History of architecture Books

Book SynopsisA close examination of an iconic small town that gives boundless insights into architecture, landscape, preservation, and philanthropyAvant-Garde in the Cornfields is an in-depth study of New Harmony, Indiana, a unique town in the American Midwest renowned as the site of two successive Utopian settlements during the nineteenth century: the Harmonists and the Owenites. During the Cold War years of the twentieth century, New Harmony became a spiritual “living community” and attracted a wide variety of creative artists and architects who left behind landmarks that are now world famous. This engrossing and well-documented book explores the architecture, topography, and preservation of New Harmony during both periods and addresses troubling questions about the origin, production, and meaning of the town’s modern structures, landscapes, and gardens. It analyzes how these were preserved, recognizing the funding that has made New Harmony so vital, and details the elaborate ways in which the town remains an ongoing experiment in defining the role of patronage in historic preservation.An important reappraisal of postwar American architecture from a rural perspective, Avant-Garde in the Cornfields presents provocative ideas about how history is interpreted through design and historic preservation—and about how the extraordinary past and present of New Harmony continue to thrive today. Contributors: William R. Crout, Harvard U; Stephen Fox, Rice U; Christine Gorby, Pennsylvania State U; Cammie McAtee, Harvard U; Nancy Mangum McCaslin; Kenneth A. Schuette Jr., Purdue U; Ralph Schwarz; Paul Tillich.Trade Review"New Harmony has long been the American Eden that almost was—a place of learning, spirituality, and experimental architecture lost somewhere south of Indianapolis. This eclectic and sweeping volume brings its many lives, from utopian outpost on the frontier to center for contemplation and tourist site anchored by great works of modern architecture, to life. The equally diverse figures who animated the place, from the English industrialist Robert Owen to his distant heir Jane Blaffer Owen, and including architects Philip Johnson and Richard Meier, each receives a careful historic and formal analysis in this masterful collection of essays."—Aaron Betsky, president, School of Architecture at Taliesin"A detour to the rural heartland can alter many presumptions about American modern culture. Reformers included Robert Owen, who bought the communitarian settlement of New Harmony, Indiana, in 1825, espousing equal rights for workers, women, and former slaves. This book looks closely at New Harmony in the post-WWII era, when historic preservation and environmentalism held sway, while protean architects like Philip Johnson and Richard Meier collaborated with their visionary client, Jane Blaffer Owen. Readers too will look at American modernism from a radically new perspective."—Gwendolyn Wright, Columbia University"Three visionaries created New Harmony, and their visions could hardly be more different. Ben Nicholson and Michelangelo Sabatino, with their splendidly comprehensive study of Jane Blaffer Owen, the most elusive of the three, have completed the story of one of America’s most consequential experiments in town-building."—Michael Lewis, Williams College"The book is carefully produced and edited, with abundant photographs and is well suited for college readers at all levels, particularly those in heritage preservation studies."—ARLIS/NA Reviews"This anthology, filled with insights on design, philanthropy, and the making of place, will be most valued by specialists but should also attract many readers interested in the built environment and historic preservation."—CHOICE"Avant-Garde in the Cornfields, a scholarly history of New Harmony's built environment in the second half of the twentieth century, is very welcome."—A Daily Dose of Architecture"Avant-Garde in the Cornfields is a tremendous achievement that promises to be the crucial resource for chronicling New Harmony’s long and important utopian evolution."—The Annals of Iowa"Avant-Garde in the Cornfields is a comprehensive and beautifully illustrated resource for architectural scholars and lovers of the modern portion of the eclectic place that is New Harmony."—Winterthur Portfolio

Read more less

Book SynopsisA close examination of an iconic small town that gives boundless insights into architecture, landscape, preservation, and philanthropyAvant-Garde in the Cornfields is an in-depth study of New Harmony, Indiana, a unique town in the American Midwest renowned as the site of two successive Utopian settlements during the nineteenth century: the Harmonists and the Owenites. During the Cold War years of the twentieth century, New Harmony became a spiritual “living community” and attracted a wide variety of creative artists and architects who left behind landmarks that are now world famous. This engrossing and well-documented book explores the architecture, topography, and preservation of New Harmony during both periods and addresses troubling questions about the origin, production, and meaning of the town’s modern structures, landscapes, and gardens. It analyzes how these were preserved, recognizing the funding that has made New Harmony so vital, and details the elaborate ways in which the town remains an ongoing experiment in defining the role of patronage in historic preservation.An important reappraisal of postwar American architecture from a rural perspective, Avant-Garde in the Cornfields presents provocative ideas about how history is interpreted through design and historic preservation—and about how the extraordinary past and present of New Harmony continue to thrive today. Contributors: William R. Crout, Harvard U; Stephen Fox, Rice U; Christine Gorby, Pennsylvania State U; Cammie McAtee, Harvard U; Nancy Mangum McCaslin; Kenneth A. Schuette Jr., Purdue U; Ralph Schwarz; Paul Tillich.Trade Review"New Harmony has long been the American Eden that almost was—a place of learning, spirituality, and experimental architecture lost somewhere south of Indianapolis. This eclectic and sweeping volume brings its many lives, from utopian outpost on the frontier to center for contemplation and tourist site anchored by great works of modern architecture, to life. The equally diverse figures who animated the place, from the English industrialist Robert Owen to his distant heir Jane Blaffer Owen, and including architects Philip Johnson and Richard Meier, each receives a careful historic and formal analysis in this masterful collection of essays."—Aaron Betsky, president, School of Architecture at Taliesin"A detour to the rural heartland can alter many presumptions about American modern culture. Reformers included Robert Owen, who bought the communitarian settlement of New Harmony, Indiana, in 1825, espousing equal rights for workers, women, and former slaves. This book looks closely at New Harmony in the post-WWII era, when historic preservation and environmentalism held sway, while protean architects like Philip Johnson and Richard Meier collaborated with their visionary client, Jane Blaffer Owen. Readers too will look at American modernism from a radically new perspective."—Gwendolyn Wright, Columbia University"Three visionaries created New Harmony, and their visions could hardly be more different. Ben Nicholson and Michelangelo Sabatino, with their splendidly comprehensive study of Jane Blaffer Owen, the most elusive of the three, have completed the story of one of America’s most consequential experiments in town-building."—Michael Lewis, Williams College"The book is carefully produced and edited, with abundant photographs and is well suited for college readers at all levels, particularly those in heritage preservation studies."—ARLIS/NA Reviews"This anthology, filled with insights on design, philanthropy, and the making of place, will be most valued by specialists but should also attract many readers interested in the built environment and historic preservation."—CHOICE"Avant-Garde in the Cornfields, a scholarly history of New Harmony's built environment in the second half of the twentieth century, is very welcome."—A Daily Dose of Architecture"Avant-Garde in the Cornfields is a tremendous achievement that promises to be the crucial resource for chronicling New Harmony’s long and important utopian evolution."—The Annals of Iowa"Avant-Garde in the Cornfields is a comprehensive and beautifully illustrated resource for architectural scholars and lovers of the modern portion of the eclectic place that is New Harmony."—Winterthur Portfolio

Read more less

Book SynopsisWinner of the International Society of Place, Landscape, and Culture Fred B. Kniffen AwardA reexamination of working-class architecture in late nineteenth-century urban AmericaAs the multifamily building type that often symbolized urban squalor, tenements are familiar but poorly understood, frequently recognized only in terms of the housing reform movement embraced by the American-born elite in the late nineteenth century. This book reexamines urban America’s tenement buildings of this period, centering on the immigrant neighborhoods of New York and Boston. Zachary J. Violette focuses on what he calls the “decorated tenement,” a wave of new buildings constructed by immigrant builders and architects who remade the slum landscapes of the Lower East Side of Manhattan and the North and West Ends of Boston in the late nineteenth century. These buildings’ highly ornamental facades became the target of predominantly upper-class and Anglo-Saxon housing reformers, who viewed the facades as garish wrappings that often hid what they assumed were exploitative and brutal living conditions. Drawing on research and fieldwork of more than three thousand extant tenement buildings, Violette uses ornament as an entry point to reconsider the role of tenement architects and builders (many of whom had deep roots in immigrant communities) in improving housing for the working poor.Utilizing specially commissioned contem-porary photography, and many never-before-published historical images, The Decorated Tenement complicates monolithic notions of architectural taste and housing standards while broadening our understanding of the diversity of cultural and economic positions of those responsible for shaping American architecture and urban landscapes. Winner of the International Society of Place, Landscape, and Culture Fred B. Kniffen AwardTrade Review "Shifting the focus away from the era’s frequently studied housing reformers, Zachary J. Violette instead explores distinctive ‘decorated tenements’ in New York and Boston. The result is a rich array of unique historical insights into market-driven design, urban building and financing practices, and the consumer desires and aesthetic preferences of immigrant renters grasping for modernity in America."—Donna Gabaccia, University of Toronto "Americans have long regarded the tenement as an unmitigated scourge while celebrating efforts by housing reformers to contain it. In this astonishing study of the architecture of tenements in New York and Boston (and of the architects and developers who built them), Zachary J. Violette topples the familiar narrative, revealing how the tenement represented not just immiseration but betterment: an effort by immigrants, for immigrants to rebuild neighborhoods like the Lower East Side and West End on their own terms. Along the way, Violette brilliantly highlights the role that xenophobia played in housing reform and the degree to which well-meaning experts dismissed the agency of those they sought to help."—Matthew Gordon Lasner, author of High Life: Condo Living in the Suburban Century "With a penetrating analysis into the way average apartment buildings were constructed, especially by little-known ethnic builders, Zachary J. Violette introduces us to the underdocumented process of building design usually associated with the construction of upper-class apartments. Violette’s well-researched book gives us fresh, surprising insights into the tenement and challenges our understanding of this monolithic building type."—Thomas C. Hubka, author of Houses without Names: Architecture Nomenclature and the Classification of America’s Common Houses "The utility of this sturdy volume is facilitated by the inclusion of extensive plans and photos (in both color and black and white), and end notes with extensive documentation and discussion."—CHOICE "Drawing on research and fieldwork of more than three thousand extant tenement buildings, Violette uses ornament as an entry point to reconsider the role of tenement architects and builders (many of whom had deep roots in immigrant communities) in improving housing for the working poor."—New York History "The Decorated Tenement deserves a wide readership and engagement by academic colleagues and by a broader public."—Gotham: A Blog for New York City History "The Decorated Tenement breaks new scholarly ground while remaining an accessible and enjoyable read for anyone interested in New York or Boston history, immigration history, urbanism, and architecture."—Winterthur Portfolio "The book contains a wealth of information and important insights into this iconic piece of the urban landscape."—Labour/Le Travail

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe story of one of Minnesota’s most famous and most mourned buildings, set against the history of downtown Minneapolis When it opened in 1890, the twelve-story Northwestern Guaranty Loan Building was the tallest, largest, and most splendid commercial structure in Minneapolis—a mighty stone skyscraper built for the ages. How this grand Richardsonian Romanesque edifice, which later came to be called the Metropolitan Building, rose with the growth of Minneapolis only to fall in the throes of the city’s postwar renewal, is revealed in Metropolitan Dreams in all its scandalous intrigue. It is a tale of urban growing pains and architectural ghosts and of colorful, sometimes criminal characters amid the grandeur and squalor of building and rebuilding a city’s skyline.Against the thrumming backdrop of turn-of-the-century Minneapolis, architectural critic and historian Larry Millett recreates the impressive rise of the massive office building, its walls of green New Hampshire granite and red Lake Superior sandstone surrounding its true architectural wonder, a dazzling twelve-story iron and glass light court. The drama, however, was far from confined to the building itself. A consummate storyteller, Millett summons the frenetic atmosphere in Gilded Age Minneapolis that encouraged the likes of Northwestern Guaranty’s founder, real estate speculator Louis Menage, whose shady deals financed this Minneapolis masterpiece—and then forced him to flee both prosecution and the country a mere three years later.Dubious as its financial beginnings might have been, the economic circumstances of the Metropolitan’s demise were at least as questionable. Anchoring Minneapolis’s historic Gateway District in its heyday, the building’s fortunes shifted with the city’s demographics and finally it fell victim to the fervor of one of the largest downtown urban renewal projects ever undertaken in the United States. Though the long and furious battle to save the Metropolitan ultimately failed in 1962, its ghost persists in the passion for historic preservation stirred by its demise—and in Metropolitan Dreams, whose photographs, architectural drawings, and absorbing narrative bring the building and its story to vibrant, enduring life.Trade Review"Minneapolis was booming and bursting, and the new wonder in green New Hampshire granite and red Lake Superior sandstone housed a magnificent twelve-story iron and glass light court, with six elevator cages, thousands of feet of detailed ironwork, and a rooftop observation tower 222 feet above the street. And there was drama: finagling, nefarious deals and vanished money through founder and speculator Louis Menage."—Lavendar"Larry Millett does a thorough job of conveying the beauty and uniqueness of this lost landmark, and its role in helping ignite our country’s preservation movement."—Minnesota Alumni"In Metropolitan Dreams, Millett dives deeply into the building's design and realization, the Midwest city's decisions to develop and demolish, and even how parts of the building live on elsewhere in the city: a great read for Minnesotans but also preservationists in any state."—A Daily Dose of Architecture BooksTable of ContentsContentsIntroduction: “They Will Damn Us, They Will”1. “Risen Like an Exhalation”2. “A Man of Peculiar Genius and Business Methods”3. “One of the Great Architects of the Day”4. “The Best Office Building in the World”The Northwestern Guaranty Loan Building, 1890–19005. “One of the Most Colossal Swindles of the Decade”6. “The Lower Loop is Sunk”7. “How Sick Is This Heart of Minneapolis?”8. “A Monstrosity in the Eyes of Most Observers”Epilogue: “The Most Unfortunate Thing”AcknowledgmentsNotesIllustration CreditsIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe interplay of psychology, design, and politics in experiments with urban open space As suburbanization, racial conflict, and the consequences of urban renewal threatened New York City with “urban crisis,” the administration of Mayor John V. Lindsay (1966–1973) experimented with a broad array of projects in open spaces to affirm the value of city life. Mariana Mogilevich provides a fascinating history of a watershed moment when designers, government administrators, and residents sought to remake the city in the image of a diverse, free, and democratic society.New pedestrian malls, residential plazas, playgrounds in vacant lots, and parks on postindustrial waterfronts promised everyday spaces for play, social interaction, and participation in the life of the city. Whereas designers had long created urban spaces for a broad amorphous public, Mogilevich demonstrates how political pressures and the influence of the psychological sciences led them to a new conception of public space that included diverse publics and encouraged individual flourishing. Drawing on extensive archival research, site work, interviews, and the analysis of film and photographs, The Invention of Public Space considers familiar figures, such as William H. Whyte and Jane Jacobs, in a new light and foregrounds the important work of landscape architects Paul Friedberg and Lawrence Halprin and the architects of New York City’s Urban Design Group.The Invention of Public Space brings together psychology, politics, and design to uncover a critical moment of transformation in our understanding of city life and reveals the emergence of a concept of public space that remains today a powerful, if unrealized, aspiration.Trade Review"Deeply researched and wonderfully written, The Invention of Public Space will inspire a re-thinking of a concept—public space—and a place and time—New York City in the 1960s and ’70s—that we thought we knew well. Mariana Mogilevich captures the unique excitement of that moment when the top-down framework of modernist urban design and planning had collapsed and a new world of open, inclusive, and participatory design seemed to be beginning."—Robert Fishman, Taubman College of Architecture + Planning, University of Michigan"Mariana Mogilevich avoids the expected judgements about the spaces she surveys—how ‘public’ were they, really?—and shows how the idea of ‘public space,’ with all its paradoxes and exclusions, was itself devised as a response to urban crisis in 1960s New York City. Pithy, clever, and wise, The Invention of Public Space is a much-needed reminder that ideas about self and society are at the heart of the cultural history of urbanism."—Samuel Zipp, coeditor of Vital Little Plans: The Short Works of Jane Jacobs"Thanks to the author's original research and acute analysis, this an important book, not just for the history of 20th-century New York but also for the history of urban America more broadly."—CHOICE"Design and planning of public space play an important role in creating the physical conditions for imagining and experiencing democratic citizenship. But rather than settling on a conclusion whether Lindsay, or later Bloomberg, failed in achieving this goal, Mogilevich leaves us with encouragement to continue the experiment."—Journal of Urban Design"Mogilevich successfully explores how design projects driven by high-minded ideals of spatial politics impacted or even contributed to ongoing racial injustice in the city, and often overlooked the experiences of communities whose lives designers and urbanists were seeking to improve."—ARLIS/NA"This timely book squashes naïveté and inspires, leaving the reader energized and better prepared to pursue spatial justice anew."—The Architect’s NewspaperTable of ContentsContentsIntroduction: The Invention of Public Space1. Space and Politics in Lindsay’s New York2. Topographies of Experience: Jacob Riis Plaza3. Strangers and Neighbors: Residential Territories4. Open Space as Interface: Vest-Pocket Parks5. Pedestrian Experiments: Designs on the Street6. Metropolitan Environments: The Waterfront ParkEpilogue: The Deaths and Lives of Urban Public SpaceAcknowledgmentsAbbreviations for Frequently Cited Archival CollectionsNotesIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisJapan’s postwar urban imagination through the Metabolism architecture movement and visionary science fiction authors The devastation of the Second World War gave rise to imaginations both utopian and apocalyptic. In Japan, a fascinating confluence of architects and science fiction writers took advantage of this space to begin remaking urban design. In The Metabolist Imagination, William O. Gardner explores the unique Metabolism movement, which allied with science fiction authors to foresee the global cities that would emerge in the postwar era.This first comparative study of postwar Japanese architecture and science fiction builds on the resurgence of interest in Metabolist architecture while establishing new directions for exploration. Gardner focuses on how these innovators created unique versions of shared concepts—including futurity, megastructures, capsules, and cybercities—making lasting contributions that resonate with contemporary conversations around cyberpunk, climate change, anime, and more.The Metabolist Imagination features original documentation of collaborations between giants of postwar Japanese art and architecture, such as the landmark 1970 Osaka Expo. It also provides the most sustained English-language discussion to date of the work of Komatsu Sakyō, considered one of the “big three” authors of postwar Japanese science fiction. These studies are underscored by Gardner’s insightful approach—treating architecture as a form of speculative fiction while positioning science fiction as an intervention into urban design—making it a necessary read for today’s visionaries.Trade Review"A compelling and visionary analysis. William O. Gardner traces shared imaginations of the future city in postwar Japanese fiction, film, and architecture, brilliantly demonstrating the originality of Japanese visions of cities and societies to come. At the same time, he shows how even the most innovative urban visions of recent novels and anime are anchored in ancient Japanese aesthetic and building traditions. A must-read for anyone interested in urban studies, architecture, and science fiction—or, quite simply, the future."—Ursula K. Heise, author of Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Meanings of Endangered Species"The Metabolist Imagination is an ambitious and meticulously researched study of the intersections of science fiction and architectural discourse in postwar through contemporary Japan, an innovative pairing that leads to numerous insights across disciplines."—Seiji Lippit, author of Topographies of Japanese Modernism"William O. Gardner is a splendid scholar-critic of Japanese cityscape. The Metabolist Imagination brilliantly foregrounds the postmodern transactions between cutting edge architecture and emergent Japanese science fiction. No one has ever succeeded in exploring so provocatively the singular point between Metabolist works exhibited at EXPO70 and hardcore science fiction novels as represented by Sakyo Komatsu, one of the producers of the very exposition."—Takayuki Tatsumi, Keio University"The Metabolist Imagination—dense and scholarly but highly enjoyable and revealing, especially for someone who likes Japanese architecture and the occasional anime."—Daily Dose of Architecture"Eye-opening in more ways than one."—ArchiECHO"The Metabolist Imagination is a thrilling new contribution that disentangles Japan’s complex 1960s and 1970s from the vantage of interdisciplinary insight."—Journal of Asian Studies "The significant contribution of this book is to invite us to consider our relationship to the ever-changing natural/cultural environment by exploring the interrelationship between future-oriented architecture (and the city) and science fiction."—Journal of Japanese Studies "The Metabolist Imagination is an important contribution to Japanese urban studies and to the burgeoning scholarly discussion of Japan’s 1960s and 1970s. In its attention to architecture, popular literature, film, anime, collage, performance, and the ferment among those, it admirably demonstrates the rewards of an intermedial approach."—Monumenta NipponicaTable of ContentsContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. City Visions: Metabolism and Science Fiction2. Ruined Cities: Isozaki Arata and Komatsu Sakyô3. Planetary Cities: Komatsu Sakyô’s Disaster Fiction4. Future City: The 1970 Osaka Expo5. Liquid Cities: The Technopolis from Expo to Cyberpunk6. Metabolist Echoes: Akira, Patlabor, and Yanobe KenjiNotesSelected FilmographyBibliographyIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisLeading scholars historicize and theorize technology’s role in architectural design Although the question of technics pervades the contemporary discipline of architecture, there are few critical analyses on the topic. Design Technics fills this gap, arguing that the technical dimension of design has often been flattened into the broader celebratory rhetoric of innovation. Bringing together leading scholars in architectural and design history, the volume’s contributors situate these tools on a broader epistemological and chronological canvas. The essays here construct histories—some panoramic and others unfolding around a specific episode—of seven techniques regularly used by the designer in the architectural studio today: rendering, modeling, scanning, equipping, specifying, positioning, and repeating.Starting with observations about the epistemological changes that have unfolded in the discipline in recent decades but seeking to offer a more expansive meaning for technics, the volume casts new light on concepts such as form, experience, and image that have played central roles in historical architectural discourses. Among the questions addressed: How was the concept of form immanent in practices of scanning since the late nineteenth century? What was the historical relationship between rendering and experience in Enlightenment discourses? How did practices of specifying reconfigure the distinction between intellectual and manual labor? What kind of rationality is inherent in the designer’s constant clicking of the mouse in front of her screen? In addressing these and other questions, this engaging and timely collection thereby proposes technics as a site for historical and philosophical reflection not only for those engaged in architectural design but also for any scholar working in the humanities today.Contributors: Lucia Allais, Edward Eigen, Orit Halpern, John Harwood, Matthew C. Hunter, and Michael Osman.Trade Review"Weaving together material instruments and mental habits, professional organization and artistic imagination, Design Technics brilliantly demonstrates that design techniques such as modeling, scanning, and specifying enable us to write a different history of architecture. Instead of focusing on authors and buildings, Zeynep Çelik Alexander and John May focus on the concrete operations of the discipline—operations that are nevertheless inseparable from larger perspectives, for techniques contribute to the construction of the human."—Antoine Picon, author of Smart Cities: A Spatialised Intelligence"The historical range of the essays is broad, allowing the reader to see the development of these different practices starting in the 19th century and continuing though the 20th century."—CHOICE"The essays gathered in Design Technics: Archaeologies of Architectural Practice propose a welcome departure from historiographical entrapments."—Critical Inquiry "Questioning and engaging with the mantra of the digital, this collection unearths the old relationship of architecture with techne, the ancient Greek word that best uncovers the root of this ongoing problem."—Technology and Culture"This deeply researched kaleidoscopic investigation of architecture’s technics operates on several levels: as histories of tools, as media archaeologies of their matter and handling, as genealogies of architectural processes, and, not least, as stories told of the historization of the discipline of architecture."—Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society"The editors redefine architectural practice as a plural field of activities entangled with technics—a key term they use to signify both artifacts and processes."—Journal of Architectural Education

Read more less

Book SynopsisHow new conceptions of human–environment interaction became central to design theories and practices in the 1970s At the end of the 1960s, new models of responsiveness between humans and their environments had a profound impact on theories and practices in architecture, design, art, technology, media, and the sciences. The resulting initiatives—design philosophies, art installations, architectural projects, exhibitions, publications, and symposia—sought to bring together insights from biology, systems theory, psychology, and anthropology with modernist legacies of total design.In The Responsive Environment, Larry D. Busbea takes up this concept of environment as an object and method of design at the height of its aesthetic, technical, and discursive elaboration. Exploring emerging paradigms of environmental perception, patterning, and control as developed by Gregory Bateson, Edward T. Hall, Wolf Hilbertz, György Kepes, Marshall McLuhan, Nicholas Negroponte, Paolo Soleri, and others, he shows how living space itself was reimagined as a domain capable of modification through input from its newly sensitized inhabitants.The Responsive Environment intercuts the development of new ideas about environmental awareness with case studies of specific architecture and design projects for responsive environments. Throughout, Busbea connects these theories and practices to the contemporary obsession with “smart” things: responsive technologies, intelligent environments, biomimetic materials, and digital atmospherics.Trade Review"The Responsive Environment contributes vital research on the emergence of responsive environments within design experiments and projects undertaken in the 1970s. Abounding with remarkable archival materials, this detailed study of designers and practices offers a valuable historical account of the rise of the smart surrounds that now characterize contemporary computerized worlds."—Jennifer Gabrys, author of Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet"The Responsive Environment is a necessary book, one that helps us understand how concepts of environment, subjectivity, and aesthetics underpin historical and conceptual developments in art and architecture. It is a carefully crafted journey through essential thinkers in this field, and it opens new pathways for exploring how we relate to objects, environments, and ourselves."—Daniel A. Barber, author of A House in the Sun: Modern Architecture and Solar Energy in the Cold War

Read more less

Book SynopsisHow new conceptions of human–environment interaction became central to design theories and practices in the 1970s At the end of the 1960s, new models of responsiveness between humans and their environments had a profound impact on theories and practices in architecture, design, art, technology, media, and the sciences. The resulting initiatives—design philosophies, art installations, architectural projects, exhibitions, publications, and symposia—sought to bring together insights from biology, systems theory, psychology, and anthropology with modernist legacies of total design.In The Responsive Environment, Larry D. Busbea takes up this concept of environment as an object and method of design at the height of its aesthetic, technical, and discursive elaboration. Exploring emerging paradigms of environmental perception, patterning, and control as developed by Gregory Bateson, Edward T. Hall, Wolf Hilbertz, György Kepes, Marshall McLuhan, Nicholas Negroponte, Paolo Soleri, and others, he shows how living space itself was reimagined as a domain capable of modification through input from its newly sensitized inhabitants.The Responsive Environment intercuts the development of new ideas about environmental awareness with case studies of specific architecture and design projects for responsive environments. Throughout, Busbea connects these theories and practices to the contemporary obsession with “smart” things: responsive technologies, intelligent environments, biomimetic materials, and digital atmospherics.Trade Review"The Responsive Environment contributes vital research on the emergence of responsive environments within design experiments and projects undertaken in the 1970s. Abounding with remarkable archival materials, this detailed study of designers and practices offers a valuable historical account of the rise of the smart surrounds that now characterize contemporary computerized worlds."—Jennifer Gabrys, author of Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet"The Responsive Environment is a necessary book, one that helps us understand how concepts of environment, subjectivity, and aesthetics underpin historical and conceptual developments in art and architecture. It is a carefully crafted journey through essential thinkers in this field, and it opens new pathways for exploring how we relate to objects, environments, and ourselves."—Daniel A. Barber, author of A House in the Sun: Modern Architecture and Solar Energy in the Cold War

Read more less

Book SynopsisHow nineteenth-century social reformers devised a new set of radical blueprints for society In the middle of the nineteenth century, a utopian impulse flourished in the United States through the circulation of architectural and urban plans predicated on geometrically distinct designs. Though the majority of such plans remained unrealized, The Shape of Utopia emphasizes the enduring importance of these radical propositions and their ability to visualize alternatives to what was then a newly emerging capitalist nation. Drawing diagrammatic plans for structures such as octagonal houses, a hexagonal anarchist city, and circular centers of equitable commerce, these various architectural utopians applied geometric forms to envision a more just and harmonious society. Highlighting the inherent political capacity of architecture, Irene Cheng showcases how these visionary planners used their blueprints as persuasive visual rhetoric that could mobilize others to share in their aspirations for a better world. Offering an extensive and uniquely focused view of mid-nineteenth-century America’s rapidly changing cultural landscape, this book examines these utopian plans within the context of significant economic and technological transformation, encompassing movements such as phrenology, anarchism, and spiritualism. Engaging equally with architectural history, visual culture studies, and U.S. history, The Shape of Utopia documents a pivotal moment in American history when ordinary people ardently believed in the potential to reshape society. Trade Review "Irene Cheng's discovery of geometric utopias uncovers a little-known yet fascinating dimension of nineteenth-century America. Combining architectural and social analysis, she offers a deeply informed interpretation of the complex interactions between political ideals and geometric form. This exciting book should generate a new interest in the utopian impulse."—Margaret Crawford, University of California, Berkeley "Offering a highly original account of nineteenth-century American reform movements and ideals, The Shape of Utopia analyzes ideal community and architectural plans as forms of politics set within vivid cultural, social, and economic contexts. Irene Cheng points the way toward advanced approaches to nineteenth-century American architecture, away from the canon and toward new modes of thinking about representation, culture, society, politics, aesthetics, and the built environment. The Shape of Utopia is a timely, important, and much welcome contribution to nineteenth-century American architectural historiography, joining work by Michael Osman, Joanna Merwood-Salisbury, and Charles Davis."—Daniel M. Abramson, Boston University Table of Contents Contents Introduction: The Visual Rhetoric of Reform 1. Antinomies of American Utopia: Thomas Jefferson’s Grids and Octagons 2. The Visual Rhetoric of Equality: The Land Reformers’ Grid 3. Cultivating the Liberal Self: Orson Fowler’s Octagon House 4. Picturing Sociality without Socialism: The Kansas Vegetarian Octagon Colony 5. Toward More Transparent Representation: The Hexagonal “Anarchist” City of Josiah Warren 6. Models, Machines, and Manifestations: The Spiritualists’ Circular Utopias Epilogue: Whither Geometric Utopianism Acknowledgments Notes Selected Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisHow nineteenth-century social reformers devised a new set of radical blueprints for society In the middle of the nineteenth century, a utopian impulse flourished in the United States through the circulation of architectural and urban plans predicated on geometrically distinct designs. Though the majority of such plans remained unrealized, The Shape of Utopia emphasizes the enduring importance of these radical propositions and their ability to visualize alternatives to what was then a newly emerging capitalist nation. Drawing diagrammatic plans for structures such as octagonal houses, a hexagonal anarchist city, and circular centers of equitable commerce, these various architectural utopians applied geometric forms to envision a more just and harmonious society. Highlighting the inherent political capacity of architecture, Irene Cheng showcases how these visionary planners used their blueprints as persuasive visual rhetoric that could mobilize others to share in their aspirations for a better world. Offering an extensive and uniquely focused view of mid-nineteenth-century America’s rapidly changing cultural landscape, this book examines these utopian plans within the context of significant economic and technological transformation, encompassing movements such as phrenology, anarchism, and spiritualism. Engaging equally with architectural history, visual culture studies, and U.S. history, The Shape of Utopia documents a pivotal moment in American history when ordinary people ardently believed in the potential to reshape society. Trade Review "Irene Cheng's discovery of geometric utopias uncovers a little-known yet fascinating dimension of nineteenth-century America. Combining architectural and social analysis, she offers a deeply informed interpretation of the complex interactions between political ideals and geometric form. This exciting book should generate a new interest in the utopian impulse."—Margaret Crawford, University of California, Berkeley "Offering a highly original account of nineteenth-century American reform movements and ideals, The Shape of Utopia analyzes ideal community and architectural plans as forms of politics set within vivid cultural, social, and economic contexts. Irene Cheng points the way toward advanced approaches to nineteenth-century American architecture, away from the canon and toward new modes of thinking about representation, culture, society, politics, aesthetics, and the built environment. The Shape of Utopia is a timely, important, and much welcome contribution to nineteenth-century American architectural historiography, joining work by Michael Osman, Joanna Merwood-Salisbury, and Charles Davis."—Daniel M. Abramson, Boston University Table of Contents Contents Introduction: The Visual Rhetoric of Reform 1. Antinomies of American Utopia: Thomas Jefferson’s Grids and Octagons 2. The Visual Rhetoric of Equality: The Land Reformers’ Grid 3. Cultivating the Liberal Self: Orson Fowler’s Octagon House 4. Picturing Sociality without Socialism: The Kansas Vegetarian Octagon Colony 5. Toward More Transparent Representation: The Hexagonal “Anarchist” City of Josiah Warren 6. Models, Machines, and Manifestations: The Spiritualists’ Circular Utopias Epilogue: Whither Geometric Utopianism Acknowledgments Notes Selected Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisHow China’s expansive new era of urbanization threatens to undermine the foundations of rural life Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, China has vastly expanded its urbanization processes in an effort to reduce the inequalities between urban and rural areas. Centered on the mountainous region of Chongqing, which serves as an experimental site for the country’s new urban development policies, The End of the Village analyzes the radical expansion of urbanization and its consequences for China’s villagers. It reveals a fundamental rewriting of the nation’s social contract, as villages that once organized rural life and guaranteed rural livelihoods are replaced by an increasingly urbanized landscape dominated by state institutions. Throughout this comprehensive study of China’s “urban–rural coordination” policy, Nick R. Smith traces the diminishing autonomy of the country’s rural populations and their subordination to larger urban networks and shared administrative structures. Outside Chongqing’s urban centers, competing forces are at work in reshaping the social, political, and spatial organization of its villages. While municipal planners and policy makers seek to extend state power structures beyond the boundaries of the city, village leaders and inhabitants try to maintain control over their communities’ uncertain futures through strategies such as collectivization, shareholding, real estate development, and migration.As China seeks to rectify the development crises of previous decades through rapid urban growth, such drastic transformations threaten to displace existing ways of life for more than 600 million residents. Offering an unprecedented look at the country’s contentious shift in urban planning and policy, The End of the Village exposes the precarious future of rural life in China and suggests a critical reappraisal of how we think about urbanization.Trade Review "This excellent book provides important insights into the complexities of Chinese urbanization. Through a thorough and grounded investigation of a peri-urban village, Nick R. Smith produces a lively and remarkably informative account of how the village has been transformed by both state-led planning and reactions from its inhabitants against these external forces. Highly recommended to anyone interested in China and urban studies."—Fulong Wu, author of Planning for Growth: Urban and Regional Planning in China "The End of the Village is a grounded and masterfully executed project on the ever-evolving relationship between two moving targets: the city and the village. It is a go-to text for all students concerned about the spatial question in the political economy of China’s transformation today."—You-tien Hsing, University of California, Berkeley "An essential authoritative text on urban-rural coordination and the contingencies of China’s urbanization processes. It should be read by scholars not only of urban planning, but also those interested in China’s party-state, development, and rural society."—China Quarterly "Overall, this book is very well written and has a nice narrative arc—starting from the perspectives of different stakeholders in Hailong, then moving to different key planning and development themes. Smith also skillfully articulates the contradictions generated from China’s coordinative planning and presents these contradictions through episodes of conflicts between various stakeholders, making the book highly readable. "—Journal of Urban Affairs "Overall, this book presents a detailed and comprehensive case study of local actions in the rural development crisis and urban-rural coordination program in China. "—H-Net Reviews "This is an exceptional book that provides compelling insights on the complex processes of urbanization in China."—Buildings & Landscapes "The book documents a living history of China’s urban transition and leaves the reader pondering the nation’s urban–rural relations and integration."—China Information "The book provides a vivid and meticulous account of the tension, fragmentation, conflict, and contingency surrounding the Chinese state."—Contemporary Sociology "This book is a delightful read and undoubtedly an essential contribution to Chinese Urban Studies. It is recommended to professionals as well as those wishing to gain a deeper understanding of multi-scalar negotiation processes accompanying urban planning and rural development in China."—European Journal of East Asian Studies "The lucid argumentation and enjoyable writing style make the book a valuable resource for undergraduate and graduate teaching in area studies, urban studies, and in interdisciplinary contexts."—Pacific Affairs "The book provides a comprehensive account of planning for the urbanisation of rural China from socio-economic, political, spatial and individual perspectives."—Urban Research & Practice "It is impossible to do justice to the depth of exploration and breadth of research that has gone into Smith’s highly engaging and thoughtfully penned exploration of rural China under rapid urbanisation."—Thesis Eleven Table of ContentsContentsIntroduction: China’s New Era of Urbanization 1. Urbanization by Other Means: Planning under Urban–Rural Coordination 2. Village Growth Machine: Charismatic Authority and the Urbanization of the Party 3. Living on the Edge: Residents’ Urban–Rural Strategies of Survival 4. Coordinative Planning: Property, Politics, and Uncertainty at the Urban–Rural Edge 5. Village-as-the-City: Land Commodification, Shareholding, and Self-Urbanization 6. The End of the Village: Experiences of Displacement Conclusion: Disjunctural Urbanization AcknowledgmentsNotesBibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisHow China’s expansive new era of urbanization threatens to undermine the foundations of rural life Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, China has vastly expanded its urbanization processes in an effort to reduce the inequalities between urban and rural areas. Centered on the mountainous region of Chongqing, which serves as an experimental site for the country’s new urban development policies, The End of the Village analyzes the radical expansion of urbanization and its consequences for China’s villagers. It reveals a fundamental rewriting of the nation’s social contract, as villages that once organized rural life and guaranteed rural livelihoods are replaced by an increasingly urbanized landscape dominated by state institutions. Throughout this comprehensive study of China’s “urban–rural coordination” policy, Nick R. Smith traces the diminishing autonomy of the country’s rural populations and their subordination to larger urban networks and shared administrative structures. Outside Chongqing’s urban centers, competing forces are at work in reshaping the social, political, and spatial organization of its villages. While municipal planners and policy makers seek to extend state power structures beyond the boundaries of the city, village leaders and inhabitants try to maintain control over their communities’ uncertain futures through strategies such as collectivization, shareholding, real estate development, and migration.As China seeks to rectify the development crises of previous decades through rapid urban growth, such drastic transformations threaten to displace existing ways of life for more than 600 million residents. Offering an unprecedented look at the country’s contentious shift in urban planning and policy, The End of the Village exposes the precarious future of rural life in China and suggests a critical reappraisal of how we think about urbanization.Trade Review "This excellent book provides important insights into the complexities of Chinese urbanization. Through a thorough and grounded investigation of a peri-urban village, Nick R. Smith produces a lively and remarkably informative account of how the village has been transformed by both state-led planning and reactions from its inhabitants against these external forces. Highly recommended to anyone interested in China and urban studies."—Fulong Wu, author of Planning for Growth: Urban and Regional Planning in China "The End of the Village is a grounded and masterfully executed project on the ever-evolving relationship between two moving targets: the city and the village. It is a go-to text for all students concerned about the spatial question in the political economy of China’s transformation today."—You-tien Hsing, University of California, Berkeley "An essential authoritative text on urban-rural coordination and the contingencies of China’s urbanization processes. It should be read by scholars not only of urban planning, but also those interested in China’s party-state, development, and rural society."—China Quarterly "Overall, this book is very well written and has a nice narrative arc—starting from the perspectives of different stakeholders in Hailong, then moving to different key planning and development themes. Smith also skillfully articulates the contradictions generated from China’s coordinative planning and presents these contradictions through episodes of conflicts between various stakeholders, making the book highly readable. "—Journal of Urban Affairs "Overall, this book presents a detailed and comprehensive case study of local actions in the rural development crisis and urban-rural coordination program in China. "—H-Net Reviews "This is an exceptional book that provides compelling insights on the complex processes of urbanization in China."—Buildings & Landscapes "The book documents a living history of China’s urban transition and leaves the reader pondering the nation’s urban–rural relations and integration."—China Information "The book provides a vivid and meticulous account of the tension, fragmentation, conflict, and contingency surrounding the Chinese state."—Contemporary Sociology "This book is a delightful read and undoubtedly an essential contribution to Chinese Urban Studies. It is recommended to professionals as well as those wishing to gain a deeper understanding of multi-scalar negotiation processes accompanying urban planning and rural development in China."—European Journal of East Asian Studies "The lucid argumentation and enjoyable writing style make the book a valuable resource for undergraduate and graduate teaching in area studies, urban studies, and in interdisciplinary contexts."—Pacific Affairs "The book provides a comprehensive account of planning for the urbanisation of rural China from socio-economic, political, spatial and individual perspectives."—Urban Research & Practice "It is impossible to do justice to the depth of exploration and breadth of research that has gone into Smith’s highly engaging and thoughtfully penned exploration of rural China under rapid urbanisation."—Thesis Eleven Table of ContentsContentsIntroduction: China’s New Era of Urbanization 1. Urbanization by Other Means: Planning under Urban–Rural Coordination 2. Village Growth Machine: Charismatic Authority and the Urbanization of the Party 3. Living on the Edge: Residents’ Urban–Rural Strategies of Survival 4. Coordinative Planning: Property, Politics, and Uncertainty at the Urban–Rural Edge 5. Village-as-the-City: Land Commodification, Shareholding, and Self-Urbanization 6. The End of the Village: Experiences of Displacement Conclusion: Disjunctural Urbanization AcknowledgmentsNotesBibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisExplores how Soviet architects reimagined the built environment through the principles of the human sciences During the 1920s and 1930s, proponents of Soviet architecture looked to various principles within the human sciences in their efforts to formulate a methodological and theoretical basis for their modernist project. Architecture of Life delves into the foundations of this transdisciplinary and transnational endeavor, analyzing many facets of their radical approach and situating it within the context of other modernist movements that were developing concurrently across the globe. Examining the theories advanced by El Lissitzky, Moisei Ginzburg, and Nikolay Ladovsky, as well as those of their lesser-known colleagues, this illuminating study demonstrates how Soviet architects of the interwar period sought to mitigate Fordist production methods with other, ostensibly more human-oriented approaches that drew on the biological and psychological sciences. Envisioning the built environment as innately connected to social evolution, their methods incorporated aspects of psychoanalysis, personality theory, and studies in spatial perception, all of which were integrated into an ideology that grounded functional design firmly within the attributes of the individual. A comprehensive overview of the ideals that permeated its expanded project, Architecture of Life explicates the underlying impulses that motivated Soviet modernism, highlighting the deep interconnections among the ways in which it viewed all aspects of life, both natural and manufactured..Trade Review"Thanks to her attentive reading of early twentieth-century German and Russian theories, Alla Vronskaya has rewritten the history of the Soviet avant-garde. Revealing the deep roots El Lissitzky, Moisei Ginzburg, and others found in experimental psychology, in the theory of empathy, and in philosophical monism, she has masterfully recast a fundamental chapter in the making of modernity."—Jean-Louis Cohen, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University"In her Architecture of Life, Alla Vronskaya resolutely abandons usual political binaries and familiar historical dichotomies that have long straightjacketed the history of socialist modernism. Bringing together Moscow and Berlin, Bauhaus and Constructivism, form and function, individuality and collectivity, she offers a historically rich and conceptually invigorating study of one of the most original architectural experiments of the twentieth century."—Serguei A. Oushakine, Princeton UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction. Life: An Ideology for Modernity1. Space: Formalist Architectural Pedagogy at the VKhUTEMAS2. Orientation: El Lissitzky’s Evolutionist Urbanism3. Fitness: Nikolay Ladovsky’s Architectural Psychotechnics4. Process: Organicist Aesthetics of Soviet Standardization5. Energy: Soviet Wall-Painting and the Economy of Perception6. Personality: Public Park as a Factory of DealienationConclusion. History: From the Monistic to the TerrestrialAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisA critical look at the competing motivations behind one of modern architecture’s most widely known and misunderstood movements Although “mid-century modern” has evolved into a highly popular and ubiquitous architectural style, this term obscures the varied perspectives and approaches of its original practitioners. In Nothing Permanent, Todd Cronan displaces generalizations with a nuanced intellectual history of architectural innovation in California between 1920 and 1970, uncovering the conflicting intentions that would go on to reshape the future of American domestic life.Focusing on four primary figures—R. M. Schindler, Richard Neutra, and Charles and Ray Eames—Nothing Permanent demonstrates how this prolific era of modern architecture in California, rather than constituting a homogenous movement, was propelled by disparate approaches and aims. Exemplified by the twin pillars of Schindler and Neutra and their respective ideological factions, these two groups of architects represent opposing poles of architectural intentionality, embodying divergent views about the dynamic between interior and exterior, the idea of permanence, and the extent to which architects could exercise control over the inhabitants of their structures.Looking past California modernism’s surface-level idealization in present-day style guides, home decor publications, films, and television shows, Nothing Permanent details the intellectual, aesthetic, and practical debates that lie at the roots of this complex architectural moment. Extracting this period from its diffusion into visual culture, Cronan argues that mid-century architecture in California raised questions about the meaning of architecture and design that remain urgent today.Trade Review "Todd Cronan’s original and provocative text reminds me of the deathbed words of Louis Sullivan. When a young architect came to report the destruction of one of his buildings, Sullivan said, ‘If you live long enough, you’ll see all your buildings destroyed. After all, it is only the idea that really counts!’ Nothing Permanent is an excellent contribution to thinking about architecture."—Steven Holl, principal, Steven Holl Architects "Todd Cronan’s brilliant reinterpretation of the divergent strains of twentieth-century modern architecture in Southern California, which reveals that intentions remain while responses constantly change, is particularly relevant now as we contemplate a future in which not only the architecture but even the landscape of the region, with its earthquakes, floods, and fires, is not permanent."—Judith Sheine, author of R. M. Schindler

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe first detailed study of “Neo-Antique” architecture applies an archaeological lens to the study of New York City’s structures Since the city’s inception, New Yorkers have deliberately and purposefully engaged with ancient architecture to design and erect many of its most iconic buildings and monuments, including Grand Central Terminal and the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch in Brooklyn, as well as forgotten gems such as Snug Harbor on Staten Island and the Gould Memorial Library in the Bronx. Antiquity in Gotham interprets the various ways ancient architecture was re-conceived in New York City from the eighteenth century to the early twenty-first century. Contextualizing New York’s Neo-Antique architecture within larger American architectural trends, author Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis applies an archaeological lens to the study of the New York buildings that incorporated these various models in their design, bringing together these diverse sources of inspiration into a single continuum. Antiquity in Gotham explores how ancient architecture communicated the political ideals of the new republic through the adaptation of Greek and Roman architecture, how Egyptian temples conveyed the city’s new technological achievements, and how the ancient Near East served many artistic masters, decorating the interiors of glitzy Gilded Age restaurants and the tops of skyscrapers. Rather than classifying neo-classical (and Greek Revival), Egyptianizing, and architecture inspired by the ancient Near East into distinct categories, Macaulay-Lewis applies the Neo-Antique framework that considers the similarities and differences—intellectually, conceptually, and chronologically—among the reception of these different architectural traditions. This fundamentally interdisciplinary project draws upon all available evidence and archival materials—such as the letters and memos of architects and their patrons, and the commentary in contemporary newspapers and magazines—to provide a lively multi-dimensional analysis that examines not only the city’s ancient buildings and rooms themselves but also how New Yorkers envisaged them, lived in them, talked about them, and reacted to them. Antiquity offered New Yorkers architecture with flexible aesthetic, functional, cultural, and intellectual resonances—whether it be the democratic ideals of Periclean Athens, the technological might of Pharaonic Egypt, or the majesty of Imperial Rome. The result of these dialogues with ancient architectural forms was the creation of innovative architecture that has defined New York City’s skyline throughout its history.Table of ContentsList of Figures | vii Introduction: From the Appian Way to Broadway | 1 Why Antiquity?, 2 • Methodologies, Evidence, and Themes: Archaeology, Reception Studies, and the Neo-Antique, 3 • Organization of the Chapters, 8 1. Herculean Efforts: New York City’s Infrastructure | 13 The Grid, 14 • Rivaling Rome and the Sphinx: The Croton Aqueduct and Murray Hill Distributing Reservoir, 15 • Bridging the East River in Style: The Manhattan Bridge, 18 • Train Stations: Appropriating the Colonnades and Baths of Imperial Rome, 24 • Conclusions, 34 2. The Genius of Architecture: Ancient Muses and Modern Forms | 35 The Parthenon on Wall Street: The US Custom House, 37 • Brooklyn Borough Hall, the Manhattan Municipal Building, and Foley Square, 43 • The Tombs, 51 • Conclusions, 55 3. Treasuries of Old and Treasuries of New | 57 Banks, 58 • Warehouses and Commercial Lofts, 63 • The First and Second Merchants’ Exchanges, 68 • The New York Stock Exchange, 71 • Skyscrapers, 74 • Modernism and Its Debt to Classical Architecture: The Seagram Building, 82 • Conclusions, 82 4. Modern Museions | 85 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 87 • The Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, 90 • Temples to Monkeys, Birds, and Lions: The Architecture of the New York Zoological Society, 94 • The New York State Memorial to Theodore Roosevelt at the American Museum of Natural History, 96 • Pantheons and a Stadium: The Architecture of New York’s Universities, 100 • Public Libraries, 108 • Conclusions, 109 5. Togas at Home | 111 Domestic Architecture and the Greek Revival Style in New York City, 112 • The Tredwell Home, 114 • Residences in New York City after the Civil War, 115 • Pompeian Rooms in New York City, 116 • The Mansion and Greco-Pompeian Music Room of Henry G. Marquand, 119 • Aspirational Antiquity: Décor and Design for the Middle Classes, 128 • Apartment Buildings: Classical Forms in the Sky, 129 • Conclusions, 131 6. Dining Like Nero | 133 The Development of the Lobster Palaces, 133 • Murray’s Roman Gardens, 136 • The Café de l’Opéra, 150 • Conclusions, 154 7. To Be Buried Like a Pharaoh | 155 New York’s Cemeteries before 1838, 156 • Green-Wood and Woodlawn, 159 • Classical Temples to New York’s Emperors and Gods, 161 • Obelisks, Pyramids, Temples, and a Barque Kiosk, 165 • Conclusions, 172 8. Heroic New Yorkers | 174 Arches to Washington, 177 • The Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch, Grand Army Plaza, 183 • The Column to Columbus, 192 • Monuments in Early Twentieth-Century New York, 196 • Conclusions, 198 9. Eclectic Antiquity | 200 Snug Harbor and Grecian Temple Churches, 200 • Bathing Culture in New York City, 204 • Fraternal Organizations: The Grand Masonic Lodge and the Pythian Temple, 209 • Theaters, 211 • Conclusions, 212 Reflections: Useable Pasts and Neo-Antique Futures | 213 Glossary | 219 Acknowledgments | 223 Notes | 227 References | 253 Index | 273

Read more less

Book SynopsisPhotographer Barbara Mensch’s rediscovered photo archives and interview tapes capture symbolic transformations of Lower Manhattan. Many of these images are published here for the first time. The photographs evoke the passage of time by dividing the images into three parts: the 1980s, the 1990s, and the new millennium (2000 and beyond). The photographer shares with the viewer: “I would shoot ruins of buildings, the demolition of famous waterfront saloons, ancient alleyways, and, in some cases, nineteenth-century buildings destroyed by mysterious fires. There were images of floods and other calamities/catastrophes in Lower Manhattan, culminating with 9/11. These photos captured what had been, what no longer exists. They served as my visual timeline. What did the passage of the many decades reveal to me? What dynamics were in my images of the same streets I repeatedly walked for years?” The author’s images from the Fulton Fish Market in the 1980s document the generations of immigrants and their children pursuing a gritty American Dream next to the Brooklyn Bridge. Photos from the 1990s present images of floods and fires that paralyzed the area, juxtaposed with continued bulldozing to clear the way for luxury housing. Politics reshaped Manhattan’s skyline by encouraging new commercial shopping, food, and restaurant destinations. This restructuring marked the beginning of the end of downtown’s blue-collar origins and white-collar replacements, challenging us to ask, “What was lost?” The seminal event of the 2000s, September 11, 2001, reinforced downtown’s rebirth as the global economic engine with no room for the past. Also included in this section is an interview with an insider privy to the Mafia leadership of the Fulton Fish Market during Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s opportunistic crusade against them in the 1980s. Dan Barry, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, offers a poetic and insightful tribute to the artist and photographer. “Definitions: ‘falling off’ suggests a decline in quality or quantity, ‘falling off’ suggests the passage of time or changes over time, ‘falling off’ suggests a detachment, an alternative path to a questionable destination, ‘falling off’ suggests a separation, ‘falling off’ suggests something that comes to pass.”Table of Contentsvii | Foreword by Dan Barry 1 | Introduction 5 | Part 1: The 1980s: Making a Living on the Waterfront 49 | Part 2: The 1990s: Setting the Stage for a Real Estate Boom 71 | Part 3: The New Millennium: Managing Change 100 | Talking about the Old Days 115 | Acknowledgments

Read more less

Book SynopsisAlthough vernacular architecture scholarship has expanded beyond its core fascination with common buildings and places, its attention remains fixed on the social function of building. Consistent with this expansion of interests, Constructing Image, Identity, and Place includes essays on a wide variety of American building types and landscapes drawn from a broad geographic and chronological spectrum. Subjects range from examinations of the houses, hotels and churches of America’s colonial and Republican elite to analyses of the humble cottages of Southern sharecroppers and mill workers, Mississippi juke joints, and the ephemeral rustic arbors and bowers erected by Civil War soldiers. Other contributors examine or reexamine the form of early synagogues in Georgia, colonial construction technologies in the Chesapeake, the appropriation and use of storefront windows by San Francisco suffragists, and the evolution of the modern factory tour. Other decidedly twentieth-century topics include the impact of the automobile on American building forms and landscapes, including parkways, drive-in movie theaters, and shopping malls. Drawn from the Vernacular Architecture Forum conferences of 1998 and 1999, these seventeen essays represent the broad range of topics and methodologies current in the field today. The volume will introduce newcomers to the breadth and depth of vernacular architecture while also bringing established scholars up to date on the field’s continued growth and maturation.The Editors: Alison K. Hoagland is associate professor of history and historic preservation at Michigan Technological University. Kenneth A. Breisch is director of Programs in Historic Preservation at the University of Southern California. He is author of Henry Hobson Richardson and the Small Public Library in America.The Contributors: Shannon Bell, Robert W. Blythe, Timothy Davis, Stephanie Dyer, Willie Graham, Kathleen LaFrank, William Littmann, Carl Lounsbury, Al Luckenbach, Sherri M. Marsh, Maurie McInnis, Steven H. Moffson, Jason D. Moser, Jennifer Nardone, Martin C. Perdue, Mark Reinberger, Andrew K. Sandoval-Strausz, Jessica Sewell, Donna Ware, and Camille Wells.

Read more less

Book SynopsisA book about contemporary urban design, a metaphysical worldview and a cultural process that transcends the pre-colonial/colonial/post-colonial divides. Sufi City: Urban Design and Archetypes in Touba is a geographical study of the modern Muslim holy city of Touba in Senegal, capital of the Mouride Sufi order. Touba was founded in 1887 by a Sufi shaykh in a moment of mysticillumination. Since the death of the founder in 1927, the Mouride order has designed and built the entire city. Touba is named for Tûbâ, the "Tree of Paradise" of Islamic tradition. This archetypal tree articulates Islamic conceptions of righteous life on earth, divine judgment, and access to the Hereafter; the city of Touba actualizes this spiritual construct. Important aspects of its configuration, such as the vertical and horizontal alignment of its monumental central shrine complex, its radiating avenues and encircling ring roads, and the actual trees that mark its landscape relate directly to the archetypal tree of Sufi theosophy. The relationship between the spiritualarchetype and its earthly actualization as a city is explained by recourse to Sufi methodology. The book employs a semiotic analysis of urban form, cartography, hermeneutics, field investigation and analysis of satellite imagery in order to relate contemporary urban design issues to overarching metaphysical concepts. Sufi City also explores the history of urban networks in Senegal since the emergence of autonomous Muslim towns in the seventeenth century. Finally, the layout of Senegal's modern Sufi cities is related to the monumental palaver trees that marked that country's historic settlements. Eric S. Ross is a cultural and urban geographer who holds a degree inIslamic Studies. Since 1998 he has been Assistant Professor of Geography at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco. Apart from research on Sufi orders and Muslim towns in Senegal, he has studied cultural tourism and urban planning in Morocco.Trade ReviewOne has to look hard to find fault with this work. It crosses numerous disciplinary boundaries, encompassing aspects of urban history, African and Islamic Studies and cultural geography in a manner that should appeal to all those with an interest in any or all those fields. -- Stephen J. Salm * URBAN HISTORY JOURNAL *[Ross's] insights have carried the study of African Islamic urban history and morphology to a new level of understanding, one which goes far beyond those that have dominated Africanist literature to date. This study is a must for anyone interested not only in the morphology of the Islamic city, but in the African fabric of settlement design-at-large. --Labelle Prussin, architect; author of Hatumere: Islamic Design in West Africa * . *Touba may be unique in the world of Islam, as a 20th-century urban complex of wholly Sufi design and social purpose. With signal clarity, intellectual fervor, and exceptional sensitivity, Eric Ross introduces readers to the mystical depth and vibrancy of Touba, the second largest city of Senegal. Sufi City deserves broad attention, for its many contributions disprove any sense that sub-Saharan African achievements are peripheral to Islam or Islamic Studies. --Allen F. Roberts, Professor of World Arts and Cultures and Director of African studies at the University of California, Los Angeles; and co-author of A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal * . *A new and fresh look at African cities that bridges the all too frequent gap between African and Islamic studies, Sufi City will be of great use for researchers, professors, and students in urban studies, African studies, and Islamic studies. --John Shoup, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Al Akhawayn University, Morocco * . *Table of ContentsArchetypes: Sufi Phenomenology and the Semiosis of Landscape Urban Design: The Spatial Configuration of a Spiritual Project Marabout Republics Then and Now: Autonomous Muslim Towns in Senegal The Pénc: Trees and Urban Design in West Africa

Read more less

Book SynopsisFrom the first millennium B.C. until the arrival of Europeans in the 16th century, artists from across the ancient Americas created small-scale architectural effigies to be placed in the tombs of important individuals. These works in stone, ceramic, wood, and metal range from highly abstracted, minimalist representations of temples and houses to elaborate complexes populated with figures, conveying a rich sense of ancient ritual and daily life. Although described as models, these effigies were created not so much as reflections or prototypes of existing structures, but rather as critical, conceptual components of funerary practice and beliefs about an afterlife. Design for Eternity is the first publication in English to explore these architectural works, providing new insights into ancient American design and how it reflected the practices of daily life. The vivid illustrations and texts focus on architectural representation, as well as the role these intriguing sculptures played in mediating relationships among the living, the dead, and the divine. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University PressExhibition Schedule:The Metropolitan Museum of Art (10/26/15–09/18/16)

Read more less

Book SynopsisWith Selling the Dwelling: The Books That Built America's Houses, Richard W. Cheek has assembled more than 200 rare books, periodicals, drawings, and printed ephemera documenting the history of the American dream of home ownership. Beginning in 1775, with George Bell’s reproduction of Abraham Swan’s The British Architect, the catalogue, which supported the eponymous Grolier Club exhibition, proceeds chronologically, covering such developments as the post-Civil War explosion of architectural book publishing, the growing importance of magazines like House Beautiful in the 1880s, the precut homes produced by Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward, the post-World War II home-building boom, the rapid changes to the literature of house building after 1970, and the significance of the Internet, which offered CD-ROMS in place of printed catalogues. Throughout, Cheek highlights the more visually arresting and socially compelling examples of this genre, focusing on books that reveal the character of our country as much as they do the style of our houses.Table of ContentsCollector's Perspective and Acknowledgements Introduction The First American Architectural Books: Builders Guides in the New Republic Honoring the Democratic Ideal: The Heyday of the Greek Revival Popular Taste Making: Pattern Books and Gothic Fantasies Optimism and Mid-Century: Every Man Can Build His House Big Firms, Big Sales: Marketing House Plans to the Nation Passion for the Past: The Colonial Revival Begins Mansions for Millionaires: Beaux Arts Country Houses, 1890-1930 Smaller Homes for the Millions: Plans by Mail or Houses by Rail Bungalows: Artful Houses for the Common Man The Homes We Fought For: Modern or Traditional? More Developments, Fewer Designs: The Demise of the House Plan Book Illustration Sources, Additional Resources, and Bibliography

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis title provides an extensive and comprehensive examination of the history and use of modern house paints. The versatility of modern commercial house paints has ensured their use in a broad range of applications, including the protection and decoration of historic buildings, the coating of toys and furniture, and the creation of works of art. While the ubiquity of commercial paints means that conservators are increasingly called upon to preserve them, such paints pose unique challenges including establishing exactly which materials are present. This book traces the history of the household paint industry in the USA and UK over the first half of the 20th century and will be of interest to conservators and conservation scientists working on a broad range of painted surfaces, as well as curators, art historians, and historians of architectural paint.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn this remarkable and gorgeously illustrated book, Neil Jackson presents a vibrant profile of the Los Angeles architect Pierre Koenig, who Time magazine said lived long enough to become "cool twice." From the influences of Koenig's youth in San Francisco and his military service during World War II to the Case Study Houses and his later award-laden years, Jackson's study plots the evolution of Koenig's oeuvre against the backdrop of Los Angeles-a city that both shaped and was shaped by his architecture. The book is anchored by Jackson's exciting discoveries in Koenig's archive at the Getty Research Institute. Drawings, photographs, diaries, letters, lecture notes, building contracts, and university projects-many of which are published for the first time-provide an expanded understanding of Koenig and additional context for his architectural achievements. An examination of Koenig's Case Study Houses shows how his often single-minded and pragmatic approach to domestic architecture recognised the advantages of production housing and presciently embraced sustainable, ecologically responsible design. A new account of the Chemehuevi housing project in Havasu Lake, California, demonstrates the special role that learning and teaching played in the development of his architecture. Over his fifty-year career, Koenig not only designed iconic houses but also directed their restoration and curated their legacy, ensuring that his work could be seen and appreciated by present and future admirers of midcentury Los Angeles.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Intro: A View from the Archive Chapter 1. Beginnings Chapter 2. Education Chapter 3. Glendale Chapter 4. Santa Monica and San Vicente Chapter 5. Case Study Houses Chapter 6. Steel Pavilions Chapter 7. Hillside Houses Chapter 8. Timber Houses Chapter 9. Mid-Career Steel Houses Chapter 10. Production Houses Chapter 11. 'I'm your architect' Chapter 12. Restoration Chapter 13. Revival Chapter 14. Payback Time Chapter 15. Cool Twice Appendix: List of Works

Read more less

Book SynopsisArthur Drexler (1921-1987) served as the curator and director of the Architecture and Design Department at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) from 1951 until 1986-the longest curatorship in the museum's history. Over four decades he conceived and oversaw trailblazing exhibitions that not only reflected but also anticipated major stylistic developments. Although several books cover the roles of MoMA's founding director, Alfred Barr, and the department's first curator, Philip Johnson, this is the only in-depth study of Drexler, who gave the department its overall shape and direction. During Drexler's tenure, MoMA played a pivotal role in examining the work and confirming the reputations of twentieth-century architects, among them Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Richard Neutra, Marcel Breuer, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Exploring unexpected subjects-from the design of automobiles and industrial objects to a reconstruction of a Japanese house and garden-Drexler's boundary-pushing shows promoted new ideas about architecture and design as modern arts in contemporary society. The department's public and educational programs projected a culture of popular accessibility, offsetting MoMA's reputation as an elitist institution. Drawing on rigorous archival research as well as author Thomas S. Hines's firsthand experience working with Drexler, Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art analyses how MoMA became a touchstone for the practice and study of midcentury architecture.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Preface 1 Prologue: MoMA's Department of Architecture and Design, 1932-1951 2 The Rise of Arthur Drexler, 1925-1951 3 Apprenticeship: Drexler as Curator, 1951-1956 4 Modernism at High Tide: Drexler as Department Director, 1956-1966 5 Creative Destruction: Drexler, MoMA, and the Changing Course of Modern Architecture, 1966-1975 6 Modernism under Siege: Drexler, MoMA, and the Postmodernist Challenge, 1975-1985 7 Modernism Reconsidered: Drexler and MoMA, 1980-1986 Notes Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisFrom the late 1930s to the early 1970s, two brothers, Burton G. Tremaine and Warren D. Tremaine, and their respective wives, Emily Hall Tremaine and Katharine Williams Tremaine, commissioned approximately thirty architecture and design projects. Richard Neutra and Oscar Niemeyer designed the best-known Tremaine houses; Philip Johnson and Frank Lloyd Wright also created designs and buildings for the family that achieved iconic status in the modern movement. Focusing on the Tremaines’ houses and other projects, such as a visitor center at a meteor crater in Arizona, this volume explores the Tremaines’ architectural patronage in terms of the family’s motivations and values, exposing patterns in what may appear as an eclectic collection of modern architecture. Architectural historian Volker M. Welter argues that the Tremaines’ patronage was not driven by any single factor; rather, it stemmed from a network of motives comprising the clients’ practical requirements, their private and public lives, and their ideas about architecture and art.

Read more less

Book Synopsis"Landscape emerged as a significant theme in the Roman Late Republican and Early Imperial periods. Writers described landscape in texts and treatises, its qualities were praised and sought out in everyday life, and contemporary perceptions of the natural and built environment, as well as ideas about nature and art, were intertwined with architectural and decorative trends. This generously illustrated volume examines how representations of real and depicted landscapes, and the merging of both in visual space, contributed to the creation of novel languages of art and architecture. Drawing on a diverse body of archaeological, art historical, and literary evidence, this study applies a groundbreaking ecocritical lens that moves beyond the limits of traditional iconography. Chapters consider, for example, how garden designs and paintings appropriated the cultures and ecosystems brought under Roman control and the ways miniature landscape paintings chronicled the transformation of the Italian shoreline with colonnaded villas, pointing to the changing relationship of humans with nature. Making a timely and original contribution to current discourses on ecology and art and architectural history, Shaping Roman Landscape reveals how Roman ideas of landscape, and the decorative strategies at imperial domus> and villa complexes that gave these ideas shape, were richly embedded with meanings of nature, culture, and labor. " "A fresh and original perspective on Roman landscape painting and architecture, this book integrates these artistic forms into an ecocritical approach examining Roman attitudes toward landscape and nature more broadly. It confirms my belief that art and material culture truly come alive as essential sources for understanding the ancient world when studied within the complete tapestry of ancient life experience and thought. The book's exquisite presentation, complemented by a wealth of stunning images, adds an extra layer of enjoyment to the reading experience."-Barbara E. Borg, Professor of Classical Archeology, Scuola Normale Superiore "Combining a deep understanding of ancient architecture and visual culture with ecocritical approaches to environmental design, Shaping Roman Landscape offers a fresh and timely account of the relationship between landscape, representation, and empire in Roman Italy. Through astute and beautifully illustrated analysis, Mantha Zarmakoupi carefully navigates shifting tensions between the Roman elite's sensitivity to nature and climate, on one hand, and their urge to master and aestheticize both space and people and flora and fauna, on the other."-Verity Platt, Professor of Classics and History of Art, Cornell University “This is a bold and meticulously researched attempt to understand how the ancient Romans thought about landscape. It encompasses a wide range of evidence—all beautifully illustrated: from architectural plans of urban parks or country villas to framed panel paintings of rural sanctuaries or palatial residences. And it offers a novel and persuasive picture of the interrelationship of nature and the built environment—‘a way of seeing’—that is distinctively Roman.” —Chris Hallett, U.C. Berkeley, History of Art

Read more less

Book SynopsisA well-illustrated, holistic overview of how American domestic spaces have changed over four hundred years, Experiencing American Houses encourages readers to think creatively about houses in terms of their function as opposed to their appearance. This captivating volume helps the reader step into the lived experience of the evolving American house: understanding, for example, why a nineteenth-century dining room might include a bed or why the kitchen as we know it did not evolve until the turn of the twentieth century. By carrying her study from the colonial period to the present, Elizabeth Collins Cromley makes the domestic spaces of the past feel like vital precursors to today's experience.Beginning with cooking spaces, Cromley examines how multi-use areas consolidated into dedicated rooms for cooking, from fires on an earthen floor to sleek modern spaces with twenty first-century appliances. Next, the author looks at ways social class, income, and local custom framed which kinds of spaces became suitable for socializing and entertaining, and what they should be called: sitting room, drawing room, hall, living room, family room, or parlor. Distinct from cooking spaces, Cromley discusses eating spaces, which morphed from multi-use areas to separate dining rooms and back again. The author covers spaces for sleeping, health, and privacy, as well as circulation—the ways that we move through a house—analyzing the functions of such little-studied features as hallways, back doors, and staircases. Finally, Cromley takes on the evolution of storage, which began mainly because of the need to store and preserve food. Clothing closets grew from oddly shaped afterthoughts to generous walk-ins, while increases in material wealth led to the need for storage outbuildings.This accessible volume, informed by up-to-date scholarship in vernacular architecture and disciplines far beyond it, provides students and readers necessary context to understand the development of the historic and contemporary houses they encounter.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Unitarian religious tradition was a product of the same eighteenth-century democratic ideals that fueled the American Revolution and informed the founding of the United States. Its liberal humanistic principles influenced institutions such as Harvard University and philosophical movements like Transcendentalism. Yet, its role in the history of American architecture is little known and studied.In American Unitarian Churches, Ann Marie Borys argues that the progressive values and identity of the Unitarian religion are intimately intertwined with ideals of American democracy and visibly expressed in the architecture of its churches. Over time, church architecture has continued to evolve in response to developments within the faith, and many contemporary projects are built to serve religious, practical, and civic functions simultaneously. Focusing primarily on churches of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple and Louis Kahn's First Unitarian Church, Borys explores building histories, biographies of leaders, and broader sociohistorical contexts. As this essential study makes clear, to examine Unitarianism through its churches is to see American architecture anew, and to find an authentic architectural expression of American democratic identity.

Read more less

Book SynopsisPrecision is necessary in the field of architecture, and new technologies have increased demands for accuracy, particularly when the smallest errors can have outsized consequences. However, the importance of precision, or exactitude, has not received the consideration it merits. While themes of sustainability, performance, and formal innovation have been at the forefront of architectural scholarship for the past twenty years, this book moves beyond these concerns to explore the theoretical and practical demands exactitude makes on architecture as a field.The eleven essays collected here investigate the possibilities and shortcomings of exactitude and delve into current debates about the state of contemporary architecture as both a technological craft and artistic creation. Featuring new work by leading theorists, historians, editors, architects, and scholars, this volume brings theory and practice into insightful and productive conversations. In addition to the editors, contributors include Mark Wigley, Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Eric Höweler, Christopher Benfey, Sunil Bald, Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano with Thomas de Monchaux, Alicia Imperiale, Francesca Hughes, Teresa Stoppani, and Cynthia Davidson.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisDressing rooms, introduced into English domestic architecture during the seventeenth century, provided elite women with unprecedented private space at home and in so doing, promised them equally unprecedented autonomy by providing a space for self-fashioning, eroticism, and contemplation. Tita Chico’s Designing Women argues that the dressing room becomes a powerful metaphor in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature. While satirists—such as Dryden, François Bruys, Gay, Wortley Montagu, John Breval, Elizabeth Thomas, Pope, and Swift—attack the lady’s dressing room as a site of individual and social degradation, domestic novelists—including Richardson, Lennox, Burney, Goldsmith, Austen, and Edgeworth—celebrate it as a space for moral, social, and personal amelioration. As a symbol of both progressive and retrograde versions of femininity, the dressing room trope in eighteenth-century literature redefines the gendered constitution of private spaces, and offers a corrective to our literary history of generic influence and development between satire and the novel.Trade Review“In this eloquent and sophisticated book, Tita Chico elucidates the multiple and changing significations of the dressing room in eighteenth-century satirical writing and the domestic novel. In doing so, Chico draws on, and rewardingly complicates, a rich and influential body of work on gender and satire, as well as recent scholarship on space, domestic architecture and eighteenth-century literature." * Eighteenth-Century Book Reviews Online *“[A] lively and sophisticated account of one of the most visible and provocative places in eighteenth century English culture, the lady’s dressing room. More than simply an exposition of the dressing room’s broad significance in a single historical moment, Tita Chico’s study shows how the meaning and functions of the dressing room change through history.” * Eighteenth-Century Fiction *“In showing us the dense, complicated, and flexible trope of the dressing room, Chico has demonstrated that representations of women through space invests their bodies—and their selves—with a number of potential associations. In real houses the dressing room was a flexible space which allowed for both women’s autonomy and containment. In literature too, the dressing room is a place where women have been objectified, but also where women have been given the independence to become authentically themselves.” * Eighteenth-Century Studies *“Her study is articulate, well-grounded, and thoughtfully argued.” * ECCB *Table of ContentsPreface The Dressing Room Unlock’d Acknowledgments Part I: Metaphor, Theory, and History Chapter 1 Women’s Private Parts: The Politics and Aesthetics of the Dressing Room Chapter 2 ‘‘The Art of Knowing Women’’: A History of the Dressing Room Part II: Satire, Art, and Epistemology Chapter 3 ‘‘A painted woman is a dang’rous thing’’: Dressing Rooms and the Satiric Mode Chapter 4 The Arts of Beauty: Women’s Cosmetics and Pope’s Ekphrasis Chapter 5 The Epistemology of the Dressing Room: Experimentation and Swift Part III: Domestic Novels, Education, and Motherhood Chapter 6 Richardson’s Closet Novels: Virtue, Education, and the Genres of Privacy Chapter 7 From Maiden to Mother: Dressing Rooms and the Domestic Novel Coda Vanity Knows No Limits in a Woman’s Dressing Room’’ Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisHow the Anglican church responded to population growth and the need for more accommodation, with the building of 1500 new churches, many of the finest quality. This book is the first comprehensive study of late-Georgian church-building. After centuries of post-Reformation inactivity, the Church of England began to address the desperate shortage of accommodation and build on a huge scale. Almost all the leading architects were involved and, amongst approximately 1500 new churches there are some outstanding designs; buildings of the very highest order architecturally. In this pioneering study, the churches are considered free from the Ecclesiological zeal that condemned them and has, for so long, prevented their serious study. It will celebrate the best of them and provide valuable insights into the design and planning of the whole corpus. There will be many revelations. Included is a thorough examination of the stylistic alternatives and contemporary liturgical imperatives, along with their architectural implications. And the book explores a lost world of late-Georgian churchgoing: what people expected and experienced in a church service. Also considered are some of the period's remarkable material and constructional innovations, ones often exploited in church-building, along with the provision of architectural services in the era that preceded full professionalisation.Trade ReviewThis is a rich, readable book, from which all who are interested in both church and chapel architecture will profit. It is to be recommended highly. -- Ted Royle * The Chapels Society *Anyone with an interest in church architecture will find much that is unfamiliar and fascinating here, presented in readable prose and shown in excellent illustrations. -- Peter Howell * Art Newspaper *Let me state at the outset that this is a fine piece of book-making in every way. Beautifully and comprehensively illustrated, well designed and printed on good paper, with a text that is both scholarly and readable, it is also a much-needed volume, dealing with a neglected and under-valued period in the history of English church-building. -- James Stevens Curl * New English Review *The book is beautifully produced, and written in an accessible style. Its nationwide coverage and well-informed commentary entitle it to be considered as the definitive work on the subject. -- Graham Parry * Ecclesiology Today *Filled with wonderful illustrations, a comprehensive bibliography and full-bodied index, this beautifully presented volume is, by its own admission, 'the first comprehensive study of late-Georgian church-building'. -- Paul Holden * Journal of Historic Buildings & Places *Through a multitude of examples and a profusion of stunning photographs, Webster successfully shows the real originality and interest of many of these projects. His text will open a whole new world to readers - one in which circular churches, octagonal churches, and churches supported by iron columns all seemed highly desirable. -- Revd Dr William Whyte * Church Times *Table of Contents1) Introduction 2) The Church in Danger 3) Ecclesiastical Architecture and the Question of Style 4) Church Designers and their World 5) Constructional and Decorative Innovation in Church-building 6) Designing for Worship: the practical issues 7) Planning Liturgical Spaces 8) Late-Georgian Worship 9) Seating the Congregation 10) Late Eighteenth Century Church-building: the final triumph of Classicism 11) Church-building 1800-1820 12) The Gothic Revival in West Yorkshire and Liverpool 1800-1820 13) Design Debates and Solutions, c1820: the Commissioners, the ICBS and publications 14) Church-building in the 1820s 15) Church-building in London c1790-1830: from Classical to Gothic 16) Church-building in South-East Lancashire c1790-1830: the role of the clergy 17) Church-building in the 1830s 18) A Brave New World? 19) Conclusions 20) Select bibliography 21) Select gazetteer 22) Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisVictorian churches were often of high quality, reflecting in physical terms the intense theological debates of the time. This highly-illustrated book by a leading authority describes many of the finest examples. Many churches were built in England during the reign of Queen Victoria: most were in various varieties of Gothic Revival. Often exquisitely furnished, they were visible expressions of the presence and importance of religion at the time. Their architectural qualities reflected aspirations of clergy, laity, and individual benefactors. The finest were the results of passionate commitment to an architecture soundly based on scholarly studies known as Ecclesiology. James Stevens Curl places English churches of the period in their complex social and denominational settings, giving comprehensive accounts of the religious atmosphere and controversies of the times. He charts the progress and development of the Gothic Revival, explains differences in the architecture of various denominations, outlines the influences of the chief protagonists involved, and describes the demands made on craftsmen and industry to produce the materials, furnishings, and fittings necessary in making some of the finest buildings ever created in England. He reveals something of the individuals and events that shaped the religious climate of the epoch, while specially commissioned illustrations reveal the rich variety found in Victorian churches.Trade ReviewBeautifully illustrated study that makes a valuable contribution to the recognition of Catholic churches. -- Elena Curti * THE TABLET *[The book] can be read as a work of scholarship; one that spans two distinct but related disciplines, namely Victorian church architecture and nineteenth-century ecclesiology. As an authoritative survey and critique of the finest examples of nineteenth-century English church building, it would be difficult to better. -- Graham Cunningham * Journal of Victorian Culture *A very full and eloquent guide ... The architectural theories are clearly set in the developing ideas-aesthetic and ecclesiastical-of the time. -- Selby Whittingham * THE JACKDAW *Illustrated with large numbers of excellent colour images, it sets churches of the period in historical context and crosses the denominational divides that so often obscure an overall understanding of what was going on. It is a timely reminder of the extraordinary riches of English church buildings. -- John Goodall * COUNTRY LIFE *We should be grateful that Professor Curl and John Hudson Publishing have produced such an attractive book between them. -- Michael Hodges * Catholic Herald *Curl has produced the best study to date of Victorian church architecture and has been well served by his publisher: the book is a model of clear and elegant design, well served by a high standard of production. -- Kenneth Powell * New Directions *Curl is as expert in dealing with the doctrinal traditions...... Curl's knowledge is breath-taking.... Curl has strong views and doesn't pull punches.... -- Bernard Richards * Oxford Magazine *This is an enriching read, replete with a full glossary (including pocket essays on "Gothic" and "Gothic Revival") and excellent illustrations. It's worth singling out the physical qualities of this book, too. In an age in which limp and drear print-on-demand books become ever more common, this carefully designed and well-made volume is a pleasure. -- Roger Bowdler * The Critic *the book is a magnificent sweep of the history of one of the great ages of church-building -- Jeremy Musson * ECCLESIOLOGY TODAY *Table of ContentsPreface and acknowledgements Foreword - Rev Barry A Orford 1 - An Introduction to Denominations and Victorian Churches 2 - Architecture, Antiquarianism, and Styles 3 - The Religious Atmosphere in the 1830s and 1840s 4 - Recusants, Goths, Converts, Ultramontanes, and Controversies 5 - The Anglican Revival 6 - The Search for an Ideal 7 - Church Architecture of the 1850s, 1860s, and early 1870s 8 - The Late-Victorian Anglican Church in Several Manifestations 9 - Non-Anglican Buildings for Religious Observance 10 - Epilogue Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisFalling Monuments, Reluctant Ruins: The Persistence of the Past in the Architecture of Apartheid interrogates how, in the era of decolonisation, post-apartheid South Africa reckons with its past in order to shape its future. Architects, historians, artists, social anthropologists and urban planners seek answers in this book to complex and unsettling questions around heritage, ruins and remembrance. What do we do with hollow memorials and political architectural remnants? Which should remain, which forgotten, and which dismantled? Are these vacant buildings, cemeteries, statues, and derelict grounds able to serve as inspiration in the fight against enduring racism and social neglect? Should they become exemplary as spaces for restitution and justice? The contributors examine the influence of public memory, planning and activism on such anguished places of oppression, resistance and defiance. Their focus on visible markers in the landscape to interrogate our past will make readers reconsider these spaces, looking at their landscape and history anew. Through a series of 14 empirically grounded chapters and 48 images, the contributors seek to understand how architecture contests or subverts these persistent conditions in order to promote social justice, land reclamation and urban rehabilitation. The decades following the dismantling of apartheid are surveyed in light of contemporary heritage projects, where building ruins and abandoned spaces are challenged and renegotiated across the country to become sites of protest, inspiration and anger.This ground-breaking collection is an important resource for professionals, academics and activists working in South Africa today.Table of Contents Acknowledgements List of Figures Foreword - Muchaparara Musemwa Introduction - Hilton Judin Part One: Lands Chapter 1 Land Dispossession and the Ghosts of the Medupi Power Station - Faeeza Ballim Chapter 2 A Community Journey: Return to Juliwe Cemetery in Roodepoort, Johannesburg - Eric Itzkin Chapter 3 Public Memory and Transformation at Constitution Hill and Gandhi Square in Johannesburg - Temba John Dawson Middelmann Chapter 4 Ejaradini: Notes Towards Modelling Black Gardens as a Response to the Coloniality of Museums - MADEYOULOOK Part Two: Buildings Chapter 5 Johannesburg Central Police Station and the Photograph as Evidence - Sally Gaule Chapter 6 The Persistence of Robben Island: Abolition and the Prison Museum - Kelly Gillespie Chapter 7 The Apartheid Pass Office in Johannesburg and a Heritage of Destruction - Hilton Judin Chapter 8 Indian Trading, Art Deco Buildings and Urban Modernity in a Segregated Town: Jubilee House in Krugersdorp - Arianna Lissoni and Roshan Dadoo Chapter 9 An Uncertain Heritage and Resistance: Transforming the Drill Hall in Johannesburg - Barbara Morovich and Pauline Guinard Part Three: Statues, as Monuments Chapter 10 Creating Spaces of Memorialisation: New Delville Wood (France) and SS Mendi (South Africa) - Yasmin Mayat and Brendan Hart Chapter 11 Re-historicising Credo Mutwa's Kwa Khaya Lendaba Cultural Village in Soweto - Ali Khangela Hlongwane and Tara Weber Chapter 12 Facing (Down) the Coloniser? The Mandela Statue at Cape Town's City Hall - Cynthia Kros Chapter 13 ‘Where's Our Monument?' Commemorating Indian Indentured Labour in South Africa -Goolam Vahed Chapter 14 Decolonisation, Monuments, and a New Architectural Language - Nnamdi Elleh Contributors Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisWhilst there are some studies of architecture in Scotland post-devolution, writings on design are largely non-existent. Designs on Democracy seeks to fill that gap and ranges over the debates concerning architecture, urbanism, design and the Creative and Cultural Industries and the policies, people and places that stimulate and animate them. The book also tells a story about Scotland's creatives -where they work and how their ideas and what they create and design contribute to Scotland's democratic culture and identity.

Read more less

Book SynopsisFirst printed edition of the building accounts of one of London's most remarkable edifices. Founded by Henry VII, the Savoy hospital was designed to execute corporal works of mercy and commemorate the king through prayer by housing one hundred poor men every night in palatial surroundings. The building complex, one of the landmarks of early Tudor London, was unique for English hospitals in its adoption of a cross-shaped ward, but its structural details have remained obscure. Published for the first time here, the building accounts record, edited here for the first time, provides detailed evidence of that structure, as well as of the hundreds of craftsmen and laborers who toiled to complete it. In addition to the accounts themselves, this volume contains a thorough contextual introduction, elucidatory notes, and a glossary of building terms. Charlotte A. Stanford is Associate Professor of Comparative Arts and Letters at Brigham Young University.Trade ReviewThese important accounts [...] throw much valuable light on the appearance of the hospital at its creation.... Of enormous value for historians of the late medieval and the early sixteenth century building trade, and those interested in building materials and economic activity in the London area. * ARCHIVES & RECORDS *An admirable piece of work [that] will be an invaluable source for economic historians. * THE RICARDIAN *Stanford's edition of the building accounts is a welcome addition to the Westminster Abbey Record Series. She has transcribed the complete account, and her introduction provides a variety of contexts for understanding the accounts. The index of last names also means that individual workers can be tracked, which would allow for further analysis of the work habits of skilled and unskilled laborers. * THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW *Table of ContentsIntroduction Workers' Wages from 27 September 1512 through 21 July 1515 Materials and Piecework from 22 August 1513 through 29 April 1520 Glossary Bibliography

Read more less

Book SynopsisFirst full-length survey of Reading Abbey, one of the most important ecclesiastical buildings of the Middle Ages. Reading Abbey was built by King Henry I to be a great architectural statement and his own mausoleum, as well as a place of resort and a staging point for royal itineraries for progresses in the west and south-west of England. Fromthe start it was envisaged as a monastic site with a high degree of independence from the church hierarchy; it was granted enormous holdings of land and major religious relics to attract visitors and pilgrims, and no expense wasspared in providing a church comparable in size and splendour with anything else in England. However, in architectural terms, the abbey has, until recently, remained enigmatic, mainly because of the efficiency with which itwas destroyed at the Reformation. Only recently has it become possible to bring together the scattered evidence - antiquarian drawings and historic records along with a new survey of the standing remains - into a coherent picture.This richly illustrated volume provides the first full account of the abbey, from foundation to dissolution, and offers a new virtual reconstruction of the church and its cloister; it also shows how the abbey formed the backdropto many key historical events. Ron Baxter is the Research Director of the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland.Trade ReviewBeautifully produced and generously illustrated. * HISTORY *A substantial achievement. As an account of Reading abbey's architecture and sculpture it will surely stand for many years. * OXONIENSIA *Offers a nuanced and considered approach to the topic and, hopefully, marks the beginning of greater interest in Reading and its abbey. * JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL MONASTIC CULTURE *A comprehensive and thoroughly readable account of the state of knowledge of this elusive medieval complex. * ECCLESIOLOGY TODAY *A triumph: a splendid, richly detailed account of the abbey, its importance, and its wider setting....Baxter's book is very timely in reminding us all of one of the forgotten glories of medieval England. * CHURCH MONUMENTS *Will undoubtedly serve as a new starting-point for work on Henry I's magnificent abbey. * ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW *[Ron] Baxter is...uniquely qualified to do this work, and in doing so, he invests the detritus with a sense not only of scholarly importance but also of its former glory. * LANDSCAPE HISTORY *An important book of reference for anybody interested in the history and archaeology of medieval Abbeys in England, and how they permeated Royal life and activity. * FRIENDS OF READING ABBEY *Table of ContentsIntroduction Foundation Pilgrimage and Relics Death and Burial at Reading Abbey The Abbey and the Court Dissolution and Dilapidation The Architecture of the Abbey Church The Architecture of the Cloister The Sculpture of the Cloister Bibliography

Read more less

Book SynopsisDemonstrates, through an investigation of material culture, the complexity of the relationship between rulers and ruled in early nineteenth-century British India. This book explores ambivalence in the domestic building activities of a group of East India Company officials in Delhi in the fifty years following British occupation in 1803. Arguing that houses, their location and their contentsdirectly or subliminally reveal the values and beliefs of the individuals who commissioned and lived in them, it uses houses to examine the changing ways the British manipulated power, both relating to and resisting the pre-existing spatial layout of the city. The re-use of palaces and of monumental religious structures as dwellings, as well as new houses that appeared formally classical but concealed adaptations to local ways of living, show that despitean apparent desire to maintain cultural separation, there was both complexity and contradiction in the interrelationship of the British authority and the failing Mughal polity. The book also shows how room sequencing and functiondemonstrate a lack of rigid distinction between the official and individual roles played by Company officials. Household objects have multiple meanings depending on their use and context. As the taste and choices made in these houses were primarily those of men, the book also contributes to our understanding of competing models of manhood in British India. SYLVIA SHORTO, an independent scholar, was Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture and Design at the American University of Beirut until the end of 2017. She writes on architecture as material culture in colonial contexts, crossing scales from urban environments to individual objects contained in domesticsettings.Table of ContentsKnowledge of Delhi: The Eighteenth Century Hybrid Accommodations: David Ochterlony, the First Residency and the Mubarak Bagh A lovely Wilderness: Charles Metcalfe and the Garden Houses at Shalimar Truly Fairy Palaces: Robert Smith in Delhi and in Europe The World Displayed: William Fraser and his House on the Hill A Tomb with ViewL Thomas Theophilus Metcalfe's Dilkusha Dreaming of Home Bibliography

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book draws on architectural and archaeological analysis to consider the form, function, use and meaning of late medieval lodging ranges. While we know a great deal about most elements of the late medieval great house, we understand very little about their lodging ranges, and even less on their contributions to the lived experience of the household and wider society. Why were lodging ranges built, for example, and how were they used? It is this gap in our knowledge which the present book aims to fill. It draws on archaeological and architectural analysis of lodging ranges to show that they were some of the finest living spaces within the great house, built as accommodation for high-ranking members of the household. Their low-, even single-, occupancy rooms, accessible via individual doors, were innovatory, showing how the idea of privacy developed. The explicit displays of uniformity upon the lodging ranges' symmetrical facades were juxtaposed with variations within. Surviving lodging ranges (including Wingfield Manor, Middleham Castle and Dartington Hall) are examined, alongside the lost example of Caister Castle, demonstrating how lodging ranges simultaneously reflected and shaped medieval life; the author argues that their very form and stones, and their manipulation of space, enabled them to have multi-faceted functions, including the representation of multiple and even conflicting identities.Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface and Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction: What are Lodging Ranges? 1. A Room of One's Own 2. Expressions of Individuality and Collectivity 3. The Theatre of Display 4. The Spaces Between Envoi: Narratives in Stone and Space Glossary Gazetteer A Gazetteer B Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisHigh Tech - sometimes known as Structural Expressionism - is a style of Modern architecture that produced some of the most prominent and visually exciting buildings of the twentieth century: the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation headquarters in Hong Kong, the Lloyd's of London headquarters in London, UK, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France. Extensively illustrated with photographs and diagrams, and accessibly written, High Tech Architecture - A style reconsidered discusses the intended meanings of the visual vocabulary involved in High Tech, and places the style in the broad context of other Modern architecture of the twentieth century. The book offers a balanced re-appraisal of the extravagant claims that have been made for High Tech, by its progenitors and by architectural critics, as an architecture appropriate for the built environment of the future.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book reinterprets architecture in Beijing during the reigns of the Kangxi (1661-1722), Yongzheng (1723-1735) and Qianlong (1736-1795) emperors in the eighteenth century. More specifically, it views the building processes of the four churches and the Western palaces in the Yuánmíng Yuán garden as an example of cultural dialogue in the context of the Enlightenment. The study is based firstly on archival sources from different institutions from around the globe, using Big Data to manage them. Secondly, it places increased emphasis on architectural remains, preserved both in international collections as well as at archaeological sites. To take advantage of these remains, some were recorded using close-range photogrammetry. Digital sunlight analyses of the buildings’ interiors were also carried out. From these emerging technologies, as well as written sources, it becomes possible first to reinterpret Beijing as an imperial capital where religious tolerance and cosmopolitanism were increasing, and second to re-evaluate the entire Yuánmíng Yuán Garden complex as a miniature version of Beijing. This approach makes for easier subsequent comparisons with other imperial capitals of the time, such as London, Paris and Istanbul. As such, this study reveals a largely neglected chapter in the global history of architecture, while simultaneously offering a crucial re-examination of the existing architectural remains.Table of ContentsIntroductionQing Modernity : The CourtThe Universal Garden-Palace : Yuanming YuanBeijing : The Capital of Religious ToleranceThe Public Images of the Yuanming YuanConclusion : a Modern CityTranscriptionsBibliography

Read more less

Book SynopsisA full and richly illustrated history of windmills in Suffolk - a county particularly notable for them. Some of the earliest recorded windmills were built in Suffolk, and since the middle ages Suffolk has been a county where windmills predominated. In the 1830s there were over 430 windmills in the county, though the advent of steamand oil engines and roller mills meant there was a rapid decline in numbers later in the nineteenth century. This survey lists all the surviving mills and mill remains. It also explains the technicalities of how the differenttypes of mill worked, emphasising the particular local types and developments; and describes the life of the millers and the work of the millwrights. There is also an account of the restoration work which has been undertaken on them. Fully illustrated with photographs of what can still be seen today.

Read more less

Book SynopsisAnalysis of the patronage of Benedictine monasteries has much to reveal about both monastic life and material culture of the time. The patronage of Benedictine art and architecture, and the circumstances that made it possible and desirable, reveal much about the ambitions, beliefs and allegiances of both the order and those who interacted with it; moreover, analysis of such patronage also improves our understanding of some of the most important and beautiful buildings, sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, stained glass and other artefacts surviving from the middle ages.In this survey,focussing on the Benedictine monasteries and nunneries in south-west England (including Glastonbury) during the 240 years leading up to the dissolution of the religious orders under Henry VIII, the author discusses the question interms of "internal" practice, initiated by Benedictine monks and nuns, and "external" practice, for which non-monastic agents were responsible; and analyses the historical circumstances affecting the commission and the purchase of art and architecture. Throughout, he takes care to situate the study of buildings and their embellishment within the broader context of Benedictine culture. The text is lavishly illustrated with forty-five black and white platesof art, architecture and documents, many of which have not previously been reproduced. Dr JULIAN M. LUXFORD is Senior Lecturer at the School of Art History, St Andrews University.Trade ReviewIn many ways a model book. It is a model of careful scholarship, of caution in its conclusions, of thoroughness in its research, in the way it neatly mortars a sturdy brick to the existing architecture of Benedictine scholarship. * ECCLESIOLOGY TODAY *Contributes importantly to the ongoing debates about the Reformation and the medieval heritage of monasticism, and the contribution of the abbeys to taste and fashion in wider material culture. * LONGMAN-HISTORY TODAY BOOK OF THE YEAR PRIZE 2007 *This magnificent book is both a regional study of much more than local significance and an art historical book that tells us much about late medieval monasticism. [It] is a major achievement. * SOUTHERN HISTORY *Luxford's book provides much new material to consider and by taking the concept of patronage as a motivation, he has found ways of approaching the subject unrealised in previous studies. This is surely a model to emulate. * SEHEPUNKTE *A pioneering work. * REVUE BENEDICTINE *A rewarding read. [The author] has shone a bright light on late medieval Benedictine monasticism and persuasively argued for its strength and integrity. [...] He has created a new standard, transforming the way in which such studies must be conducted in the future. * THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE *An interesting book which would be a useful reference document for the church historian. TRANSACTIONS, Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society * . *

Read more less

Book SynopsisEssays centred on the methods, pleasures, and pitfalls of architectural interpretation. Architecture affects us on a number of levels. It can control our movements, change our experience of our own scale, create a particular sense of place, focus memory, and act as a statement of power and taste, to name but a few. Yet the ways in which these effects are brought about are not yet well understood. The aim of this book is to move the discussion forward, to encourage and broaden debate about the ways in which architecture is interpreted, with aview to raising levels of intellectual engagement with the issues in terms of the theory and practice of architectural history. The range of material covered extends from houses constructed from mammoth bones around 15,000 years ago in the present-day Ukraine to a surfer's memorial in Carpinteria, California; other subjects include the young Michelangelo seeking to transcend genre boundaries; medieval masons' tombs; and the mythographies of early modern Netherlandish towns. Taking as their point of departure the ways in which architecture has been, is, and can be written about and otherwise represented, the editors' substantial Introduction provides an historiographical framework for, and draws out the themes and ideas presented in, the individual contributors' essays. Contributors: Christine Stevenson, T. A. Heslop, John Mitchell, Malcolm Thurlby, Richard Fawcett, Jill A. Franklin, StephenHeywood, Roger Stalley, Veronica Sekules, John Onians, Frank Woodman, Paul Crossley, David Hemsoll, Kerry Downes, Richard Plant, Jenifer Ní Ghrádraigh, Lindy Grant, Elisabeth de Bièvre, Stefan Muthesius, Robert Hillenbrand, AndrewM. Shanken, Peter Guillery.Trade ReviewFor its breadth of inquiry and variety of methodologies it is recommended for programs in architectural history. * ARLIS/NA REVIEWS *Will prove to be a seminal and enduringly valued addition to professional and academic reference collections. * MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW *Table of ContentsIntroduction - T A Heslop and Christine Stevenson Believing is Seeing: the natural image in late antiquity - John Mitchell Articulation as an expression of function in Romanesque architecture - Malcolm Thurlby Barrel-vaulted churches in late medieval Scotland - Richard Fawcett Augustinian and other canons' churches in Romanesque Europe: the significance of the aisleless cruciform plan - Jill A. Franklin Towers and radiating chapels in Romanesque architectural iconography - Stephen Heywood Diffusion, imitation and evolution: the uncertain origins of 'beakhead' ornament - Roger Stalley Architecture and pattern: the western façade of Lincoln Cathedral and Modernist reference points for its interpretation - Veronica Sekules Home sweet mammoth: neuroarchaeology and the origins of architecture - John Onians Constantine and Helena: the Roman in English Romanesque - T A Heslop For their monuments, look about you: medieval masons and their tombs - Francis Woodman Baxandall's bridge and Charles IV's Prague: an exercise in architectural intention - Paul Crossley Imitation as a creative vehicle in Michelangelo's art and architecture - David Hemsoll The 'façade problem' in Roman Churches c.1540-1640 - Kerry Downes Innovation and traditionalism in writings on English Romanesque - Richard Plant Why medieval Ireland failed to edify - Jenifer Ni Ghradaigh The Chapel of the Hospital of St-Jean at Angers: acta, statutes, architecture and interpretation - Lindy Grant Sealed architecture: city seals, architecture and urban identity in the Northern Netherlands, 1200-1700 - Elisabeth de Bievre Style and geography: struggles for identification in the later nineteenth century - Stefan Muthesius The Dome of the Rock: from medieval symbol to modern propaganda - Towards a cultural geography of modern memorials - Andrew Shanken Bicycle sheds revisited, or: why are houses interesting? - Peter Guillery

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe first full-scale biography of Robert Willis, the "founding father" of architectural history. WINNER of the Cambridge Association for Local History book award 2016 Robert Willis was the archetypal nineteenth-century polymath. Officially, as Jacksonian Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, he specialized in the study of mechanism, which he also taught at the Royal School of Mines in London. In the field of science he was an experimentalist, inventor and educational innovator. Meanwhile, in his spare time, he pursued his passion, pioneering the serious study of architectural history. Initially his work was aimed at architects - his role in providing an intellectual underpinning to the contemporary Gothic Revival was acknowledged by the award of the gold medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1862. However his main contribution was more historical. Starting with Canterbury, in 1844, over the course of his career, he investigated almost every English cathedral and developed an approach, combining documentary and archaeological research, which remains in use today. His studies culminated in the monumental Architectural History of the University of Cambridge, still the definitive account of its subject. In this fascinating and lavishly illustrated intellectual biography, drawn from extensive archival and architectural research, the author sheds new light on the interconnections between Willis's varied fields of interest and his fundamental role in the creation of a discipline. ALEXANDRINA BUCHANAN is both an architectural historian and an archivist; her introduction to archives came throughcataloguing the papers of Robert Willis at the Cambridge University Library. She is now Lecturer in Archive Studies at the University of Liverpool.Trade ReviewA work of outstanding scholarship, comprehensive in its coverage of Willis's life and activities, elegantly written, eminently readable, well-illustrated and meticulously referenced.. [A] superbly scholarly volume of lasting value. It will not be superseded for several generations. * ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL *[A] meticulous, well-crafted intellectual biography.... If Willis had anything to say about the matter, then this is the intellectual biography he would have wanted. * THE BURLINGTON *An impressive work of scholarship about one of the superstars of the nineteenth-century architectural firmament. ... It is superbly researched and brings to the fore a major figure to whom all ecclesiologists and archaeologists have good reason to be grateful. * ECCLESIOLOGY TODAY *This intelligent and well-researched book throws much new light on the career and influence of a remarkable Victorian scientist and scholar. * THE VICTORIAN *[A] fascinating...richly illustrated volume. ... This comprehensive biographical work is a worthy and engaging read for anyone interested in architectural history, medieval architecture, ecclesiology, antiquarianism or the Gothic Revival. * MEDIEVAL ARCHAEOLOGY *This book is a tremendous achievement and overdue chance to give [Willis] the recognition he deserves. * SPAB MAGAZINE *A very rich book. * SALON *Table of ContentsIntroduction London and the Early Years Cambridge and Scientific Work to 1841 Remarks on the Architecture of the Middle Ages and the Membrological Approach Evidence and its Uses in Architectural History The Cathedral Studies: 'Landmarks' of Architectural History Public Scientist, Private Man The Practice of Architecture: Willis as designer, arbiter and influence 'Architectural and Social History': Canterbury and Cambridge Appendix: Willis on Restoration

Read more less