History of architecture Books

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Book SynopsisThis book offers a comprehensive study of the evolution of pre-archaic Greek temple architecture from the eleventh to mid-seventh century BCE. It will be a resource for scholars and students of archaeology, Greek religion, ancient history, architectural history, art history, and construction history.Table of ContentsIntroduction; 1. Origins and legacies. Early Iron Age temples and the question of function; 2. The rise of monumental temples (eighth to mid-seventh centuries BC); 3. Technological innovation and permanence (first half of the seventh century); 4. Conclusion; Appendices: Appendix 1: wind force for destabilizing a mud brick wall; Appendix 2: labor for manufacturing a monolithic sarcophagus; Appendix 3: labor for stonework at Isthmia.

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Book SynopsisCatherine Flinn is Associate Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, UK. Her main research interest is the impact of politics and economics on the architecture and landscape of modern Britain.Trade ReviewIn a very well written and exceptionally well organized book, Flinn achieves her goal: She clearly highlights the political and institutional reasons why the reconstruction plans for the blitzed cities didn’t come to fruition … [For] anyone interested in a better understanding of the incredible challenges involved with rebuilding Britain after the war, I’d recommend it enthusiastically. * EH.net *A meticulous, detailed account of what became of cities such as Coventry, Liverpool, Hull, Exeter and Portsmouth whose urban fabric was torn to shreds by German planes, and the ideas of the planners who sought to rebuild them ... This book [contains] extraordinary attention to detail. * Contemporary British History *A superbly researched and useful addition to the existing body of work on reconstruction. * Journal of British Studies *Catherine Flinn’s excellent book raises important questions that extend far beyond the reconstruction of blitzed cities, the role of planners, and the triumph of modernism over historical reimagining. It also raises questions of how limited resources were allocated after the war, how decisions were made by the local and national state, how private economic interests operated within a planned economy. Her findings will be of great interest not only to urban and architectural but also to economic, political and cultural historians of postwar Britain. * Martin Daunton, Emeritus Professor of Economic History, University of Cambridge, UK *The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans, the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima, and the Grenfell Tower Disaster in London demonstrated that while causes of urban disaster may be simple, the consequences present major challenges. In her meticulous study, Flinn shows that the reconstruction of Britain following the air raids of World War Two saw many grand plans. Some were realized, while others were undermined by political, practical and economic constraints. Rebuilding Britain's Blitzed Cities is essential both for our understanding of post-war British history, but also as a corrective to naive arguments that urban renewal can always be straightforward. * Mark Clapson, Professor of Social and Urban History, University of Westminster, UK *Table of ContentsList of Abbreviations List of Persons & Affiliations List of Illustrations Preface: In Spite of Planning 1. Introduction: Did the Planners “Cut the Heart Out of our Cities”? 2. Considering Reconstruction, 1940-1945 3. Treasury Mandarins: The Apparatus of Postwar Economic Planning 4. Central Control?: The Challenges of Postwar Physical Planning 5. Local Constraints: The Cities of Hull, Exeter and Liverpool 6. Postwar Rebuilding: Hopeful Plans Become Different Realities 7. Rebuilding Blitzed City Centres Despite Planning Appendices Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisLars Spuybroek is Professor of Architectural Design at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, USA. He is the author of NOX: Machining Architecture (2004), The Architecture of Continuity (2008), Research & Design: The Architecture of Variation (2009) and Research & Design: Textile Tectonics (2011). He is an award-winning architect with his practice NOX.Trade Review... exhilarating to watch elements of Ruskin's thought being taken on ... The Sympathy of Things is energetic, well written and full of examples. -- Matthew Reynolds * Times Literary Supplement *This is a dazzling, provocative, baffling, and sometimes vexing manifesto. The Sympathy of Things is an unforgettable book. * Carlyle Studies Annual *The term 'brilliant' is often misused in reviews, but the opening chapter on 'the digital nature of gothic' is truly scintillating. * Architectural Research Quarterly *Hundreds of threads that make an astonishingly rich tapestry ... Ruskin has at last found an interpreter with the breadth of learning and a poetic imagination to make his perceptions relevant to our own day. * Architectural Review *The author envisions a radical future for design and technology ... This book is undoubtedly a rich and original source of ideas for anyone across the many disciplines that increasingly care about materiality in the past, present or future. * Theory, Culture & Society *In this remarkable study, Spuybroek treats us to an astonishingly fresh upgrade of John Ruskin, who ends up no longer inhabiting an antique past but talks to us directly. Spuybroeck shows how Ruskin's aesthetic actually works, cutting through clouds of vagueness to get at a wonderfully algorithmic, procedural tactics with limpid clarity. But there's much more: something like a distinctive ontology emerges when we study Ruskin this way. This ontology radically decenters the human from its meaning-making position in the cosmos, allowing all kinds of other entities to show up without the usual visas and interrogations. What results is truly an ecology of things, making Ruskin sharply relevant for our age. * Professor Timothy Morton, Rita Shea Chair in English, Rice University, USA *The Sympathy of Things is a stirring call to action; an amazing reconstruction of the ideas of the Victorian sage John Ruskin; and, above all, a visionary look at the inner life of things. Lars Spuybroek makes the case that aesthetics is first philosophy, and proposes a radical new aesthetics for the digital age. -- Steven Shaviro, DeRoy Professor of English at Wayne State University, USAIf Spuybroek, like Ruskin, does not shake your design and aesthetic concepts, you haven’t understood him. -- Charles JencksThe Sympathy of Things is an astonishing and visionary work. I have never before come across a book so brimming with insight, written with such feeling, and so keenly in touch with life. Ostensibly a meditation on the oeuvre of John Ruskin, what Lars Spuybroek offers us is an intoxicating meditation on art, architecture and design that soars above the ponderous deadweight of thing-theory to luxuriate in the unruly and exuberant proliferation of the things themselves. * Professor Tim Ingold, Chair of Social Anthropology, University of Aberdeen *Table of ContentsForeword Preface 1. The Digital Nature of Gothic 2. The Matter of Ornament 3. Abstraction and Sympathy 4. The Radical Picturesque 5. The Ecology of Design Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe author writes in his introduction that evening is the magical moment to wander about Rome: "That is the moment to see the city of conflicting moods as it always has been and still is, hateful and holy, wicked and wise, pagan and papal, sometimes so beautiful that it is scarcely to be endured, and always quite inscrutable. That is the supreme moment to rhapsodize and pay homage, to make the final assault upon the hidden secret of Rome's eternal decay, and to be deliciously deceived… The early morning on the other hand is more to our purpose, for it is not at all romantic." The early morning serves to light for Lees-Milne the eight Roman buildings–from the somber Pantheon first built by Marcus Agrippa in 27 B.C. to the Trevi fountain, whose waters were brought to Rome via aqueduct by the same Agrippa, but whose completion had to await the eighteenth century–that are in the author's opinion the chef architectural monuments of the city. All of them, he says, are powerful archetypes, and two among them, the Pantheon and the Tempietto, have individual features that are reflected in practically every town in Europe, the British Commonwealth, and America.Trade ReviewA brief, lyrical introduction. -- Michael Webb * L.A. Architect *Less-Milne offers not scholarship but, rather, entertainment of the most elegant and eye-opening kind. -- Deborah Howard * Architecture *

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Book SynopsisPrior to the nineteenth century, few Americans knew anything more of Egyptian culture than what could be gained from studying the biblical Exodus. Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt at the end of the eighteenth century, however, initiated a cultural breakthrough for Americans as representations of Egyptian culture flooded western museums and publications, sparking a growing interest in all things Egyptian that was coined Egyptomania. As Egyptomania swept over the West, a relatively young America began assimilating Egyptian culture into its own national identity, creating a hybrid national heritage that would vastly affect the memorial landscape of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Far more than a study of Egyptian revivalism, this book examines the Egyptian style of commemoration from the rural cemetery to national obelisks to the Sphinx at Mount Auburn Cemetery. Giguere argues that Americans adopted Egyptian forms of commemoration as readily as other neoclassical styles such as Greek revivalism, noting that the American landscape is littered with monuments that define the Egyptian style’s importance to American national identity. Of particular interest is perhaps America’s greatest commemorative obelisk: the Washington Monument. Standing at 555 feet high and constructed entirely of stone—making it the tallest obelisk in the world—the Washington Monument represents the pinnacle of Egyptian architecture’s influence on America’s desire to memorialize its national heroes by employing monumental forms associated with solidity and timelessness. Construction on the monument began in 1848, but controversy over its design, which at one point included a Greek colonnade surrounding the obelisk, and the American Civil War halted construction until 1877. Interestingly, Americans saw the completion of the Washington Monument after the Civil War as a mending of the nation itself, melding Egyptian commemoration with the reconstruction of America. As the twentieth century saw the rise of additional commemorative obelisks, the Egyptian Revival became ensconced in American national identity. Egyptian-style architecture has been used as a form of commemoration in memorials for World War I and II, the civil rights movement, and even as recently as the 9/11 remembrances. Giguere places the Egyptian style in a historical context that demonstrates how Americans actively sought to forge a national identity reminiscent of Egyptian culture that has endured to the present day.Trade Review“This book is solidly and intelligently researched. Giguere presents a worthy subject, a reassessment of a variety of memorials constructed amid the Egyptian revival in the United States, and proposes that Egyptian forms, such as the gateway, the obelisk, and the sphinx—once considered pagan and foreign—ultimately left such a strong mark on US memorialization in the nineteenth century that they became “characteristically American.” —Cynthia Mills, former executive editor of American Art

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