Download or read book Dingbat 2 0 the Iconic Los Angeles Apartment As Projection of a Metropolis written by Thurman Grant and published by Doppelhouse Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dingbat 2.0 is the first critical study of the most ubiquitous and mundane building type in Los Angeles: the dingbat apartment. Often dismissed as ugly and unremarkable, dingbat apartments have qualities that arguably make them innovative, iconoclastic, and distinctly "L.A." For more than half a century the idiosyncratic dingbat has been largely anonymous, occasionally fetishized and often misunderstood. Praised and vilified in equal measure, dingbat apartments were a critical enabler of Los Angeles' rapid postwar urban expansion. While these apartments are known for their variety of midcentury decorated facades, less explored is the way they have contributed to a consistency of urban density achieved by few other twentieth century cities. Dingbat 2.0 integrates essays and discussions by some of today's leading architects, urbanists and cultural critics with photographic series, typological analysis, and speculative designs from around the world to propose alternate futures for Los Angeles housing and to consider how qualities of the inarguably flawed housing type can foreground many crucial issues facing global metropolises today. Dingbat 2.0 gives an often-maligned Los Angeles building type its long overdue moment in the sun, not only advancing a sophisticated typology of dingbats, but also reimagining the potential of the dingbat for the twenty-first century--at a moment when the imperative to create livable and modest affordable housing is more pressing than ever. - Ken Bernstein, Principal City Planner, Los Angeles Department of City Planning and Office of Historic Resources This book is extremely valuable for designers, particularly when one considers that architects generate species of buildings. An in-depth study of this particularly indigenous species to Los Angeles allows architects to not only become familiar with the causes and effects of the dingbat, but also the many possibilities for its future morphologies. - Jimenez Lai, founder and creator of Bureau Spectacular One of the many brilliances of this great book is the telling comparison of Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye--raised on its skinny pilotis to create an entirely ornamental void--and the dingbat--likewise lally column-upped in the air but usefully making room for cars beneath. Ever not quite modern, Corb pontificated about "machines for living" while never quite knowing what to do with their true enabler: the machine for leaving. The indelible dingbat is a sandwich of necessity and desire that bespeaks the throwaway (and getaway) modernity uniquely Made in L.A. -- Michael Sorkin, Architect, Urbanist and Author; Principal, Michael Sorkin Studio
Download or read book Elements of Architecture written by Pierre von Meiss and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-08 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This internationally significant book analyzes architectural elements, drawing general principles from the prevailing pluralism of architectural approaches. Von Meiss expertly bridges the gap between history and contemporary work by pinpointing the constant factors that exist in all architecture. A comprehensive analysis of the whole architectural phenomenon, this valuable book will prove especially useful to modern practitioners who need to make constant reference to buildings of the past. Staying away from the ineffectual arguments on styles that dominate today's architectural literature, this is the first recent book to attempt such a synthesis of architectural history and contemporary work. As such, it is unique.
Download or read book A Year with Swollen Appendices written by Brian Eno and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The diary and essays of Brian Eno republished twenty-five years on with a new introduction by the artist in a beautiful hardback edition.'One of the seminal books about music . . . an invaluable insight into the mind and working practices of one of the industry's undeniable geniuses.'GUARDIANAt the end of 1994, Brian Eno resolved to keep a diary. His plans to go to the cinema, theatre and galleries fell quickly to the wayside. What he did do - and write - however, was astonishing: ruminations on his collaborative work with David Bowie, U2, James and Jah Wobble, interspersed with correspondence and essays dating back to 1978. These 'appendices' covered topics from the generative and ambient music Eno pioneered to what he believed the role of an artist and their art to be, alongside adroit commentary on quotidian tribulations and happenings around the world.This beautiful 25th-anniversary hardcover edition has been redesigned in the same size as the diary that eventually became this book. It features two ribbons, pink paper delineating the appendices (matching the original edition) and a two-tone paper-over-board cover, which pays homage to the original design.An intimate insight into one of the most influential creative artists of our time, A Year with Swollen Appendices is an essential classic.
Download or read book The Colours of Light written by Tadao Andō and published by Phaidon Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty-seven of Ando's buildings, completed over the last decade, including such notable projects as the Kidosaki House, Tokyo, 1986, the Church on the Water, Hokkaido, 1988, the Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum and Annexe, 1992 and 1995, and the recently completed buildings for Benetton in Treviso, Italy, 1995, and the Meditation Space for Unesco, Paris, 1995. Richard Pare's images break with previous conventions of architectural representation; they convey his interest.
Download or read book Why Architecture Matters written by Paul Goldberger and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2023-01-31 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic work on the joy of experiencing architecture, with a new afterword reflecting on architecture’s place in the contemporary moment “Architecture begins to matter,” writes Paul Goldberger, “when it brings delight and sadness and perplexity and awe along with a roof over our heads.” In Why Architecture Matters, he shows us how that works in examples ranging from a small Cape Cod cottage to the vast, flowing Prairie houses of Frank Lloyd Wright, from the Lincoln Memorial to the Guggenheim Bilbao. He eloquently describes the Church of Sant’Ivo in Rome as a work that “embraces the deepest complexities of human imagination.” In his afterword to this new edition, Goldberger addresses the current climate in architectural history and takes a more nuanced look at projects such as Thomas Jefferson’s academical village at the University of Virginia and figures including Philip Johnson, whose controversial status has been the topic of much recent discourse. He argues that the emotional impact of great architecture remains vital, even as he welcomes the shift in the field to an increased emphasis on social justice and sustainability.
Download or read book Escape Home written by Charles Paterson and published by Doppelhouse Press. This book was released on 2017-03-21 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The riveting family memoir of a Frank Lloyd Wright apprentice begins in Nazi-occupied Europe and journeys home to American modernism.
Download or read book The Image of the City written by Kevin Lynch and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1964-06-15 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic work on the evaluation of city form. What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion—imageability—and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The wide scope of this study leads to an original and vital method for the evaluation of city form. The architect, the planner, and certainly the city dweller will all want to read this book.
Download or read book Seventy nine Short Essays on Design written by Michael Bierut and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2012-03-20 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design brings together the best of designer Michael Bierut's critical writing—serious or humorous, flattering or biting, but always on the mark. Bierut is widely considered the finest observer on design writing today. Covering topics as diverse as Twyla Tharp and ITC Garamond, Bierut's intelligent and accessible texts pull design culture into crisp focus. He touches on classics, like Massimo Vignelli and the cover of The Catcher in the Rye, as well as newcomers, like McSweeney's Quarterly Concern and color-coded terrorism alert levels. Along the way Nabakov's Pale Fire; Eero Saarinen; the paper clip; Celebration, Florida; the planet Saturn; the ClearRx pill bottle; and paper architecture all fall under his pen. His experience as a design practitioner informs his writing and gives it truth. In Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design, designers and nondesigners alike can share and revel in his insights.
Download or read book African American Architects written by Melvin Mitchell and published by . This book was released on 2020-01-31 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Melvin Mitchell believes that the 2016 opening of the NMAAHC signals either a black architect renaissance or the demise of the black architect-practitioner corps in the U.S. by 2040 if not earlier...along with the demise of Black America's cultural, political, and spatial beachheads in America's big cities.He argues in this book that America's perennial housing crisis - most acutely manifested in Black America's accelerating displacement from America's cities - must be countered by a new progressive 21st century movement that re-invents the revolutionary construction-based architecture modus operandi deployed 100 years ago by Booker T. Washington. Mitchell believes that Washington completed the build-out of the Tuskegee Institute campus as a counter to America's building of the "White City" aka the 1893 Chicago World's Fair-Columbian Exposition 600 miles to the north in Chicago, Illinois.
Download or read book The Films of John Carpenter written by John Kenneth Muir and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The films of John Carpenter cover a tremendous range and yet all bear his clear personal stamp. From the horrifying (Halloween) to the touching (Starman) to the controversial (The Thing) to the comic (Big Trouble in Little China), his films reflect a unique approach to filmmaking and singular views of humanity and American culture. This analysis of Carpenter's films includes a historical overview of his career, and in-depth entries on each of his films, from 1975's Dark Star to 1998's Vampires. Complete cast and production information is provided for each. The book also covers those films written and produced by Carpenter, such as Halloween II and Black Moon Rising, as well as Carpenter's work for television. Appendices are included on films Carpenter was offered but turned down, the slasher films that followed in the wake of the highly-successful Halloween, the actors and characters who make repeated appearances in Carpenter's films, and ratings for Carpenter's work. Notes, bibliography, and index are included.
Download or read book Architecture Concepts written by Bernard Tschumi and published by Rizzoli International Publications. This book was released on 2012 with total page 784 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophy and architecture by Bernard Tschumi.
Download or read book The Future of Architecture Since 1889 written by Jean-Louis Cohen and published by Phaidon Press. This book was released on 2016-10-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The highly acclaimed history of the architecture of the twentieth century and beyond - now in paperback Jean-Louis Cohen, one of the world's leading architectural historians, serves up a compelling account of the developments that have shaped the world in which we live today. This highly accessible book begins with the Paris Universal Exposition of 1889, tracing architecture's evolution to the early twenty-first century's globalized architectural culture. Illustrated with hundreds of drawings and photographs as well as portraits, publications, diagrams, film stills, and more, this survey places radical developments in architecture in a larger context, among those of art, technology, urbanism, and critical theory.
Download or read book How to Read Architecture written by Paulette Singley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-06-26 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How to Read Architecture is based on the fundamental premise that reading and interpreting architecture is something we already do, and that close observation matters. This book enhances this skill so that given an unfamiliar building, you will have the tools to understand it and to be inspired by it. Author Paulette Singley encourages you to misread, closely read, conventionally read, and unconventionally read architecture to stimulate your creative process. This book explores three essential ways to help you understand architecture: reading a building from the outside-in, from the inside-out, and from the position of out-and-out, or formal, architecture. This book erodes boundaries between the frequently compartmentalized fields of interior design, landscape design, and building design with chapters exploring concepts of terroir, scenography, criticality, atmosphere, tectonics, inhabitation, type, form, and enclosure. Using examples and case studies that span a wide range of historical and global precedents, Singley addresses the complex interaction among the ways a building engages its context, addresses its performative exigencies, and operates as an autonomous aesthetic object. Including over 300 images, this book is an essential read for both undergraduate and postgraduate students of architecture with a global focus on the interpretation of buildings in their context.
Download or read book Translations from Drawing to Building written by Robin Evans and published by MIT Press (MA). This book was released on 1997 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction by Mohsen Mostafavi The late Robin Evans (1944-1993) was a highly original historian of architecture whose writings covered a wide range of concerns: society's role in the evolution and development of building types, aspects of geometry, modes of projection, military architecture, representation of all kinds. No matter what the topic, however, he always drew on firsthand experience, arriving at his insights from direct observation. This book brings together eight of Evans's most significant essays. Written over a period of twenty years, from 1970, when he graduated from the Architectural Association, to 1990, they represent the diverse interests of an agile and skeptical mind. The book includes an introduction by Mohsen Mostafavi, a chronological account of the development of Evans's writing by Robin Middleton, and a bibliography by Richard Difford. CONTENTS Towards Anarchitecture The Rights of Retreat and Rites of Exclusion: Notes Towards the Definition of Wall Figures, Doors and Passages Rookeries and Model Dwellings: English Housing Reform and the Moralities of Private Space Not to Be Used for Wrapping Purposes Translations from Drawing to Building The Developed Surface: An Enquiry into the Brief Life of an Eighteenth-Century Drawing Technique Mies van der Rohes Paradoxical Symmetries
Download or read book Pretty Vacant written by Clive Piercy and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2003-08 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The only thing better than one boring building is hundreds of them. Far from the glamorous and avant-garde architectural features that make Los Angeles justifiably famous are the humble apartment buildings known as "dingbats." But Pretty Vacant dares to elevate the low-rise, the boxy, the not remarkably well-constructed to the architecturally sublime. In this inexpensive brick of a book, through scads of photographs of these underappreciated gems, their boundless surfacey charms are soon obvious. Combining funky textures, streamlined sconces, and future-retro ornamentation, these buildings practically define LA vernacular in their optimistic mix of mid-century modishness and darling details. Clive Piercy's photographs provide a streetside glimpse into the curious lives of these buildings, with charming names that range from the regal (Kings Studios) to the space-age (The Galaxie). Assembled in a compact but weighty package with more than 480 images, Pretty Vacant provides a snapshot tour and kitschy homage to this underdog architectural form.
Download or read book The Use of Words in Context written by John W. Black and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1985-11-30 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Speech Situation is a term worn with age in the teaching of public speaking in America. That it is comprised of occasion, speaker, and topic is a gross oversimplification. It also includes challenge, anxiety, emotion, fear, responsibility, faults of memory, and instants of pride. Out of the circumstances arise an increase in heart rate, a change in blood pressure, an abnormal pattern of breathing, a noticeable build up in perspiration, and an ongoing evaluation. For students this may be merely a grade or perhaps a series of evaluative remarks, possibly addressed both to the speaker and the other participants, the audience. It may entail a replaying of a record of the speech, indeed a videotape. Most important is the lasting impression that remains with all of the participants. What of the vocabulary of the speaker under the circumstances of the speech situation? This speaker - in the major portions of this work we may say, "this young man" - has spent time seeking an appropriate topic. He has outlined a composition around a central idea or thesis. He has marshaled evidence, details. He has framed an opening paragraph. He has been admonished not to give an essay, but to strive for audience contact, interpersonal communication. He makes his audible approach through his vocabulary and accompanying phonology. Under the tension, the speaker repeats; he adds meaningless vocalizations in periods that might logically be pauses. There are slips of the tongue. At worst, failing, he withdraws to await another day.
Download or read book Folding Architecture written by Sophia Vyzoviti and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A relatively new trend in architecture, folding is a playful method that opens up the design process to spontaneity and surprise. Folding Architecture presents the results of research into the technique, which was carried out in The Netherlands by the architectural faculty at the TU in Delft. It is an enlightening and inspiring survey that is vividly illustrated and presents all of the much-discussed concepts, projects and buildings in which this process has been applied. And as the book implies the possibilities are endless. Compulsory reference material for any architect or student of architecture who wishes to design outside of mainstream. Sophia Vyzoviti is an architect and teaches design method at the TU in Delft.