Showing titles in Architecture

In Top 10 Fascinating Facts About Westminster Abbey, Caspar Dene explores the hidden layers of this extraordinary building and reveals ten surprising truths that will forever change how you see it. With rich storytelling and historical insight, each chapter uncovers a new facet of the Abbey’s incredible past.

Over more than five decades, legendary architect Moshe Safdie has built some of the world's most influential and memorable structures. Safdie always refers to the "silent client" an architect must ultimately serve: the people who live in, work in, or experience a building. If Walls Could Speak takes listeners behind the veil of an essential yet mysterious profession to explain through Safdie's own experiences how an architect thinks and works.

Country House Collection documents the development of stately homes in England with a trajectory from Medieval times to a burgeoning of the neo-classical style of building in the early to mid 18th-century. The grand houses that appeared in rural locations manifested statements of a ruling class composed of self-made landowners, merchants and families of historic lineage and title.

How the emerging field of speculative futures can help us dream--and build--better, sustainable, and more equitable cities for everyone. Speculative futures--design approaches that help us visualize new and potential worlds--move us beyond what currently exists into what could one day be...

This riveting, true account of the 1929 race to build New York City's tallest skyscraper evokes the glory of an exciting time long past.

In this haunting poem, a guest on his way to a wedding reception is stopped by the Ancient Mariner. With his "glittering eye" he transfixes the guest and then relates a compelling tale of a sea voyage fraught with strange happenings. The Mariner tells of journeying through tyrannous storms to ice mast-high, through mist and snow to the deadly inertia of the doldrums. There are unearthly visitations, ill omens, and supernatural happenings - all leading to the revelation of the Mariner's strange fate.

In this revolutionary book, Joan Breton Connelly challenges our most basic assumptions about the Parthenon and the ancient Athenians. Beginning with the natural environment and its rich mythic associations, she re-creates the development of the Acropolis - the Sacred Rock at the heart of the city-state - from its prehistoric origins to its Periklean glory days as a constellation of temples among which the Parthenon stood supreme.

Over the past 10 years, urban planners, technology companies, and governments have promoted smart cities with a somewhat utopian vision of urban life made knowable and manageable through data collection and analysis. Emerging smart cities have become both crucibles and showrooms for the practical application of the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and the integration of big data into everyday life. Are smart cities optimized, sustainable, digitally networked solutions to urban problems? Or are they neoliberal, corporate-controlled, undemocratic non-places?

Tuvieron que transcurrir muchos años para que las palabras de Pla perdieran finalmente vigencia. Fruto de un trabajo lento y laborioso, Gijs van Hensbergen ha conseguido construir un retrato del hombre que fue Antoni Gaudí, tanto como persona como ciudadano dentro de su contexto social, político, artístico y religioso. Esta deslumbrante biografía cubre con equilibrio y claridad todas las etapas de su vida, desde su infancia en Reus hasta su amistad con la familia Güell y el renacimiento catalanista, prestando gran atención a su fervor religioso y su vida austera.

For more than 850 years, Notre Dame Cathedral has stood at the heart of Paris—a Gothic masterpiece, a stage for history, and a symbol of resilience that has inspired awe across centuries. From its foundation stone in 1163 to its triumphant reopening after the devastating 2019 fire, this cathedral has witnessed kings and revolutions, processions and protests, literature and legend. It is not only a place of worship but a monument that embodies the very soul of France.

Disability critiques of architecture usually emphasize the need for modification and increased access, but The Architecture of Disability calls for a radical reorientation of this perspective by situating experiences of impairment as a new foundation for the built environment. With its provocative proposal for "the construction of disability," this book fundamentally reconsiders how we conceive of and experience disability in our world.

An extraordinary investigation into shade, this “compelling . . . conversation-starter draws examples from history, city-planning and social policy” (NPR) to change the way we think about a critical natural resource that should be available to all. “Thought-provoking . . . Bloch, an...

In Japanese gardens, composition follows from placement of the first stone; all elements and plantings become interconnected. These eight essays on Kyoto gardens similarly begin with keen description and build into richly meditative excursions into art, Buddhism, nature, and science. Landscape architect Marc Keane shows how Japanese gardens are both a microcosm of the natural universe and a clear expression of our humanity, mirroring how we think, worship, and organize our lives and communities.

In The Language of Things, Deyan Sudjic, director of the Design Museum, decodes the things around us: their hidden meanings, our relationships with them, how they shape our lives and why we desire them. Design is everywhere. It seduces, pleases and inspires us. It makes us part with our money. It defines who we think we are. An iPhone, an anglepoise lamp, a Picasso, a banknote, an Armani suit, a William Morris textile, a Lucky Strike packet, a spacecraft - every object tells a story.

Great cities are complex, chaotic and colossal. These are cities that dominate the world stage and define eras; where ideas flourish, revolutions are born and history is made. Through ten unique cities, from the founding of ancient capitals to buzzing modern megacities, Paul Strathern explores...

One of the classic works on interior decoration, Edith Wharton’s The Decoration of Houses offers a comprehensive look at the history and character of turn-of-the-century interior design. Co-written with architect Ogden Codman, Jr., this invaluable reference provides us with numerous keen and practical axioms for house design, such as (1) The better the house, the less need for curtains, and (2) the height of a well-proportioned doorway should be twice its width.

Mazes and Labyrinths is a look into the origin and mystery of mazes. From ancient stone carvings, Minoan palaces to today's hedge-maze, Matthews chronicles the history of the maze. With devoted scholarship to "the lure of the labyrinth," W. H. Matthews has composed an exhaustive history of mazes and labyrinths from antiquity to the present. Important examples include the Great Labyrinth of Egypt with its 3,000 rooms, the labyrinth of Daedalus, the Lincolnshire and Yorkshire hedge mazes, and the Stone Labyrinths of Finland.

For listeners who enjoyed Finding the Mother Tree and The Hidden Life of Trees comes the first-ever book about a movement to restore biodiversity in our cities and towns by transforming empty lots, backyards, and degraded land into mini-forests. Author Hannah Lewis is the forest maker turning asphalt into ecosystems to save the planet, and she wants everyone to know they can do it too.

From “tomorrow’s greatest designer” (The Atlantic), a personal and deeply researched look at how the choices we build into our environment reflect and determine the way we think, connect, and live. We've been led to believe that purposefully designed spaces are something reserved only for...

Out of Architecture is both a call to reassess the architecture profession and its education, and a toolkit for graduates and working architects to untangle their skills, passions, and value from traditional architectural practice and consider alternate pathways. Written by design professionals and expert career consultants, this book is informed by numerous client accounts as well as the authors' own stories and routes out of architecture.