House Architecture

In his extraordinary new book, Alain de Botton explores the importance of buildings in our lives, pondering our attachment to our homes and considering such questions as: Why do people disagree about taste? Can beautiful surroundings make us good?

Every 24 minutes, someone somewhere in Britain starts an extension on their house. Regrettably, a shocking number of these building projects ends in total disaster.

It is ordinary homes, not grand public buildings or the mansions of the rich that have all the best stories. The rises and falls, the shifts in the fortunes of neighbourhoods and whole cities are here, tracing the often surprising journey one single house can take from elegant dwelling in a fashionable district to a tenement for society’s rejects. Packed with remarkable human stories, it is a phenomenal insight into living history, a history we can see every day on the streets where we live.

Thirty years after its publication, The Death and Life of Great American Cities was described by The New York Times as "perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning....[It] can also be seen in a much larger context. It is first of all a work of literature; the descriptions of street life as a kind of ballet and the bitingly satiric account of traditional planning theory can still be read for pleasure even by those who long ago absorbed and appropriated the book's arguments."

To look south and skyward from Central Park these days is to gaze upon a physical manifestation of tens of billions of dollars in global wealth: a series of soaring spires stretching from Park Avenue to Broadway. Known as Billionaires’ Row, this set of slender high-rise residences has transformed the skyline of New York City, thanks to developer-friendly policies and a seemingly endless gush of cash from tech, finance, and foreign oligarchs. And chances are most of us will never be invited to step inside.

Moving house has never flustered author Jane Christmas. She loves houses: viewing them, negotiating their price, dreaming up interior plans, hiring tradespeople to do the work and overseeing renovations. She loves houses so much that she’s moved thirty-two times. With humour and irreverence, Open House reveals that what we think we gain by constantly moving house actually obscures the precious and vital parts of our lives that we leave behind.This is a memoir that will appeal to anyone whose pulse quickens at the mere mention of real estate.  

In this mesmerizing memoir-in-essays, New York Times best-selling author Erica Bauermeister renovates a trash-filled house in eccentric Port Townsend, Washington, and in the process takes listeners on a journey to discover the ways our spaces subliminally affect us. A personal, accessible, and literary exploration of the psychology of architecture, this book is designed for homeowners, remodelers, and those who are simply curious about how our built environments shape who we become.

Get designing and building with architect and TV presenter George Clarke. From marvellous materials to future tech – discover the stories behind our homes....

Royal Lodge is one of a scattered group of dwellings, mansions, forts, and follies in the southern recesses and environs of Windsor Great Park which have served royal pleasures and private needs ever since the carefree days of Charles II. It has been the home of artists and courtiers and farmers and foresters, the picnic pavilion of queens and the private abode of two kings. Meticulously researched, royal chronicler Helen Cathcart paints a vivid picture of the evolving architecture, changing decor, and esteemed inhabitants of Royal Lodge from earliest days through to the mid-twentieth century.

Confused and puzzled by the world's disinterest, today's frustrated architects find comfort and consolation in entertaining obscene fantasies.

Housing (low cost social housing as well as luxury dwellings) has been the major raison d'être of generations of European architects. American architects must be congratulated for making entirely different career choices: Housing is not architecture.

Skriven av Mikael Askergren för Art-land International, Köpenhamn, Danmark, Nummer 2: 1997. Har även publicerats i "Magasin för Modern Arkitektur", Stockholm, Sverige, Nummer 19: 1998.

Skriven av Mikael Askergren på svenska och översatt till engelska för bokprojektet "FutureDesignDays 2003; in Action" publicerad av Futurelab, Borås, Sweden, 2004.

Possession, they say, is nine-tenths of the law, but it is also what too many houses and towns lack. We are not possessed by our home places. This lost quality of dwelling—the soul of buildings—haunts most of our houses and our landscape. Dwelling in Possibility is a search for the ordinary qualities that make some houses a home, and some public places welcoming.

Gail Gibbons uses clear, simple wording to present all the steps involved in building a house. From the architect who draws the plans, through the various types of workers who construct it, to the family who will make the house their home, each aspect is explained. Children can easily follow along as construction begins at the ground level with surveyors, describing the jobs of carpenters and plumbers.

Why GAO did this study. The internet is a global system of interconnected networks used by billions of people across the world to perform personal, educational, commercial, and governmental tasks. The US Government over time has relinquished its oversight role of the internet. A global, multistakeholder community made up of many organizations shapes internet policy, operations, and security. But the ongoing and increasing reliance on the internet underscores the need to understand the risks to its underlying architecture.

The story of Emperor Nero and the building of his Golden Palace. The reconstruction of the great fire of 64 AD, which destroyed the capital of the Empire, and the golden palace of Nero in a new production by Altair4 Multimedia & LA CASE Books: from the crumbling insulae of the Suburra to the sumptuous architecture of the Domus Aurea, from Nero's artificial lake to the Colosseum, from the Neronian porticoes on the Via Sacra to the glories of the Imperial Fora, from the imposing bulk of the Colossus of Nero to the architectural revolution of the Octagonal Hall.

Es hora de elegir un nuevo Papa. Cientos de miles de personas se reúnen frente a la Basílica de San Pedro para saber quién será el próximo líder de la Iglesia Católica. Una bocanada de humo blanco procedente de una chimenea indica que los cardenales (los "príncipes" de la iglesia) han elegido a uno de los suyos que seguirá siendo el líder de la fe que ha existido durante más de dos mil años.