In recent years we have seen a number of dramatic discoveries within the biological and related sciences. Traditional arguments such as "nature versus nurture" are rapidly disappearing because of the realization that just as we are affecting our environments, so too do these altered environments restructure our cognitive abilities and outlooks. If the biological and technological breakthroughs are promising benefits such as extended life expectancies, these same discoveries also have the potential to improve in significant ways the quality of our built environments. This poses a compelling challenge to conventional architectural theory... This is the first book to consider these new scientific and humanistic models in architectural terms. Constructed as a series of five essays around the themes of beauty, culture, emotion, the experience of architecture, and artistic play, this book draws upon a broad range of discussions taking place in philosophy, psychology, biology, neuroscience, and anthropology, and in doing so questions what implications these discussions hold for architectural design. Drawing upon a wealth of research, Mallgrave argues that we should turn our focus away from the objectification of architecture (treating design as the creation of objects) and redirect it back to those for whom we design: the people inhabiting our built environments.

- Presents novel framing of contemporary problems of design - Includes historical examples drawn from every continent and time period - Proposes specific reforms - Richly illustrated with over 80 black and white images

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.

Gottfied Semper was the most important German theorist of the nineteenth century. From his first published essay on Greek polychromy in 1834 to his final lecture on the origin of architectural styles in 1869, Semper persistently endeavoured to fashion a comprehensive architectural theory explaining the meaning and transformational nature of architectural form. The breadth and richness of his ideas, both applauded and opposed at the turn of the twentieth century, proved enormously influential in the development of modern theory. Originally published in 1989, this book provides an English translation of a number of Semper's published writings. The introduction seeks to trace the course of Semper's theoretical development over thirty-five years. Semper's ideas, like those of his contemporaries, John Ruskin and Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, had enormous influence on the genesis of modern architectural theory and will appeal to both architectural historians and architects.

Modern Architectural Theory is the first book to provide a comprehensive survey of architectural theory, primarily in Europe and the United States, during three centuries of development. In this synthetic overview, Harry Mallgrave examines architectural discourse within its social and political context. He explores the philosophical and conceptual evolution of its ideas, discusses the relation of theory to the practice of building, and, most importantly, considers the words of the architects themselves, as they contentiously shaped Western architecture. He also examines the compelling currents of French rationalist and British empiricist thought, radical reformation of the theory during the Enlightenment, the intellectual ambitions and historicist debates of the nineteenth century, and the distinctive varieties of modern theory in the twentieth century up to the profound social upheaval of the 1960s. Modern Architectural Theory challenges many assumptions about architectural modernism and uncovers many new dimensions of the debates about modernism.

In recent years we have seen a number of dramatic discoveries within the biological and related sciences. Traditional arguments such as "nature versus nurture" are rapidly disappearing because of the realization that just as we are affecting our environments, so too do these altered environments restructure our cognitive abilities and outlooks. If the biological and technological breakthroughs are promising benefits such as extended life expectancies, these same discoveries also have the potential to improve in significant ways the quality of our built environments. This poses a compelling challenge to conventional architectural theory... This is the first book to consider these new scientific and humanistic models in architectural terms. Constructed as a series of five essays around the themes of beauty, culture, emotion, the experience of architecture, and artistic play, this book draws upon a broad range of discussions taking place in philosophy, psychology, biology, neuroscience, and anthropology, and in doing so questions what implications these discussions hold for architectural design. Drawing upon a wealth of research, Mallgrave argues that we should turn our focus away from the objectification of architecture (treating design as the creation of objects) and redirect it back to those for whom we design: the people inhabiting our built environments.

The architect and theorist Walter Behrendt was involved with public housing and urban development as a designer and administrator for the German government after World War I. From 1925 to 1926 he edited the journal Die Form for the German Werkbund and led an articulate and well-orchestrated campaign in support of the Modern Movement. A friend and colleague of Lewis Mumford, he immigrated in 1934 to the United States where he taught courses on city planning and housing at Dartmouth College and the University of Buffalo.
This book--Behrendt's principle theoretical work in German and the precursor to Modern Building--presents a revisionist concept of style that places equal emphasis on form and function. Here, Behrendt calls for architects to return to basic geometries and to articulate explicitly the new social and economic realities. Now available in English for the first time, this incisive treatise boldly advocates international modernism to the general public.