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Book Architectural Agents

    Book Details:
  • Author : Annabel Jane Wharton
  • Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
  • Release : 2015-02-15
  • ISBN : 1452943397
  • Pages : 329 pages

Download or read book Architectural Agents written by Annabel Jane Wharton and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2015-02-15 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Buildings are not benign; rather, they commonly manipulate and abuse their human users. Architectural Agents makes the case that buildings act in the world independently of their makers, patrons, owners, or occupants. And often they act badly. Treating buildings as bodies, Annabel Jane Wharton writes biographies of symptomatic structures in order to diagnose their pathologies. The violence of some sites is rooted in historical trauma; the unhealthy spatial behaviors of other spaces stem from political and economic ruthlessness. The places examined range from the Cloisters Museum in New York City and the Palestine Archaeological Museum (renamed the Rockefeller Museum) in Jerusalem to the grand Hostal de los Reyes Católicos in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, and Las Vegas casino resorts. Recognizing that a study of pathological spaces would not be complete without an investigation of digital structures, Wharton integrates into her argument an original consideration of the powerful architectures of video games and immersive worlds. Her work mounts a persuasive critique of popular phenomenological treatments of architecture. Architectural Agents advances an alternative theorization of buildings’ agency—one rooted in buildings’ essential materiality and historical formation—as the basis for her significant intervention in current debates over the boundaries separating humans, animals, and machines.

Book Architects of Delusion

Download or read book Architects of Delusion written by Simon Serfaty and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2013-05-23 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The commencement of war in Iraq in 2003 was met with a variety of reactions around the globe. In Architects of Delusion, Simon Serfaty presents a historical analysis of how and why the decision to wage war was endorsed by some of America's main European allies, especially Britain, and opposed by others, especially France and Germany. Tony Blair, George W. Bush, Jacques Chirac, and Gerhard Schroeder were, Serfaty argues, the architects of one of the most serious crises in postwar transatlantic relations. These four heads of state were the victims not only of their personal delusions but also of those of the nations they led. They all played the hand that their countries had dealt them—the forceful hand of a righteous America, the principled acquiescence of a faithful Britain, the determined intransigence of a quarrelsome France, and the ambiguous "new way" of a recast Germany. Serfaty's deft interweaving of the political histories and cultures of the four countries and the personalities of their leaders transcends the Europe-bashing debate sparked by the Iraq invasion. He contends that not one of these four leaders was entirely right or entirely wrong in his approach to the others or to the issues, before and during the war. For the resulting wounds to heal, though, and for the continuity of transatlantic relations, he reminds us that the United States and France must end their estrangement, France and Britain must resolve their differences, Germany must carry its weight relative to both France and Britain, and the United States must exert the same visionary leadership for the twenty-first century that it showed during its rise to preeminence in the twentieth century.

Book The Growth Delusion

Download or read book The Growth Delusion written by David Pilling and published by Crown. This book was released on 2018-01-30 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative critique of the pieties and fallacies of our obsession with economic growth We live in a society in which a priesthood of economists, wielding impenetrable mathematical formulas, set the framework for public debate. Ultimately, it is the perceived health of the economy which determines how much we can spend on our schools, highways, and defense; economists decide how much unemployment is acceptable and whether it is right to print money or bail out profligate banks. The backlash we are currently witnessing suggests that people are turning against the experts and their faulty understanding of our lives. Despite decades of steady economic growth, many citizens feel more pessimistic than ever, and are voting for candidates who voice undisguised contempt for the technocratic elite. For too long, economics has relied on a language which fails to resonate with people's actual experience, and we are now living with the consequences. In this powerful, incisive book, David Pilling reveals the hidden biases of economic orthodoxy and explores the alternatives to GDP, from measures of wealth, equality, and sustainability to measures of subjective wellbeing. Authoritative, provocative, and eye-opening, The Growth Delusion offers witty and unexpected insights into how our society can respond to the needs of real people instead of pursuing growth at any cost.

Book Architects  Sketches

    Book Details:
  • Author : Kendra Schank Smith
  • Publisher : Routledge
  • Release : 2012-05-23
  • ISBN : 1136429093
  • Pages : 153 pages

Download or read book Architects Sketches written by Kendra Schank Smith and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-05-23 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concepts from architects’ minds evolve through sketches and as a mode of transference are conveyed to the finished building. This book compares qualities of sketches to reveal unique approaches to the instruments of thinking in which all architects engage. It provides new insight into the relationship between architectural sketches and the process of creative manipulation. Sketches comprise a thinking mechanism, and through the qualities of ambiguity, quickness and change, they initiate a dialogue for architects. As a medium to facilitate communication, recording, discovery and evaluation, their pertinence lies in their ability to exhibit both the precise and the imprecise. Exploring four related theoretical approaches, play, memory-imagination-fantasy, caricature and the grotesque, the book shows how imprecision stimulates imagination to conceive new forms in the dialogue of architectural sketches.

Book Garage

Download or read book Garage written by Olivia Erlanger and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A secret history of the garage as a space of creativity, from its invention by Frank Lloyd Wright to its use by start-ups and garage bands. Frank Lloyd Wright invented the garage when he moved the automobile out of the stable into a room of its own. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (allegedly) started Apple Computer in a garage. Suburban men turned garages into man caves to escape from family life. Nirvana and No Doubt played their first chords as garage bands. What began as an architectural construct became a cultural construct. In this provocative history and deconstruction of an American icon, Olivia Erlanger and Luis Ortega Govela use the garage as a lens through which to view the advent of suburbia, the myth of the perfect family, and the degradation of the American dream. The stories of what happened in these garages became self-fulfilling prophecies the more they were repeated. Hewlett-Packard was founded in a garage that now bears a plaque: The Birthplace of Silicon Valley. Google followed suit, dreamed up in a Menlo Park garage a few decades later. Also conceived in a garage: the toy company Mattel, creator of Barbie, the postwar, posthuman representation of American women. Garages became guest rooms, game rooms, home gyms, wine cellars, and secret bondage lairs, a no-commute destination for makers and DIYers--surfboard designers, ski makers, pet keepers, flannel-wearing musicians, weed-growing nuns. The garage was an aboveground underground, offering both a safe space for withdrawal and a stage for participation--opportunities for isolation or empowerment.

Book The Work

    Book Details:
  • Author : Rob Krier
  • Publisher : Birkhäuser
  • Release : 2021-07-19
  • ISBN : 3035622809
  • Pages : 1344 pages

Download or read book The Work written by Rob Krier and published by Birkhäuser. This book was released on 2021-07-19 with total page 1344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rob Krier hat als Architekt, Stadtplaner und Bildhauer ein facettenreiches Gesamtwerk geschaffen: es wird hier erstmals umfassend dargestellt. Nach dem Studium war Krier bei O. M. Ungers und Frei Otto tätig, er führte ein eigenes Büro in Wien und Berlin und lehrte er von 1976 - 1998 an der TU Wien sowie 1986 als Gastprofessor an der Yale University. Anknüpfend an eine Fülle historischer Vorbilder und archetypischer Grundmuster, entwickelte er als Architekt und Stadtplaner Typologien von Straßen- und Platzräumen und war für zahlreiche städtebauliche Projekte in ganz Europa verantwortlich, u.a. im Zuge der IBA in Berlin die Blockrandbebauungen an der Ritterstraße, den Wohnkomplex in der Breitenfurter Straße in Wien, den Stadtteil Kirchsteigfeld in Potsdam sowie eine Vielzahl von Projekten in den Niederlanden.

Book The Paradoxes of Delusion

Download or read book The Paradoxes of Delusion written by Louis A. Sass and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Insanity—in clinical practice as in the popular imagination—is seen as a state of believing things that are not true and perceiving things that do not exist. Most schizophrenics, however, do not act as if they mistake their delusions for reality. In a work of uncommon insight and empathy, Louis A. Sass shatters conventional thinking about insanity by juxtaposing the narratives of delusional schizophrenics with the philosophical writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Book The Architect

Download or read book The Architect written by and published by . This book was released on 1927 with total page 778 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book The Great American Delusion

Download or read book The Great American Delusion written by Patrick Davies and published by Caravan Books UK. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Something has been going badly wrong in America. But what is really happening, why, and what does it mean? Could the US itself now be the greatest threat to the future of the West? What does Joe Biden need to do to get America back on track? In this fascinating account of America today, Patrick Davies, former British Deputy Ambassador to the US, sets out to understand how America, blinded by myths of its own exceptionalism, has failed to tackle serious political, social and economic problems which are exacerbating divisions in its society, poisoning its politics and ultimately fuelling America’s decline. The Great American Delusion asks whether, with global power shifting eastwards, the US can save itself and, with it, the Western world before it’s too late. Patrick Davies worked alongside the Obama and Trump White Houses for five years. He has more than 30 years’ experience of America, its people and its politics.

Book Architecture of Defeat

Download or read book Architecture of Defeat written by Kengo Kuma and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-06-11 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kengo Kuma, one of Japan’s leading architects, has been combining professional practice and academia for most of his career. In addition to creating many internationally recognized buildings all over the world, he has written extensively about the history and theory of architecture. Like his built work, his writings also reflect his profound personal philosophy. Architecture of Defeat is no exception. Now available in English for the first time, the book explores events and architectural trends in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in both Japan and beyond. It brings together a collection of essays which Kuma wrote after disasters such as the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City on 9/11 and the earthquake and tsunami that obliterated much of the built landscape on Japan’s northern shore in a matter of minutes in 2011. Asking if we have been building in a manner that is too self-confident or arrogant, he examines architecture’s intrinsic—and often problematic—relationship to the powerful forces of contemporary politics, economics, consumerism, and technology, as well as its vital ties to society. Despite the title, Architecture of Defeat is an optimistic and hopeful book. Rather than anticipating the demise of architecture, Kuma envisages a different mode of conceiving architecture: guided and shaped by more modesty and with greater respect for the forces of our natural world. Beautifully designed and illustrated, this is a fascinating insight into the thinking of one of the world’s most influential architects.

Book The Brickbuilder

Download or read book The Brickbuilder written by and published by . This book was released on 1893 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An architectural monthly.

Book The Prefabricated Home

Download or read book The Prefabricated Home written by Colin Davies and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2005-06-15 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of prefabricated architecture around the world, from McDonalds drive-through restaurants to Ikea's flat-pack house.

Book Belief  Imagination  and Delusion

Download or read book Belief Imagination and Delusion written by Ema Sullivan-Bissett and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-01-23 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together recent work on the nature of belief, imagination, and delusion, and seeks to get clearer on the nature of belief and imagination, the ways in which they relate to one another, and how they might be integrated into accounts of delusional belief formation.

Book Architects  and Builders  Magazine

Download or read book Architects and Builders Magazine written by and published by . This book was released on 1902 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book The Icon Project

    Book Details:
  • Author : Leslie Sklair
  • Publisher : Oxford University Press
  • Release : 2017-02-27
  • ISBN : 0190464208
  • Pages : 353 pages

Download or read book The Icon Project written by Leslie Sklair and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-27 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last quarter century, a new form of iconic architecture has appeared throughout the world's major cities. Typically designed by globe-trotting "starchitects" or by a few large transnational architectural firms, these projects are almost always funded by the private sector in the service of private interests. Whereas in the past monumental architecture often had a strong public component, the urban ziggurats of today are emblems and conduits of capitalist globalization. In The Icon Project, Leslie Sklair focuses on ways in which capitalist globalization is produced and represented all over the world, especially in globalizing cities. Sklair traces how the iconic buildings of our era-elaborate shopping malls, spectacular museums, and vast urban megaprojects--constitute the triumphal "Icon Project" of contemporary global capitalism, promoting increasing inequality and hyperconsumerism. Two of the most significant strains of iconic architecture--unique icons recognized as works of art, designed by the likes of Gehry, Foster, Koolhaas, and Hadid, as well as successful, derivative icons that copy elements of the starchitects' work--speak to the centrality of hyperconsumerism within contemporary capitalism. Along with explaining how the architecture industry organizes the social production and marketing of iconic structures, he also shows how corporations increasingly dominate the built environment and promote the trend towards globalizing, consumerist cities. The Icon Project, Sklair argues, is a weapon in the struggle to solidify capitalist hegemony as well as reinforce transnational capitalist control of where we live, what we consume, and how we think.

Book Architect

Download or read book Architect written by and published by . This book was released on 1873 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book The Architectural Director  being an approved guide to architects  draughtsmen  students  amateurs  and builders  in the study  employment  and execution of architecture     Extensively illustrated by plates and tables

Download or read book The Architectural Director being an approved guide to architects draughtsmen students amateurs and builders in the study employment and execution of architecture Extensively illustrated by plates and tables written by John Billington and published by . This book was released on 1834 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: