Theory of architecture Books

Book SynopsisAnyone concerned with the history, tradition, and culture of our built environment will sooner or later come across the term ‘Public Humanities’. At the interface between an academic discipline and the media-oriented culture industry, Public Humanities is established as a field of inquiry in the US and is increasingly becoming so in Europe too. Whether this field of research remains a product of Western culture will only become apparent in the coming years. However, linking architectural debate with the humanities is an important concern of the papers collected here. These essays on architectural theory provide academic food for thought while encouraging reflection on the discipline of architecture and stimulating urban design in the twenty-first century. The lectures collected here are from a class on Public Humanities at Brown University.

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Book SynopsisAfter its golden age in the last decades of the 20th century, diagramming is still an experimental practice today, but it focuses on the synthesis of complexity and on new disciplinary territories on the edge between humanities, art, architecture, urban planning and landscape. This manual presents experimental diagrams through sensing, analysing and transforming space. The contributions critically delineate diagrammatic behaviours in architectural history, present the design practices of offices such as AZPML and MVRDV, take the medium to its extreme consequences, and outline future trajectories.

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Book SynopsisDissatisfied with the world we live in, we have been longing since time immemorial for two opposing topoi: the peaceful garden -- a carefree paradise -- the New City -- a harmonious community. Utopia has long been sought after by urban architects since the time of Thomas More. Other fictional cities followed, some of which were brought to fruition such as Brasilia and Palmanova. Yet these cities too have turned out to be imperfect, deeply rooted in their own period. For the author, all these places, though only fictitious, have long since been built and he strolls through them in company with the architects, planners, writers and philosophers, just as Thomas More and many others once led us through their cities.

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Book SynopsisText in English and German. The church rises to the challenge of providing a spiritual centre for Donau City, the new residential and commercial centre on the opposite bank of the Danube -- not as an act of coronation for the city in the sense of Taut's urban crown, as a temple or cathedral, but as miniature, as a demonstration of the power of the quiet as opposed to the loud, as an 'oasis in the diaspora', to use Karl Rahner's formulation about the parishes of the future. The building gives an impression of starkness: a hard cube, cut off at the corners, clad with sheets of black chromium steel. But it is only stark at first glance. A second glance shows that the hardness is a friendly hardness: because of the reflections that the material admits; because of the grid of the large-format sheets, to which the brightly gleaming drill-holes that cover the walls like fine gossamer respond; because of circular apertures that allow light to shine outwards after dark; because of large, rectangular windows in the receding corners that create a contrast with the closed quality of the building. Inside the starkness gives way altogether: a light space, which one comes into through an art-fully designed entrance. Originally a sparse covering for the space, which thrives mainly because of the light material -- birch wood -, because of the arrangement of the pews, which is as lively as it is peaceful -- segments of circles of different sizes, surrounding the dark syenite altar block in the form of an open circle -- and especially because of the wide range of circular light sources that render the introverted interior transparent, the large windows that create islands of light, the free-form aperture in the ceiling, which sends light gliding down on to the altar. Heinz Tesar's church continues a tradition of forward-looking modern church building, from Rudolf Schwarz's Fronleichnamskirche in Aachen via Egon Eiermann's Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedachtniskirche in Berlin, Franz Fueg's Piuskirche in Meggen on Lake Lucerne to the new Herz-Jesu-Kirche in Munich by Allmann, Sattler and Wappner; and alongside all this there is also the tradition of a genuinely Viennese development of this theme, from Otto Wagner's Kirche am Steinhof to Ottokar Uhl's parish church Katharina von Siena.

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Book SynopsisText in English and German. The Neues Haus, the new building for the Munchner Kammerspiele, is not a big building in any sense. The plot of land not far from Maximilian-strasse, whose greatest advantage is its proximity to Richard Riemerschmied's Schauspielhaus, is only about 1000 m2 in area. The most important quality of the design is in fact that it accepts the modesty of its role. The new building subordinates itself to the main Kammerspiele building, and manages without lavish foyers and extensive prestigious areas. The Neues Haus is a servant building, a place where work is done. A hasty passer-by would see the building simply as a white cube, reticent and introverted. Given the serene mastery of the brief and the architectural resources, one is almost inclined to call it a work of Peichl's old age, combining his love of clear volumes with a sovereign grasp of technical requirements. Like the silvery-sparkling ORF studios, the ground radio station in Styria and the liner-like phosphate elimination plant in Berlin before it, the Neues Haus is also crammed full of technology. It contains three stages, and two of them can be used at the same time. The largest playing area is elaborately equipped with gallery and under-stage; it is therefore intended as the main rehearsal area in future. The two large auditoriums are stacked one above the other like shoe-boxes and form a massive hollow core surrounded by all the service functions. The interior is dominated by a plainness that oscillates between poverty and asceticism. The corridors and foyers are narrow, the stairs simple, the interval areas positively sparse. The only opulent feature is the splendid technical equipment. Peichl's handwriting can be seen in the treatment of the details and his ingenious practice of self-quotation. Many of the motifs are reminiscent of earlier projects, and of course the typical portholes, spiral staircases and railings made of steel hawsers crop up again, all Peichl's usual maritime metaphors. In this way he has produced a building whose cool elegance reveals scarcely anything of its inner values.

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Book SynopsisText in English and Spanish. In 2000 the Autostadt, a show park for the Volkswagen group and its subsidiaries from Seat via Audi to Bentley and Lamborghini, opened in Wolfsburg. Alfredo Arribas designed the Seat Pavilion, and has brought off the brilliant trick of making an essentially reticent building into the focal point of the Autostadt. The structure is like a snail shell, forbidding and closed with the exception of a band of windows that seems to rise directly out of the surface of the lake on the Autostadt site. The irregular curve of the ground plan is reminiscent of a leaf or other forms borrowed from nature. Access is via two elegant ramps floating over the water and the site and thrusting straight into the centre of the pavilion: a homage to the old master, Le Corbusier. And then inside we are confronted with a surprise-packed exhibition landscape: a dazzling synthesis of acoustic and visual impressions that cast their spell over visitors as they walk round. Alfredo Arribas was a provocative newcomer on the architectural scene in Barcelona in the late eighties and is now an international success. He was probably predestined for this job like no other architect. He showed a highly personal flair for presenting spaces and goods from the outset, attracting early attention with his designs for discotheques and bars like the enormous Louie Vega (1988) discotheque, or the Torres de Avila (1990). The expressive tower for the Marugame Hirai Museum (1993) is also part of this creative phase, where forms did not necessarily have to be justified by functional logic. But Arribas' architecture changed into its business suit for the very next commissions. For example, even bankers in their pin-stripe suits feel perfectly at home in the cafeteria he designed for Norman Foster's Commerzbank headquarters in Frankfurt. Arribas is working on two large projects at present: a family entertainment centre in Bari and the Cite des Musiques Vivantes in Montlucon.

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Book SynopsisText in English and German. Mankind needs to relate to inanimate matter as well. Manking 'animates' stones, mountains, rivers, yes even the world and the cosmos so that it can communicate with them. There is quite clearly a need to initiate individual contact also with architecture, with our surroundings. This is easier if we can also recognise certain characteristics of our own bodies in the constructed bodies of the built environment. We can go well beyond the common phenomenon of corporeality to find countless analogies between buildings and human beings, thus demonstrating a first step towards an anthropomorphy of architecture. These statements become clearer if a column is interpreted as an anthropomorphic element. If certain features in facades are reminiscent of a pair of eyes, then architectural physiognomy helps us to a dialogue: the building is looking at us, in the direct sense of the word. In the world of Christian symbolism the church -- spatially and theologically -- is constantly compared with the body of Christ, and thus becomes an image of a man-god. The church is the 'mysterious body of Christ', and all parts of the building become metaphors of Christ and his congregation.The 'organic' architecture of the 20th century in its three-dimensional and sculptural manifestations constantly addresses the corporeality of biological creatures. In very recent times we are surprised how often the metaphor of man and architecture occurs: in the work of Ricardo Porro, Imre Makovecz, Santiago Calatrava, Reima Pietila and others. Zoomorphic architecture is a variant of anthropomorphic architecture. Elephants, birds, fishes, insects do not just appear in many current works of modern architecture like those of Frank O Gehry and Coop Himmelblau, they are also absurd manifestations of trivial architecture that has also to be considered in its everyday quality. If we are talking about 'expanded' architecture, then cities, the world and even the cosmos have to be included. Mankind is still moved by the transfer from man as microcosm to the universe as macrocosm.

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Book SynopsisText in English and German. A yawning gap between two 1960s buildings. Not at all unusual in Cologne. A gap between two buildings, 2,56 m wide and 33 m long. Scarcely wide enough to park a few bicycles. This gap has been used as an office by the rendel & spitz advertising agency since early 1999. The architects b&k+ hooked a few concrete floors into the walls of the adjacent buildings, made sure there were stairs and a bit of infrastructure, suspended a glass facade at the front and back -- finished. To give any curious or interested parties an impression of the building, it was cleared out for a week and used by three selected European designers for a comprehensive development on the theme of 'braving the gap'. The traditional disciplines of product, furniture and lighting design were complemented with contributions addressing the other senses: music and perfume. Johanna Grawunder (Milan) devised a light installation leading from a cold area by the entrance to a warm and comfortable rest area at the end of the space. Konstantin Grcic (Munich) filled the whole volume of the space with a pink ball that fitted into it exactly.Visitors had to show that they were prepared to brave the gap by squeezing between this 'puff ball' and the wall to get to the other side of the room. They were rewarded at the end by reaching the stainless steel fireplace by Timo Salli (Helsinki). The Dusseldorf firm aerome enhanced the installation with a variety of fragrances. Finally, the Hamburg photographer Uli Mattes recorded the whole project and provided his own interpretation of the work.

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Book SynopsisText in English and German. As in 2001, during the 2002 Cologne International Furniture Fair three internationally known designers squeezed themselves into the town's best known building between buildings. There they presented their ideas on the subject of 'expanding the gap'. From Tokyo came the idea of expanding the exhibition space with an installation to make it snow. Designer Tokujin Yoshioka had 18 kilos of down whirled up by fans at the end of the room to create an everlasting blizzard, and the largest snowball of the year. -- In order to burst through the austere geometry of the exhibition building, projections from lava lamps from the London-based designer Ross Lovegrove covered the greater part of the interior. The coloured, gently moving bubbles created in these lamps by heat caused the sharp contours and hard black and white contrasts of the ceilings and walls to melt and flow. -- Greg Lynn from Los Angeles installed an over-dimensioned, organic sculpture on one of the side walls. It reached out well into the room, and so the visitors were obliged to squeeze past it and search on the other side for space.

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Book SynopsisText in English and German. This monograph describes the construction of reality through the cognitive subject, and, associated with this, potential ways for producing space. The book studies methods for exposing, through indeterminacy, the definition of space to a larger field of possibility within personal interpretation, and thus virtually de-bordering space. Against a historical background of past attempts to de-border space visually, new possible ways of indeterminately defining space through the modulation of light are shown. The analysis of various modulation phenomena is illustrated with references to works of art, and the phenomena are studied with a view to integrating them in the actual production of space. The modulation of light has the potential of creating diffuse and ambivalent characteristics on space-defining surfaces. This fuzziness offers an opportunity for a freer interpretation of spatial definition and thus also for de-bordering space due to the process of perception. New materials and technologies can be used to create spatial worlds that open up genuine, hitherto unknown realms of cognition and experience. Based on multilayered, ambiguous spatial situations, according to the author, new open spaces of perception are possible and thus an expansion of human consciousness as well with respect to the world around us.

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Book SynopsisNOMINATED FOR THE RIBA INTERNATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2007. In this book Nili Portugali, presents her particular interpretation of the holistic-phenomenological worldview in theory and in practice, a worldview which stands in recent years at the forefront of the scientific discourse, and is tightly related to Buddhist philosophy. The purpose of architecture is first and foremost to create a human environment for human beings. The real challenge of current architectural practice is to make the best use of the potential inherent in our modern technological age. Yet, modern society has lost the value of man and thus created a feeling of alienation between man and the environment. Contemporary architecture sought to dissociate itself from the world of emotions and connect the design process to the world of ideas, thus creating a rational relation between building and man, devoid of any emotion. Portugali argues that in order to change the feeling of the environment and create places and buildings we really feel at home' and want to live in, what is needed is not a change of style or fashion, but a transformation of the mechanistic worldview underlying current thought and approaches. Based on Christopher Alexander's basic assumption that behind human architecture there are universal and eternal codes common to us all as human beings, and that there is absolute truth underlying beauty and comfort, Portugali demonstrates how this approach, as well as her unique planning process stemming from it (based on the way things actually exist already on site) generates that common spiritual experience people undergo in buildings endowed with soul, no matter where or from what culture they come from. That she demonstrates through a variety of her buildings and projects (with over 600 color illustrations and drawings), in relation to the physical, cultural and social reality of the place they were planned and built on, an Israeli reality which reflects a unique interface between the orient and the west, a cultural interface she personally represents. The book is valuable to architects, artists, scientists, philosophers and anyone who cares about the quality and beauty of the environment we live in.Trade Review"There is no other book quite like this one, it really is singular and worthy of your close attention." -- The RIBA Bookshops."It is not every day that a book is published which describes the world view of an Israeli architect with a fascinating body of work and a structured thesis about how architecture should be practiced here, Such is Nili Portugali's book." -- Books Supplement, 'Ha'aretz', December 13, 2006.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Revisiting a Myth; The Idea: To Universalise "Christendom"; The Man: Fred Nolde; To Write a Just and Durable Peace; Mobilising Christian Forces; The Joint Committee on Religious Liberty; Preparing for San Francisco; The Charter of the United Nations Organisation; An Ecumenical Instrument; Finding a Text; Declaring Human Rights; Conclusion: Faith and Human Rights Need Each Other.

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Book SynopsisText in German. What runs through our minds when somebody says the names of the following cities: Rome, Venice, Warsaw, Singapore, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Lisbon, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Vienna, Paris, Tartu, Tallinn, New York, Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Barcelona, Geneva, Brussels, London? Each name's aura of associations is so powerful that no-one will be able to give an answer that applies for everybody. When asked this question, almost everyone's answer will be triggered by their own biography, by any personal experience of the city in question they might have. One person might remember a dishonest taxi driver who drove them from the airport into the city. Another might remember a successful or unsuccessful business deal, while yet another might remember a terrible or excellent hotel, a project that he or she completed in that city or people met there. Some people will have met the love of their lives there -- or quarrelled with them for the final time. Some will have spent their honeymoons there, while other will have been divorced there. Some of those asked will certainly have had a bad accident in one city or the other, or been robbed there. They might say any of the following things: "It's a beautiful city!", "It's one of the ugliest and most dangerous cities I've ever been to!", "You see nothing but rubbish and chaos in that city!", "You can forget the passage of time in that city -- it's so wonderfully old-fashioned that it makes me cry!", "This city is so lively and colourful and loud that it was where I finally found out what life can be like!", "That city is so sensible, neat and well-controlled that it made me even more introverted and depressed than I am usually!", "You should only judge a city by its dogs!", "A good city for shopping!" Although the houses, alleys, streets and city squares really do exist, every city is created mostly from stories, beliefs, prejudices, clichés, scraps of knowledge, observations, personal experiences, first-hand or second-hand impressions, dreams, hopes and fears. The architect Hans Dieter Schaal, who has designed scenery for almost every major theatre and opera house in the world, often spent many days in the same city. He began to research the cities, to get the feel of them and to travel them on foot like a wanderer. Alongside these subjective impressions, the author presents plenty of facts, making this book an accurate picture of an age dominated by cities.

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Book SynopsisText in English & German. Hollywood is not only the secret world capital of dreams and the fictions of the subconscious, but also the capital of architecture. Hollywood is the Rome and the Versailles of the 20th and 21st centuries. A new awareness of space spanning the entire world was created here. These backgrounds, stage sets and filmic spaces are indelibly fixed in every spectator's mind. It may be in the cinema that the first time you saw the desert, the Rocky Mountain cliffs, Greenland's glacier mountains and California's sandy beaches. You saw here the Western saloons and Al Capone's dark rooms, the poor Mexicans' huts and the Kennedys' penthouse apartments; you saw here also the jazz clubs of New Orleans and the dream houses in Los Angeles. There was and is scarcely a corner of the earth that the Hollywood film has not dreamed its way into. Every cinema-goer in the world sees the same plot, the same images, the same faces, the same rooms, buildings, towns and streets. Film's power to bring people together can scarcely be overestimated. Film architecture is world architecture. All other architecture -- your own town, your own street, your own house, your own flat -- remains small and parochial in the face of this, restricted to affecting a very tiny sphere. The architecture of the future will develop in the field of tension between these two aspects -- small and parochial, large and spanning the entire world. The real architecture of houses and cities could be enriched in its language by including film architecture, and real architecture could be jolted out of its banality by including the studio world. Films and their images can teach us that the architecture of houses, streets and towns is not just a problem of order, function and economic viability, but that psychology, atmosphere and images are being built here as well.Trade ReviewFilm and architecture are both visual forms, so its great that someone has now thought to tie them together, on the premise that each will aid a better understanding of the other. Schaals clever and linear approach allows the reader to appreciate his observations so that, by the books end, I too had become a willing convert. Screentrade Nov/Dec 2009

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Book SynopsisText in English & German. Chaos and anarchy represent the opposite pole to an ordered life. Nothing works any more, everything is devastated, everything is falling apart. City walls, buildings that once afforded protection, have fallen victim to the excesses of armed conflict. Infernal threats, ambushes, fiery rain and other catastrophes were described even in the Bible. Pillaging and plunder were part of everyday life in the Middle Ages. Cruel deeds familiar from the Bible, or those described by other people or experienced personally, inspired painters in the transitional period from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, and were picked out as a central theme in their pictures. In the 18th century it became fashionable to build artificial ruins in parks and landscape gardens. Ruins became an image of human inadequacy in the attempt to come to terms with nature. 18th century landscape painters used ruin motifs in order to suggest the mysterious magic of pain, the sadness of beauty, to viewers. In the first half of the last century the world had to endure two wars that costs millions of people their lives and reduced many cities to rubble. Countless ruins remained. Few of them have survived. Overgrown with grass, ivy and Virginia creeper they now tower up out of the landscape like many others from various epochs bearing witness to those who see them of the vanity of human endeavour, of transience, of death; filling them with horror, but at the same time exuding a feeling of gloom and sadness, of melancholy. In this book, the author delivers a detailed assessment of ruins as a phenomenon in architecture, landscape design, fine art, film and the media. The result is an extraordinarily intense contribution to the theme of transience.Table of ContentsHans Dieter Schaal is a trained architect living in Attenweiler near Ulm and in Berlin. He works not only in his original profession, but also as a garden architect, as an exhibition and stage designer and as a writer. His exhibition designs and stage sets are among the best of their kind in our days.

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Book SynopsisOriginally developed in linguistics, the structuralist approach has been introduced as a scientific method in anthropology and other human sciences since the 1950s. In the 1960s and 1970s the double category of primary and secondary structure (langue and parole), essential to structuralism, in which the primary structure's system of rules determines how the secondary elements are placed in relation to one another, also advanced to a leading Ideology in the field of architecture and urban planning. From its development in the Netherlands and within the Team 10 circle of architects, structuralism in architecture quickly spread world-wide. Since the 1990s we have been witnessing a revival of structuralist tendencies in architecture. Whereas the structuralism of the 1970s encountered limits in complexity that were insurmountable at the time, today there is much to suggest that the return to structural thinking is causally connected to information technology, which has opened up new possibilities for dealing with complexity. In the field of digital architecture there is talk of neo-Structuralism. The question arises as to whether primary and secondary structures of the 1960s should be understood today as being in a state of complex interactions with one another that could be described through algorithms. The current interest in design methods based on rules makes the structuralist approach one of the most productive and comprehensive methods for the organisation, design, and production of the built environment. At the same time, it provides the systemic and meta-theoretical background for all disciplines involved in the production of space. This book is a collection of 47 articles by renowned authors including, among others, Roland Barthes, Koos Bosma, Jörg Gleiter, Herman Hertzberger, Arnulf Lüchinger, Winy Maas, Sylvain Malfroy, Hasim Sarkis, Fabian Scheurer, and Georges Teyssot. Through well-founded theoretical contributions, the book provides the first comprehensive representation of historical and contemporary digital structural thinking in architecture and urban planning.

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Book SynopsisThis is an appreciation of architecture of Islam in India. Indo-Islamic architecture is characterised by the prolific use of sandstone -- red stone. It is the culmination of the long tradition of Islamic art that came into bloom right from the faith''s first expansion beyond the Arabian Peninsula in the late seventh century. All the great Mughal emperors were prolific commissioners of monuments and their architecture thus remained the finest representation of this syncretion. Mughal architecture has been rich in ornament, almost at times overwhelming the architecture itself. With lively pictures, giving you a feeling of actually experiencing them, the book is divided into three major sections -- Islamic ornament, Common forms in Islamic ornament, and Mughal architecture. Indeed a tribute to the Islamic architecture in India. A musthave book for all who love Mughal architecture. The pictures present a feast of craftsmanship, as an enduring romance with shape and stone, in its unending variations. For a visitor to these buildings, the photographs allow a return, a recollection of architecture as a phenomenon, giving a sensual experience of the visit, a feel for the infinite craft. Mustansir Dalvi''s text complements Pitkar''s photographs by guiding the reader to an understanding of the variety and symbolism of ornamental forms that grace Islamic architecture, especially in the Indian context. Ornament in its many manifestations transforms the architecture, dematerializing immense monuments into elegant jewel-boxes. Dalvi shows how artisan and patron came together in India in a unique integration of two divergent world views and cultures to create a lasting syncretism of Islamic and Hindu traditions that reached its zenith in the architecture of the Mughal period.

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Book SynopsisThis book raises a discussion in regard to architecture''s role as a catalyst for urban development. Through studies of eight architectural projects in large cities on four different continents, the focus is placed on how architecture can promote the enriching experiences of the tolerant, the democratic, the learning and the experience rich city. In other words: The city worth living in, worth supporting and worth investing in. The projects operate with a mix of design programs, organised so that they invite diverse user groups to a variety of activities. Visual and other sensuous architectural effects frame the interaction between the projects and the human activities within their urban context -- an interaction that indicates a direction for a new narrative about the potential of place. The book is written for everybody with an interest in architecture and urban life in large cities and is a must-read for students of architecture, urban design, town planning, urban geography, urban sociology and aesthetic studies.

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Book SynopsisAn examination of the influential Italian architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri''s historical construction of contemporary architecture.The influential Italian architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri (1935-1994) invoked the productive possibilities of crisis, writing that history is a project of crisis (progetto di crisi). In this entry in the Writing Architecture series, Marco Biraghi explores Tafuri''s multifaceted and often knotty oeuvre, using the historian''s concept of a project of crisis as a lens through which to examine his historical construction of contemporary architecture.Mindful of Tafuri''s statement that there is no such thing as criticism, only history, Biraghi carefully maps the influences on Tafuri''s writing—Walter Benjamin, Karl Krauss, Massimo Cacciari, and the architect Ludovico Quaroni, among others—in order to create a portrait of one of the most complex minds in twentieth-century architecture and architectural history. Tra

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Book SynopsisHow outlaw spatial products—resorts, information technology campuses, retail chains, golf courses, and ports—act as cunning pawns in global politics.In Enduring Innocence, Keller Easterling tells the stories of outlaw spatial products—resorts, information technology campuses, retail chains, golf courses, ports, and other hybrid spaces that exist outside normal constituencies and jurisdictions—in difficult political situations around the world. These spaces—familiar commercial formulas of retail, business, and trade—aspire to be worlds unto themselves, self-reflexive and innocent of politics. But as Easterling shows, in reality these enclaves can become political pawns and objects of contention. Jurisdictionally ambiguous, they are imbued with myths, desires, and symbolic capital. Their hilarious and dangerous masquerades often mix quite easily with the cunning of political platforms. Easterling argues that the study of such real estate cocktails provides vivid evidence of the market''s weakness, resilience, or violence.Enduring Innocence collects six stories of spatial products and their political predicaments: cruise ship tourism in North Korea; high-tech agricultural formations in Spain (which have reignited labor wars and piracy in the Mediterranean); hyperbolic forms of sovereignty in commercial and spiritual organizations shared by gurus and golf celebrities; automated global ports; microwave urbanism in South Asian IT enclaves; and a global industry of building demolition that suggests urban warfare. These regimes of nonnational sovereignty, writes Easterling, move around the world like weather fronts; she focuses not on their blending—their global connectivity—but on their segregation and the cultural collisions that ensue.Enduring Innocence resists the dream of one globally legible world found in many architectural discourses on globalization. Instead, Easterling''s consideration of these segregated worlds provides new tools for practitioners sensitive to the political composition of urban landscapes.

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Book SynopsisBased on her extensive experience in the urban communities of Los Angeles, historian and architect Dolores Hayden proposes new perspectives on gender, race, and ethnicity to broaden the practice of public history and public art, enlarge urban preservation, and reorient the writing of urban history to spatial struggles.In the first part of The Power of Place, Hayden outlines the elements of a social history of urban space to connect people''s lives and livelihoods to the urban landscape as it changes over time. She then explores how communities and professionals can tap the power of historic urban landscapes to nurture public memory.The second part documents a decade of research and practice by The Power of Place, a nonprofit organization Hayden founded in downtown Los Angeles. Through public meetings, walking tours, artists''s books, and permanent public sculpture, as well as architectural preservation, teams of historians, designers, planners, and artists worked together to understand, preserve, and commemorate urban landscape history as African American, Latina, and Asian American families have experienced it.One project celebrates the urban homestead of Biddy Mason, an African American ex-slave and midwife active betwen 1856 and 1891. Another reinterprets the Embassy Theater where Rose Pesotta, Luisa Moreno, and Josefina Fierro de Bright organized Latina dressmakers and cannery workers in the 1930s and 1940s. A third chapter tells the story of a historic district where Japanese American family businesses flourished from the 1890s to the 1940s. Each project deals with bitter memories—slavery, repatriation, internment—but shows how citizens survived and persevered to build an urban life for themselves, their families, and their communities.Drawing on many similar efforts around the United States, from New York to Charleston, Seattle to Cincinnati, Hayden finds a broad new movement across urban preservation, public history, and public art to accept American diversity at the heart of the vernacular urban landscape. She provides dozens of models for creative urban history projects in cities and towns across the country.

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Book SynopsisBridges the gap between the history and theory of twentieth-century architecture and cultural theories of modernity.In this exploration of the relationship between modernity, dwelling, and architecture, Hilde Heynen attempts to bridge the gap between the discourse of the modern movement and cultural theories of modernity. On one hand, she discusses architecture from the perspective of critical theory, and on the other, she modifies positions within critical theory by linking them with architecture. She assesses architecture as a cultural field that structures daily life and that embodies major contradictions inherent in modernity, arguing that architecture nonetheless has a certain capacity to adopt a critical stance vis-à-vis modernity.Besides presenting a theoretical discussion of the relation between architecture, modernity, and dwelling, the book provides architectural students with an introduction to the discourse of critical theory. The subchapters on Walter

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Book SynopsisAddresses philosophical questions concerning the relation between writing and architecture. This book draws together two cultural fantasies from different periods, and argues that architecture is a system of representation, with signifying possibilities that go beyond the symbolic.

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Book SynopsisThe most influential work of architectural criticism and history of the twentieth century, now available in a handsomely designed new edition.

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Book SynopsisRounding off decades of exploration into the various ways in which buildings and urban sequences make an impact on the mind, The Dynamics of Delight emphasizes the qualitative aspects of form and space, providing designers with an analytical framework in which to evaluate projects on an aesthetic level. In laying the foundations for an appreciation of the aesthetic component in architecture, Smith considers the mechanisms which are involved in the aesthetic response and goes on to consider how human perception may be influenced by natural phenomena and draws on chaos theory and biomathematics to illustrate this original argument.Table of ContentsIntroduction Part 1: Amsterdam and the Tiger 1. Laying the Foundations 2. The Roots of Aesthetic Perception 3. The Protean Factor 4. Exploring Harmony 5. From Harmony to Chaos 6. From Nature to Artefacts 7. Intelligent Interventions 8. Unity Versus Diversity Part 2: The Parthenon and the Sunflower 9. The Deep Structure of Proportion 10. The Numerology of Beauty 11. Developing the Theme 12. Beyond the Portico and Dome 13. Contemporary Variations 14. Architectural Metaphor 15. Second Level Proportion 16. The Limbic Domain 17. Bioclimatic Opportunities Part 3: The Dynamics of the City 18. The City and Dimensions of Engagement 19. The Rewards of Chance 20. The Street 21. The Square 22. Encounters with Old Gods 23. The Ethical Dimension

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Book SynopsisThis volume presents the discipline's best thinking on sustainability in written, drawn, and built form, drawing on over fifteen years of peer-reviewed essays and national design awards published by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA).Providing a primer on sustainability, useful to teachers and students alike, the selected essays address a broad range of issues. Combined with design projects that highlight issues holistically, they promote an understanding of the principles of sustainability and further the integration of sustainable methods into architectural projects.Using essays that alternately revise and clarify twentieth century architectural thinking, The Green Braid places sustainability at the centre of excellent architectural design. No other volume addresses sustainability within the context of architectural history, theory, pedagogy and design, making this book an ideal source for architects in framing their practices,Trade Review'With a broad definition of sustainability in mind, the book delves into how architectural designs can be situated at the crossroads of ecology, economy and equity ... The book is rich with examples and case studies that are informative and intriguing.' – CitiesTable of ContentsPart 1: The Green Braid: Networked Ways of Knowing 1. The Green Braid: Networked Ways of Knowing 2. Architecture, Ecology Design and Human Ecology 3. A New Social Contract: Equity and Sustainable Development 4. Economic Sustainability in the Post-Industrial Landscape 5. Models, Lists and the Evolution of Sustainable Architecture Part 2: Meta-Discourses in Pedagogy and Practice 6. Introduction 7. Cyborg Theories and Situated Knowledges: Some Speculations on a Cultural Approach to Technology 8. We Are No[w here]: A Social Critique of Contemporary Theory 9. The Hidden Influence of Historical Scholarship on Design 10. Culture and the Recalibration of First Ring Suburbs 11. Portable Construction Training Center 12. One Week, Eight Hours Part 3: Phenomena and Technology 13. Introduction 14. From l’Air Exact to l’Aérateur: Ventilation and its Evolution in the Architectural Work of Le Corbusier 15. Unhealthy Energy Conservation Practices 16. Good-Bye Willis Carrier 17. The Compass House 18. Scupper Houses or the Dogtrot House and the Shotgun House Reconsidered 19. An Affordable, Sustainable House 20. Phenomenal Surface: Fog House Part 4: Building Practices 21. Introduction 22. Poetic Engineering and Invention: Arthur Troutner, Architect, and the Development of Engineered Lumber 23. Terunobu Fujimori: Working with Japan’s Small Production Facilities 24. Making Smartwrap: From Parts to Pixels 25. Quilting with Glass, Cedar and Fir: A Workshop and Studio in Rossland, BC and Navy Demonstration Project 26. Modernism Redux: a Study in Light, Surface, and Volume 27. Solar Sails: An Installation Part 5: Settlement Patterns 28. Introduction 29. Economy=Ecology: A Scenario for Chicago’s Lake Calumet 30. Sarajevo: Ecological Reconstruction after the ‘Urbicide’ 31. The Suburban Critique at Mid-Century: A Case Study 32. I-10 The Gulf Coast States/Mall Housing 33. Community Redevelopment for a Small Town in Florida and Drifting Urbanism 34. The Role of Infrastructure in the Production of Public Spaces for the City of Miami Part 6: The Shared Realm 35. Introduction 36. Architectural Intervention and the Post-Colonial Era: The Tjibaou Cultural Center in New Caledonia by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop 37. History, Tradition, and Modernity: Urbanism and Cultural Change in Chanderi, India 38. Global Constructions, Or Why Guadalajara wants a Home Depot while Los Angeles Wants Construction Workers 39. A Raptor Enclosure for the Zuni Pueblo 40. Garden of Time; Landscape of Change: Women Suffrage Memorial St. Paul, Minnesota 41. Unmasking Urban Traces

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Book SynopsisCreation in Space: Fundamentals of Architecture, Volumes 1 and 2, by Jonathan Friedman, provide all basic projects, guided instruction, commentaries, and selected readings for a full year course in the fundamentals of architecture. It is designed to cover not only the normal technical requirements - drawing skills and techniques such as planimetrics, axonometrics and perspective projection, freehand drawing, and abrication skills for model making - but also fundamental design issues such as figure-ground ambiguity, proportion, scale, light and shade, and circulation. The two volumes of Creation in Space together provide a basic introduction to understanding architecture. The works assume no previous knowledge of the subject, only that all of us were architects as young children playing with blocks.Table of Contents Preface, ix Foreword by Robert Slutzky, xii Introduction: Foundation, 1 Study 1 UNITYThinking: The Parthenon, 23 Projecting: Parti, geometry and proportion, 25 Doing: Sticks and stones; torn paper, 27 Reflecting: On the Plastic, 29 Study 2 DIALOGPreview: Ise Shrine, dialog of place and time, 35 2A Dialog "rough"Thinking: Leaf Retreat, 37 Projecting: Making plans, 38 Doing: Sticks and stones; square field, 41 Reflecting: Rose Windows: geometrical schemes, 43 2B Dialog "dressed"Thinking: Facade of Notre Dame, 49 Projecting: Axonometric, Diamond Thesis, 51 Doing: Rods and cubes; squares in and on squares, 53 Reflecting: Leaf Retreat and Wall House, a debate, 55 Study 3 VOLUMEThinking: Rock Cut Church of Lalibala, 61 Projecting: Figure-ground, solid-void, shade and shadows, 63 Doing: Solid-void ambiguity; figure-ground tiles, 65 Reflecting: The Representation of Space, 67 Study 4 TRANSFORMATIONThinking: Falling Water, 75 Projecting: The evolution of form, 77 Doing: Explosion: extension in space; hierarchy, 79 Reflecting: The Destruction of the Box, Fractals, 81 Study 5 EXPRESSIONThinking: Ronchamp, 87 Projecting: Perspective, 89 Doing: Euclidean forms; graphic character, 91 Reflecting: The Poetics of Music, 93 Study 6 TIMEPIECEThinking: Stonehenge, 103 Projecting: Sun angles and the motion of the earth, 107 Doing: A place that measures time; layering, 109 Reflecting: Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal, 113 Study 7 FREE EXERCISEThinking: The studio as possibility, 123 Projecting: What comes next?, 125 Doing: Temple, labyrinth, tower, wall, 129 Reflecting: Nothing is transmissible but thought, 134 APPENDIXThe Kit of Parts, 142 Tools and Equipment, 144 Documentation, 146 Visual Glossary, 148 Bibliography, 181 Credits, 184 Index, 188

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Book SynopsisKarl Rosenkranz (1805 1879) was a German philosopher. He followed Kant and Herbart as professor of philosophy in Königsberg; in 1848-49 he took part in the reform government in Berlin.Andrei Pop is Associate Professor in the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.Mechtild Widrich is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art History in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA.Trade ReviewRosenkranz’s prose, given new life in this fine translation, sparkles with enlivening incident and wry asides … Rosenkranz’s essay is a text to linger over. * Times Literary Supplement *The great value of the concept of ugliness is dialectical. The contrast with the beautiful can be a distinct way of illuminating that notion, and with it the ideal of art as such. Karl Rosenkranz’s Aesthetics of Ugliness, here carefully edited, lucidly introduced, and elegantly translated by Andrei Pop and Mechtild Widrich, shows us in detail how one might understand this contrast, illuminating fundamental issues in aesthetics and in the self-understanding of modernity along the way – a very valuable contribution to any discussion. * Robert Pippin, Professor, the Committee on Social Thought, Department of Philosophy, University of Chicago, USA *Table of ContentsTable of Contents: 1. Introductory essay by Andrei Pop and Mechtild Widrich 2. Karl Rosenkranz, Aesthetics of Ugliness, 1853 3. The Text: Introduction Section 1: Formlessness Section 2: Incorrectness Section 3: Deformation or Disfiguration Conclusion Rosenkranz's and editors' notes 4. Texts crucial to the understanding of the Aesthetics of Ugliness: i) Rosenkranz’s review of Hegel's Aesthetics, 1836 and 1839 ii) Rosenkranz's entry on "Aesthetics in its Development" in the Brockhaus Conversation-Lexikon, 1838 iii) Rosenkranz, “Beauty and Art” section of his System of Science, 1850 Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisBoredom is a ubiquitous feature of modern life. Endured by everyone, it is both cause and effect of modernity, and of situations, spaces and surroundings. As such, this book argues, boredom shares an intimate relationship with architectureone that has been seldom explored in architectural history and theory. Boredom, Architecture, and Spatial Experience investigates that relationship, showing how an understanding of boredom affords us a new way of looking at and understanding the modern experience. It reconstructs a series of episodes in architectural history, from the 19th century to the present, to survey how boredom became a normalized component of the everyday, how it infiltrated into the production and reception of architecture, and how it serves to diagnose moments of crisis in the continuous transformations of the built environment. Erudite and innovative, the work moves deftly from architectural theory and philosophy to literature and psychology to make its case. CTrade ReviewWhat if architectural creativity is not only grounded in knowledge and skill but equally in a state of mind, a mood? Improbable though the suggestion may be, this original and marvelously well-studied book shows that from the 19th century onward boredom became a force that focused concentration and compelled experimentation. * David Leatherbarrow, University of Pennsylvania, USA *A fascinating exploration of boredom that builds on 19th-century literary narratives to understand its contemporary spatial manifestations. Parreno meanders through a multitude of boredoms, from the domestic to the monumentally bureaucratic, and from the modern generic to endlessly varied imagery—revealing unexpectedly reassuring aspects of boredom in the process. * Lara Schrijver, University of Antwerp, Belgium *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface Foreword by Iain Borden Acknowledgements Introduction: Boredom as Architecture 1. A Component of Modernity Differential Distances 2. Fascination and Aversion 3. Søren Kierkegaard’s Babylonian Tower 4. Catherine Gore and Charles Dickens: Idle Restlessness/Restless Idleness 5. Blunting and Jading 6. Coney Island, Misleading Structures Circular Trajectories 7. A Unity of Disarray 8. Martin Heidegger’s Urge to Be at Home 9. Oran, the Capital of Boredom 10. International Style Confusions: Sigfried Giedion 11. Los Angeles, Flat Enough Extended Thresholds 12. Potential Architectures 13. Andrew Benjamin’s Antithesis to Boredom 14. Boredom in Domus 15. Servitude and Liberalism: Russell Kirk 16. Charles Jencks, Rem Koolhaas, and the Generic 17. Jorge Silvetti and Sylvia Lavin: Unamused Muses and Lying Fallow Epilogue: Architectures of Boredom Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisAt a time of unprecedented levels of change in the production of building materials and their deployment in construction, better theoretical and historical tools are needed to understand these new developments and how they are altering the practices and concepts of architecture. Building Materials offers a radical rethink of how materials, as they are constituted in architectural practice, are themselves constructed and, in turn, uncovers a vast and neglected resource of architectural writing about materials as they are mobilized in architecture.The book is unique in conceiving architectural specification as a starting point for architectural theory, arguing that how materials are prescribed - through a range of practices from the literal processes of procurement and manufacture to epistemological, contractual, social and economic frameworks - radically alters their potential in architecture. Drawing on the work of French philosopher Gilbert Simondon, as well as close readings oTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgements 1. Introduction Simondon and the Specification Building Materials: an ontogenetic approach ‘Veritable Relations’: building materials as systems On the Transductive Method 2. Specifying Building Materials From Object to Process: 18th and 19th century specifications and the shift to division by trade From Means to Ends: 20th and 21st century specifications and the variety of forms of clause 3. Naming Materials From Species to Brand-names: Changing practices of naming timber Effects of Changes in Naming: The emergence of proprietary specification Naming and Table 2/3: Materials as varieties of matter 4. Process The Process-Based Clause ‘Nothing but a Transit’: Hylomorphism and the forgetting of process Dynamic Operations in Process-Based Description ‘Rendered Plastic by Preparation’: Preliminary operations 5. Performance Performance Specification ‘Grounded in Such Usefulness’: Material as Equipment ‘For a Given Service’: ‘New Glass Performances’ 6. Systems of Material Simondon’s ‘Complete System’ ‘That Constitutive Seam’ 7. Going Into the Mould Preliminary Operations The Technical Object Inventive Relations Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisHow do we learn about the objects that surround us? As well as gathering sensory information by viewing and using objects, we also learn about objects through the written and spoken word - from shop labels to friends' recommendations and from magazines to patents. But, even as design commentators have become increasingly preoccupied with issues of mediation, the intersection of design and language remains under-explored.Writing Design provides a unique examination of what is at stake when we convert the material properties of designed goods into verbal or textual description. Issues discussed include the role of text in informing design consumption, designing with and through language, and the challenges and opportunities raised by design without language. Bringing together a wide range of scholars and practitioners, Writing Design reveals the difficulties, ethics and politics of writing about design.Trade ReviewWriting Design is long overdue. For well over a century, critics, historians, theorists and designers themselves have used a multitude of words to describe, suggest, denote, evoke and critique that evasive concept of 'design'. Now, for the first time, a group of scholars have set out to reflect on that long-standing practice and to make us think more deeply about the complex relationship that exists between words and things. * Professor Penny Sparke, Kingston University, London, UK *This volume promises to become essential reading for anyone interested in the historical and contemporary circumstances by which words describe design, and design defines language. From a range of international perspectives, the book's contributors show how the interrelationship between language and design is never passive, but always subject to mediation, negotiation, and at times contestation. * Jeremy Aynsley, Professor of History of Design, Royal College of Art, UK *Writing Design will be a pivotal book on the fast-filling Design Criticism bookshelf. Design Criticism manifests variously as a journalistic practice, a mode of political resistance, a literary genre, an interpretive tool - and now as an academic discipline. The growing number of pedagogical initiatives in Design Criticism demands a literature that supports and challenges these academic endeavours with new research, provocative thinking and thoughtful analysis. Writing Design collects important scholarship - representing a spectrum of approaches, viewpoints, and geographical origins - that explores the rich relationship between design and language and draws attention to the written word as an artefact, worthy of as much scrutiny as the designed entity it describes. As such, this carefully selected compendium of essays helps to stake out the territory, and provides students with a broad view of the field, its key debates, themes and issues, as well as with inspiration for their own research, and case studies for close analysis. I look forward to the Design Criticism bookshelf soon groaning under the weight of many more anthologies, theoretical treatises, narrative histories and polemical tracts of the same calibre as this pioneering volume. * Alice Twemlow, Chair, MFA Design Criticism Department School of Visual Arts, USA *Table of ContentsAcknowledgementsGeneral Introduction, Grace Lees-MaffeiPART 1: RIGHTING DESIGN - ON THE REFORMING ROLE OF DESIGN CRITICISMIntroduction1. ‘Writing about Stuff': The Peril and Promise of Design History and Criticism, Jeffrey L. Meikle, University of Texas at Austin, USA2. Design Criticism and Social Responsibility: The Flemish Design Critic K.-N. Elno (1920-1993), Fredie Floré, Ghent University, Belgium3. The Metamorphosis of a Norwegian Design Magazine: Nye Bonytt, 1968-1971, Kjetil Fallan, University of Oslo, Norway4. Writing Contemporary Design into History, Stephen Hayward, University of the Arts London, UKPART 2: MEDIATIONS - BETWEEN DESIGN AND CONSUMPTIONIntroduction5. Thinking in Metaphor: Figurative Conceptualising in John Evelyn's Diary and John Ruskin's Stones of Venice, Anne Hultzsch, University College London, UK6. Regulating the Body in Army Manuals and Trade Guides: The Design of the First World War Khaki Service Dress, Jane Tynan, University of the Arts London, UK7. Vitaglass and the Discourse of Modern Culture, John Stanislav Sadar, Monash University, Australia8. Lewis Mumford's Lever House: Writing a House of Glass, Ann Sobiech Munson, Iowa State University, USA PART 3: DESIGNING WITH AND THROUGH LANGUAGEIntroduction9. Judging a Book by its Cover: or Does Modernist Form Follow Function?, Polly Cantlon and Alice Lo, both University of Waikato, New Zealand 10. Reading Details: Caruso St John and the Poetic Intent of Construction Documents, Mhairi McVicar, Welsh School of Architecture, UK11. Applying Oral Sources: Design Historian, Practitioner and Participant:, Chae Ho Lee, University of Hawai‘i at Mânoa, USA12. Fluid Typography: Construction, Metamorphosis and Revelation, Barbara Brownie, University of Hertfordshire, UK PART 4: SHOWING AS TELLING - ON DESIGN BEYOND TEXTIntroduction13. Showing Architecture Through Exhibitions: A Taxonomical Analysis Applied to the Case of the First Venice Architecture Biennale (1980), Léa-Catherine Szacka, University College London, UK14. Design as Language without Words: AG Fronzoni, Gabriele Oropallo, University College London, UK 15. On the Legal Protection of Design: Things and Words about Them, Stina Teilmann-Lock, Danish Design School, Denmark 16. Text-led and Object-led Research Paradigms: Doing Without Words, Michael Biggs and Daniela Büchler, both University of Hertfordshire, UKContributorsList of IllustrationsSelect BibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisDas Besondere an diesem Buch: Es enthält in jedem Kapitel auch eine Audioversion des Textes.Bauingenieur zu sein ist ein erfüllender Beruf. Bauingenieure gestalten nachhaltige Infrastruktur. Wir errichten Häuser, Straßen, Brücken, Tunnel, Kulturstätten, Türme und vieles mehr. Dafür bringen wir häufig die ganze Ingenieurskunst auf, um solide Lösungen zu erreichen. Und häufig noch mehr, was jenseits der technischen Ingenieurskunst liegt. Das Buch schaut über die technischen Lösungen hinaus in das weitere Umfeld des Bauingenieurs und reflektiert seinen Beruf und die eigene Einstellung aus unterschiedlichsten Perspektiven. „Brückenbau beginnt im Kopf“ bedeutet, sich darauf einzulassen, Verbindungen zu suchen – zu einem ganzheitlichen Berufsbild und seinem Standort als Ingenieur. Wenn der sichere Brückenschlag zum Umfeld des Ingenieurs gelingt, heißt Ingenieursein mehr als perfekte Technik anzuwenden.Table of ContentsIngenieursein mit Gelassenheit,- Ingenieure und ihre Verantwortung.- Ingenieure und ihre Schublade.- Ingenieure im Wandel der Digitalisierung.- Beruflicher Alltag – Ingenieure in Bau- und Planungsprojekten.- Ingenieur als Führungskraft.- Ingenieure und ihr Fehlermanagement.- Statik verträgt sich nicht mit Hektik.- „Psyche“ der Statik.- Bauingenieure zu klein beim Klimawandel?.- Ingenieure und Politiker.- Ingenieure und Juristen im Bau- und Planungsprozess.- Ingenieure und Verkauf.- Ingenieure und (ihre) Kinder.

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Book SynopsisFrom the Rust Belt to Silicon Valley, the intersection between architecture and industry has provided a rich and evolving source for historians of architecture. In a historical context, industrial architecture evokes the smoking factories of the nineteenth century or Fordist production complexes of the twentieth century. This book documents the changing nature of industrial building and planning from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Drawing on research from the United States, Europe and Australia, this collection of essays highlights key moments in industrial architecture and planning representative of the wider paradigms in the field. Areas of analysis include industrial production, factories, hydroelectricity, aerospace, logistics, finance, scientific research and mining. The selected case studies serve to highlight architectural and planning innovations in industry and their contributions to wider cultural and societal currents. This richly illustrated collection will be of interest for a wide range of built environment studies, incorporating findings from both historical and theoretical scholarship and design research.Table of ContentsThe Architecture of Industry

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Book SynopsisA treasure trove of ideas and encouragement for architects looking for alternatives to the severity of modernism and graceless postmodernism.

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Book SynopsisThis book is a cutting edge study examining the attitudes to both nature and the built environment of the designer, the client and the society in which an intervention (be it architecture, landscape design or a piece of art) is made. The legacy of the Modernist view of nature and the environment is also addressed, and the degree to which such ideas continue to impinge on contemporary interventions is assessed.Table of ContentsIntroduction. Part 1. Mind. Projecting a Relationship. Philosophy of Place. Part 2. Matter. Modern Metiation. Considerate Intervention. Index.

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Book SynopsisWhat if the house you are about to enter was built with the confessed purpose of seducing you, of creating various sensations destined to touch your soul and make you reflect on who you are? Could architecture have such power? This was the assumption of generations of architects at the beginning of modernity.Exploring the role of theatre and fiction in defining character in architecture, Louise Pelletier examines how architecture developed to express political and social intent. Applying this to the modern day, Pelletier considers how architects can learn from these eighteenth century attitudes in order to restore architecture''s communicative dimension.Through an in-depth and interdisciplinary analysis of the beginning of modernity, Louise Pelletier encourages today''s architects to consider the political and linguistic implications of their tools. Combining theory, historical studies and research, Architecture in Words will provoke thought and enriTable of ContentsIntroduction Part 1: Character and Expression: Staging Architecture 1. Architecture as an Expressive Language 2. Character Theory at the Theatre 3. Rules of Expression and the Paradox of Acting Part 2: Playacting and the Culture of Entertainment: Architecture as Theatre 4. Theatre as the Locus of Public and Social Expression 5. Theatre Architecture and the Role of the Proscenium Part 3: Language and Personal Imagination: An Architecture for the Senses 6. Taste, Talent and Genius in Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics 7. Newtonian Empirical Sciences and the Order of Nature 8. Empirical Philosophy and the Nature of Sensations Part 4: Plotting an Architectural Program: The Space of Desire 9. Staging an Architecture in Words 10. The Narrative Space of Desire Conclusion: The Temporality of Human Experience Selected Bibliography

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