Search results for ""Author Susannah Hagan""

Susannah Hagan boldly discusses the fraught relationship between key dominating areas of architectural discourse - digital design, environmental design, and avant-garde design.Digitalia firstly demonstrates that drawing such firm lines between architectural spheres is damaging and foolish, particularly as both environmental and avant-garde practices are experimenting with the digital, and secondly remonstrates with an avant-garde that has repudiated the social/ethical agenda of the modernist avant-garde because it failed the first time round. It is environmental architecture that has picked up the social/ethical ball and is running with it, using the digital to very different, and more far-reaching, ends.As the debates rage, this book is a key read for all who are involved or intrigued.

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There is almost nothing new left to say about the urgent need to reduce our devastating impact on the biosphere that supports us. In architectural terms, we have been told since the 1960s that mainstream architecture is not engaged enough with the environmental consequences of what it produces and how it produces it. The usual approach is to propose new ways of designing and building to persuade the reader of the centrality of environmental concerns. But too many readers have remained resolutely unpersuaded over decades. In four sharp, interlocking essays, this book asks why the majority of the architectural profession and its clients still only pay lip service to the importance of the environmental. The first - Overthrowing - examines the Modern Movement’s astonishing success in establishing itself, and its legacy in contemporary architectural culture; the second - Converting - explores the inability of the environmental movement to ignite and transform architecture in the same way; the third - Making - discusses the importance of shifting architecture back to a materially-based view of itself to increase its effectiveness, and finally - Educating - looks at the need for architectural education to urgently reconsider how and what it teaches in the volatile 21st century. This in no way diminishes the extraordinary contribution that a minority in architectural practice and education have made to the development of environmental design and environmental thinking over the past fifty years. In each essay, therefore, are examples of innovative and determined people pursuing other ways of practicing architecture and other ways of training architects for this critical century, who are pulling the model of a nature-centric practice out of the margins and into the centre.

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Those involved in the creation of public spaces think a great deal about the users of those spaces. Users think little, if at all, about those who create them. There are many: planners, developers, investors, contractors, special-interest groups, governments from local to national, and above all in this book, designers. The complex sets of relationships in which the designer is enmeshed remain largely unknown, as does the effect of those relationships on the public spaces they design. In ‘super-diverse’ cities like London, a successful public realm, where people can be together in trust and tolerance, is essential. A city’s commitment to design quality indicates a commitment to civic health. In the interests of such commitment, the book asks: What should public space ‘design intentions’ be today?; Who is ‘the public’ of public spaces?; What can/should designers do to protect the ‘publicness’ of public spaces?; Was state financed public space mid-20th century of any higher quality than privately financed public space today?; How significant is the shift from commissioning architects to design public spaces mid-20th century to commissioning landscape architects and public realm architects today?; Does emptiness in public spaces have a value?; Does retail in public spaces narrow the range of people visiting them?

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Meet Egg. Egg is not like any other egg you've ever seen. Egg is gold and white, and can fly and talk and be seen by children and special grownups. It lives in a place of stillness and silence until one day a girl’s hand suddenly picks it up and sticks it in her bedroom. Egg is amazed. What is this place? The hand belongs to Hester, and she and her younger brother, Sam, live on a volcanic island. Slowly, Egg realises it has to help them leave their unhappy house, and one night leads them down to a beautiful yacht called Waterwitch. It’s crewed by children of all ages who’ve also left home, and captained by a woman called the Skipper. You might think the adventures end there...but it's here where they really begin. From a stormy ocean to a faraway desert, Egg helps a lost girl called Raahi and a brave girl called Sana and learns that finding can be losing and losing can be finding, and that there are amazing things hiding in the middle of nowhere. For readers looking to get whisked into a magical story akin to the classics, Egg is perfect for 7 - 9 year-olds. Come aboard – adventure awaits!

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