recently elected President of the RIBA) have been in practice together for 18 years. In that time, they have garnered an eclectic portfolio of buildings that are both visually striking and practical, and for a variety of uses, including education, healthcare, housing and culture. "Transformations: The Architecture of Penoyre & Prasad" consists of eight essays written by Prasad: 'The Anchor of Function'; 'Architecture, Art and Culture'; 'Plan Section and Elevation'; 'Who Designs?'; 'From DIY to PFI'; 'Environments for Healing'; 'Environments for Learning'; and 'Working with Existing Buildings'. These texts discuss Penoyre and Prasad's engagement with their clients and examines its relationship to both architectural history and the contemporary situations and purposes for which the practice works. "Transformations" provides a unique and personal insight into Penoyre and Prasad's major projects, including Moorfields Eye Hospital, the Rich Mix Centre, Wolverhampton Civic Halls, Woodacre Farm Learning Difficulties Unit and the University of Portsmouth Frewen Library.

Visual Spatial Enquiry explores visual and textual ways of working within spatial research. Architects and spatial thinkers from the arts, social sciences and humanities present rich case studies from remote and regional settings in Australia to the suburbs of Los Angeles, and from gallery and university settings to community collaborations in Mongolia. Through these case studies the authors reappraise and reconsider research approaches, methods and processes within and across their fields. In spatial research diagramming can be used as a method to synthesise complex concepts into a succinct picture, whereas metaphors can add the richness of lived experiences. Drawing on the editors' own architectural backgrounds, this volume is organised into three key themes: seeing, doing and making space. In seeing space chapters consider observational research enquiries where developing empathy for the context and topic is as important as gathering concrete data. Doing space explores generative opportunities that inform new and innovative propositions, and making space looks at ways to rethink and reshape spatial and relational settings. Through this volume Creagh and McGann invite readers to find their own understandings of the value and practices of neighbouring fields including planning, geography, ethnography, architecture and art. This exploration will be of value to researchers looking to develop their cross-disciplinary literacy, and to design practitioners looking to enhance and articulate their research skills.

ILS-Innovative Learning Space is a Summer School organised in 2016 by the Ecourbanlab research facility, founded by Massimo Faiferri within the DADU (Department of Architecture, Design and Urbanism) at the University of Sassari. It was formed as a project activity SPIN-APP: Innovative Learning Spaces (Regional Law No. 7 Promotion of Scientific Research and Technological Innovation in Sardinia) in collaboration with the INFN (National Institute of Nuclear Physics) and with contributions from Sardegna Ricerche through the project Scientific School 2015. The general objective of the Scientific School is as an innovative project for learning environments which can serve as a reference and model for the new realisation or adaptation of school education. To intervene on the project of school space means to reflect responsibly on the role that space itself covers in the dynamics of learning processes as well as to think about the renewal of the didactic organisation. The prerequisite is the articulation of a modular and multi-functional space suited to the subjective needs of the individual pathways of pupil skills, and which incorporates principles and material linked to good sustainable practices as their constituent elements, which can accept new technological tools as a form of enhancement of real space.

In Designing Social Equality, Mark Foster Gage proposes a dramatic realignment between aesthetic thought, politics, social equality, and the design of our physical world. By reconsidering historic concepts from aesthetic philosophy and weaving them with emerging intellectual positions from a variety of disciplines, he sets out to design a more encompassing social theory for how humanity perceives its very reality, and how it might begin to more justly define that reality through new ways of reconsidering the built environment.

Pierre Bourdieu is arguably one of the twentieth century s greatest socio-philosophical thinkers and his writings have much to offer anyone interested in the ways that people value, consume and produce architecture. Bourdieu spent much of his life attempting to understand cultural consumption and production through detailed empirical research that included studies of dwellings, art, museums, photography and aesthetics. This book introduces the architectural reader to Bourdieu s key writings on culture and outlines the ways in which they offer powerful practical tools and novel conceptual frameworks for understanding architectural value, taste, and practice.

Cities have historically supported production, commerce, and consumption, all central to urban life. But in the contemporary Western city, production has been hidden or removed, and commerce and consumption have dominated. This book is about the importance of production in the life of the city, and the relationships between production, architecture, and urban form. It answers the question: What will cities be like when they become, once again, places of production and not only of consumption? Through theoretical arguments, historical analysis, and descriptions of new initiatives, Working Cities: Architecture, Place and Production argues that contemporary cities can regain their historic role as places of material production-places where food is processed and things are made. The book looks toward a future that builds on this revival, providing architectural and urban examples and current strategies within the framework of a strong set of historically-based arguments. The book is illustrated in full colour with archival and contemporary photographs, maps, and diagrams especially developed for the book. The diagrams help illustrate the different variables of architectural space, urban location, and production in different historical eras and in different kinds of industries, providing a compelling visual understanding for the reader.

In Designing Social Equality, Mark Foster Gage proposes a dramatic realignment between aesthetic thought, politics, social equality, and the design of our physical world. By reconsidering historic concepts from aesthetic philosophy and weaving them with emerging intellectual positions from a variety of disciplines, he sets out to design a more encompassing social theory for how humanity perceives its very reality, and how it might begin to more justly define that reality through new ways of reconsidering the built environment.

The work of Homi K. Bhabha has permeated into numerous publications which use postcolonial discourse as a means to analyze architectural practices in previously colonized contexts, particularly in Africa, Asia, the Middle-East, South-East Asia and, Latin America. Bhabha's use of the concept of a ~spacea (TM) has made his work highly appealing to architects and architectural theorists.

This introductory book, specifically for architects, focuses on Bhabhaa (TM)s seminal book The Location of Culture and reveals how his work contributes to architectural theory and the study of contemporary architectures in general, not only in colonial and postcolonial contexts.

The title of this issue of the Nexus Network Journal, "Architecture, Mathematics and Structure," is deliberately ambiguous. At first glance, it might seem to indicate the relationship between what buildings look like and how they stand up. This is indeed one aspect of what we are concerned with here. But on a deeper level, the fundamental concept of structure is what connects architecture to mathematics. Both architecture and mathematics are highly structured formal systems expressed through a symbolic language. For architecture, the generating structure might be geometrical, musical, modular, or fractal. Once we understand the nature of the structure underlying the design, we are able to "read" the meaning inherent in the architectural forms. The papers in this issue all explore themes of structure in different ways.

Offering an in-depth consideration of the impact which humanities have had on the processes of architecture and design, this book asks how we can restore the traditional dialogue between intellectual enquiry in the humanities and design creativity.

Written by leading academics in the fields of history, theory and philosophy of design, these essays draw profound meanings from cultural practices and beliefs. These are as diverse as the designs they inspire and include religious, mythic, poetic, political, and philosophical references.

This timely and important book is not a benign reflection on humanities' role in architectural design but a direct response to the increased marginalization of humanities in a technology driven world. The prioritization of technology leaves critical questions unanswered about the relationships between information and knowledge, transcription and translation, and how emerging technologies can usefully contribute to a deeper understanding of our design culture.

In celebration of the 2009 International Year of Astronomy, this issue of the Nexus Network Journal is devoted to relationships between astronomy, mathematics and architecture. Ancient cultures looked to the heavens in order to identify timeless principles for their own creations. Knowledge gained in astronomy was transformed into culture through architecture and design. Papers in this issue look at how astronomy influenced architecture and urban design.

On Surface and Place is a rich and poetic exploration of surfaces which foregrounds their significance in our understanding and experience of place. Adopting weaving as its overarching metaphor, it departs from Gottfried Semper's discussion of correspondences between architecture and textiles, and emerges from the reading of photographs, a swatch of Harris Tweed and curtain wall facade juxtaposed. In juxtaposing the fabric of the city with the weave of Harris Tweed the book charts an original course across a range of connected ideas and questions, combining many different themes, writers and disciplines. It presents integrated and innovative rethinkings on a number of fundamental relationships, including correlations between body and building, word and image, and between the rural and the metropolitan, and the hand-crafted and the mass-reproduced. In doing so, it seeks to foreground the very interrelationship of surface and place, as it makes a claim for the relational nature of the world in which we live.

David Wang's Architecture and Sacrament considers architectural theory from a Christian theological perspective, specifically, the analogy of being (analogia entis). The book tracks social and cultural reasons why the theological literature tends to be separate from contemporary architecture theory. Wang argues that retrieval of the sacramental outlook embedded within the analogy of being, which informed centuries of art and architecture in the West, can shed light on current architectural issues such as "big box stores," the environmental crisis and the loss of sense of community. The book critiques the materialist basis of current architectural discourse, subsumed largely under the banner of critical theory. This volume on how European ideas inform architectural theory complements Wang's previous book, A Philosophy of Chinese Architecture: Past, Present, Future, and will appeal to architecture students and academics, as well as those grappling with the philosophical moorings of all built environments.

Digital Monuments radically explodes "iconic architecture" of the new millennium and its hijacking of the public imagination via the digital image. Hallucinatory constructions such as Rem Koolhaas's CCTV headquarters in Beijing, Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and Zaha Hadid's Performing Arts Centre in Abu Dhabi are all introduced to the world by immortal digital imagery that floods the internet-yet comes to haunt the actualised buildings. Like holograms, these "digital monuments," which violently push physics and engineering to their limits, flicker eerily between the real and the unreal-invoking fantasies of omnipotence, immortality and utopian cities. But this experience of iconic architecture as a digital dream on the ground conceals from the urban spectator the social reality of the buildings and the rigidity of their ideology. In 18 micro-essays, Digital Monuments exposes the stereotypes of iconic architecture while depicting the savagery of the industry, from the Greek and Spanish crises triggered by financialised iconic development to mass labour-deaths on construction sites in the UAE.

Riverscapes are the main arteries of the world's largest cities, and have, for millennia, been the lifeblood of the urban communities that have developed around them. These human settlements - given life through the space of the local waterscape - soon developed into ritualised spaces that sought to harness the dynamism of the watercourse and create the local architectural landscape. Theorised via a sophisticated understanding of history, space, culture, and ecology, this collection of wonderful and deliberately wide-ranging case studies, from Early Modern Italy to the contemporary Bengal Delta, investigates the culture of human interaction with rivers and the nature of urban topography. Riverine explores the ways in which architecture and urban planning have imbued cultural landscapes with ritual and structural meaning.

Megastructure proposals by the Japanese Metabolism group are commonly identified with the concept of utopia. Beyond this partial understanding, Agnes Nyilas suggests that rather than being merely utopian, the Megastructure of Metabolism represents a uniquely amalgam genre: the myth camouflaged as utopia. Although its Megastructure seemingly describes a desirable future condition as utopia does, it also comprises certain cultural images rooted in the collective (un)conscious of Japanese people, in accordance with the general interpretation of myth. The primary narrative of Beyond Utopia thus follows the gradual unfolding of the myth-like characteristics of its Megastructure. Myth is dealt here as an interdisciplinary subject in line with contemporary myth theories. After expounding the mechanism underlying the growing demand for a new myth in architecture (the origin of the myth), Part I discovers the formal characteristics of the Megastructure of Metabolism to give a hint of the real intention behind it. Based on this, Part II is a reexamination of their design methods, which aims to clarify the function of the myth and to suggest the meaning behind it. Finally, Part III deals with the subject matter of the myth by disclosing the meaning unfolding in the story, and suggests a new reading of Metabolism urban theory: as an attempt to reconsider the traditional Japanese space concept.

The modern metropolis has been one of the crucial sites for the exploration of modernity since at least the mid-nineteenth century. In this new volume, David Frisby provides an original and critical examination of the construction and experience of metropolitan modernity.

Drawing on a rich variety of sources, Frisby seeks to reveal some key features of metropolitan experience in modernity. Among the issues examined are Benjamin's account of the flaneur and its relevance for social investigation and urban detection; Simmel's influential essay on the metropolis; contrasting interpretations of fin-de-siecle Berlin and Vienna by Sombart; the work of Otto Wagner; and the response to the modern metropolis as highlighted in German Expressionism and Weimar Berlin.

Cityscapes of Modernity will be a valuable text for students of sociology, social theory, urban theory, cultural studies and architectural history, as well as all those interested in the urban culture of modernity.

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.

This book captures concepts and projects that reshape the discipline of architecture by prioritizing people over buildings. In doing so, it uncovers sophisticated approaches that go beyond standard architectural protocols to explore experience-based aesthetics, encounters, action-based research, critical practices, and social engagement. If these are widely understood as singular or incompatible approaches, the book reveals that they form a growing network of interrelations and generate levels of flexibility and dynamism that are reshaping the discipline. The thirteen chapters analyze thought-provoking projects - branded museums, restaged exhibitions, home/work spaces, multi-cultural spaces, ageing apartment blocks, abandoned homes, and urban slums amongst them. Together, they enliven the stalled debate about a single architectural response to the complex challenges of the contemporary world by highlighting pluralistic perspectives on architecture that offer fresh solutions on how architecture can improve people's lives. Featuring essays from an international range of authors, this book makes a vital contribution to our understanding of the wider conditions under which, and in relation to which, contemporary architecture is produced.

Civic Spaces and Desire presents an original and critical appraisal of civic spaces for a novel theoretical intersection of architecture and human geography. The authors address civic spaces that embody a strong moral code, such as a remembrance park or a casino, in various places in the United Kingdom, Europe, North America, Australia and Asia. The consecutive chapters of the book present these chosen spaces as the interconnection between the everyday and the ideological. By doing so the book reimagines the socio-political effects of the countercultural assemblages and ontologies of difference that these spaces produce, represent and foster, as presented through outcasts and nomads of various kinds and forms. The book reflects on different interpretations of the key texts from primarily post-linguistic theoreticians, such as Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari and Jacques Derrida. It will benefit students and academics in architecture, geography, philosophy and urban studies and planning, who seek to understand the politics of space, place and civility. By deconstructing normative ideological constructs, the book uses the concept of desire to explore the tensions between expectations of civic spaces and the disappointment and wonder of their immanent existence. Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. https://tandfbis.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9780815395232_oachapter1.pdf

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.

Northern Ireland has a complex urbanism with multilayered socio-spatial politics. In this environment, issues of communication, self-representation and expression of identity are central to the experience of urban space and architecture where the dichotomy of division and shared living are spatially exercised in everyday life. Unlike other studies in the area, this book focuses on the everyday experiences of local communities in both public and private spheres - issues of 'shareness' - challenging conventional approaches to divided cities. The book aims to layer its narratives of architectural and social developments as an urban experience in post-conflict settings over the past two decades.

The Architecture of Ruins: Designs on the Past, Present and Future identifies an alternative and significant history of architecture from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first century, in which a building is designed, occupied and imagined as a ruin. This design practice conceives a monument and a ruin as creative, interdependent and simultaneous themes within a single building dialectic, addressing temporal and environmental questions in poetic, psychological and practical terms, and stimulating questions of personal and national identity, nature and culture, weather and climate, permanence and impermanence and life and death. Conceiving a building as a dialogue between a monument and a ruin intensifies the already blurred relations between the unfinished and the ruined and envisages the past, the present and the future in a single architecture. Structured around a collection of biographies, this book conceives a monument and a ruin as metaphors for a life and means to negotiate between a self and a society. Emphasising the interconnections between designers and the particular ways in which later architects learned from earlier ones, the chapters investigate an evolving, interdisciplinary design practice to show the relevance of historical understanding to design. Like a history, a design is a reinterpretation of the past that is meaningful to the present. Equally, a design is equivalent to a fiction, convincing users to suspend disbelief. We expect a history or a novel to be written in words, but they can also be delineated in drawing, cast in concrete or seeded in soil. The architect is a 'physical novelist' as well as a 'physical historian'. Like building sites, ruins are full of potential. In revealing not only what is lost, but also what is incomplete, a ruin suggests the future as well as the past. As a stimulus to the imagination, a ruin's incomplete and broken forms expand architecture's allegorical and metaphorical capacity, indicating that a building can remain unfinished, literally and in the imagination, focusing attention on the creativity of users as well as architects. Emphasising the symbiotic relations between nature and culture, a building designed, occupied and imagined as a ruin acknowledges the coproduction of multiple authors, whether human, non-human or atmospheric, and is an appropriate model for architecture in an era of increasing climate change.