Download or read book How Buildings Learn written by Stewart Brand and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1995-10-01 with total page 648 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A captivating exploration of the ever-evolving world of architecture and the untold stories buildings tell. When a building is finished being built, that isn’t the end of its story. More than any other human artifacts, buildings improve with time—if they’re allowed to. Buildings adapt by being constantly refined and reshaped by their occupants, and in that way, architects can become artists of time rather than simply artists of space. From the connected farmhouses of New England to I.M. Pei’s Media Lab, from the evolution of bungalows to the invention of Santa Fe Style, from Low Road military surplus buildings to a High Road English classic like Chatsworth—this is a far-ranging survey of unexplored essential territory. Discover how structures become living organisms, shaped by the people who inhabit them, and learn how architects can harness the power of time to create enduring works of art through the interconnected worlds of design, function, and human ingenuity.

Download or read book How Buildings Work written by Edward Allen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-09-01 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illustrated with hundreds of illuminating line drawings, this classic guide reveals virtually every secret of a building's function: how it stands up, keeps its occupants safe and comfortable, gets built, grows old, and dies--and why some buildings do this so much better than others. Drawing on things he's learned from the many buildings he himself designed (and in some cases built with his own hands), Edward Allen explains complex phenomena such as the role of the sun in heating buildings and the range of structural devices that are used for support, from trusses and bearing walls to post-tensioned concrete beams and corbeled vaults. He stresses the importance of intelligent design in dealing with such problems as overheating and overcooling, excessive energy use, leaky roofs and windows, fire safety, and noisy interiors. He serves up some surprises: thermal insulation is generally a better investment than solar collectors; board fences are not effective noise barriers; there's one type of window that can be left open during a rainstorm. The new edition emphasizes "green" architecture and eco-conscious design and construction. It features a prologue on sustainable construction, and includes new information on topics such as the collapse of the World Trade Center, sick building syndrome, and EIFS failures and how they could have been prevented. Allen also highlights the array of amazing new building materials now available, such as self-cleaning glass, photovoltaics, transparent ceramics, cloud gel, and super-high-strength concrete and structural fibers. Edward Allen makes it easy for everyone--from armchair architects and sidewalk superintendents to students of architecture and construction--to understand the mysteries and complexities of even the largest building, from how it recycles waste and controls the movement of air, to how it is kept alive and growing.

Download or read book Water in Buildings written by William B. Rose and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2005-04-07 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive guide to understanding and managing the effects of water on buildings Water in Buildings: An Architect's Guide to Moisture and Mold is a detailed and highly useful reference to help architects and other design professionals create dry, healthy environments, without jeopardizing a project with poor liability management. Much more than a book of "quick fixes," this practical guide illuminates an essential understanding of the "whys" of moisture problems, including valuable information on how water behaves and how its performance can be anticipated and managed in building design. With a special emphasis on water's role in creating mold, an issue of growing concern and liability, Water in Buildings offers the most up-to-date information on rainwater management, below-grade water management, foundations, wall and roof construction, mechanical systems, moisture, and much more! Providing authoritative guidance to designers and builders, this definitive guide features: * Clear explanations of how water interacts with building materials and equipment * An in-depth exploration of the paths of leaks * Numerous case studies on such well-known structures as Mount Vernon, Independence Hall, and Wingspan (Frank Lloyd Wright) * Numerous descriptive drawings and photographs

Download or read book How Buildings Work written by Huw Evans and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-25 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An understanding of building physics is fundamental for the design and construction of safe, functional, energy efficient buildings. Without it, occupants’ health and comfort is compromised, energy bills become unmanageable, or the building fabric itself can fail. But it’s not just about providing a heating source or stopping the cold coming in; at the heart of building physics is a fine balancing act: how much ventilation will be required for the occupants and how can that be provided without compromising the thermal performance? How will the layout and fenestration affect light levels and cooling demand? How Buildings Work provides construction professionals with a clear understanding of the basic mechanisms of physics and how they affect the performance and operation of buildings. Heat, air, moisture, sound, light and radioactivity are explained in turn, yet all the while reminding the reader that none of these phenomena can be considered in isolation when designing a building. Whether you’re a student trying to get your head round the basics, or a seasoned practitioner looking for a quick refresher course.

Download or read book The Timeless Way of Building written by Christopher Alexander and published by New York : Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1979 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This introductory volume to Alexander's other works, A Pattern of Language and The Oregon Experiment, explains concepts fundamental to his original approaches to the theory and application of architecture.

Download or read book The Power of Existing Buildings written by Robert Sroufe and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2019-11-12 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Your building has the potential to change the world. Existing buildings consume approximately 40 percent of the energy and emit nearly half of the carbon dioxide in the US each year. In recognition of the significant contribution of buildings to climate change, the idea of building green has become increasingly popular. But is it enough? If an energy-efficient building is new construction, it may take 10 to 80 years to overcome the climate change impacts of the building process. New buildings are sexy, but few realize the value in existing buildings and how easy it is to get to “zero energy” or low-energy consumption through deep energy retrofits. Existing buildings can and should be retrofit to reduce environmental impacts that contribute to climate change, while improving human health and productivity for building occupants. In The Power of Existing Buildings, academic sustainability expert Robert Sroufe, and construction and building experts Craig Stevenson and Beth Eckenrode, explain how to realize the potential of existing buildings and make them perform like new. This step-by-step guide will help readers to: understand where to start a project; develop financial models and realize costs savings; assemble an expert team; and align goals with numerous sustainability programs. The Power of Existing Buildings will challenge you to rethink spaces where people work and play, while determining how existing buildings can save the world. The insights and practical experience of Sroufe, Stevenson, and Eckenrode, along with the project case study examples, provide new insights on investing in existing buildings for building owners, engineers, occupants, architects, and real estate and construction professionals. The Power of Existing Buildings helps decision-makers move beyond incremental changes to holistic, results-oriented solutions.

Download or read book How Structures Work written by David Yeomans and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-01-19 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Structural engineering is central to the design of a building. How the building behaves when subjected to various forces – the weight of the materials used to build it, the weight of the occupants or the traffic it carries, the force of the wind etc – is fundamental to its stability. The alliance between architecture and structural engineering is therefore critical to the successful design and completion of the buildings and infrastructure that surrounds us. Yet structure is often cloaked in mathematics which many architects and surveyors find difficult to understand. How Structures Work has been written to explain the behaviour of structures in a clear way without resorting to complex mathematics. This new edition includes a new chapter on construction materials, and significant revisions to, and reordering of the existing chapters. It is aimed at all who require a good qualitative understanding of structures and their behaviour, and as such will be of benefit to students of architecture, architectural history, building surveying and civil engineering. The straightforward, non-mathematical approach ensures it will also be suitable for a wider audience including building administrators, archaeologists and the interested layman.

Download or read book Healthy Buildings written by JOSEPH G. ALLEN and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2022-10-18 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Buildings can make us sick or keep us well. Diseases and toxins course through indoor spaces, making us ill. Meanwhile, better air quality and light levels improve productivity. At a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has us focused more than ever on indoor air quality, Healthy Buildings shows how much we have to gain from human-centered design.

Download or read book Architecture and Ritual written by Peter Blundell Jones and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-08-25 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Architecture and Ritual explores how the varied rituals of everyday life are framed and defined in space by the buildings which we inhabit. It penetrates beyond traditional assumptions about architectural style, aesthetics and utility to deal with something more implicit: how buildings shape and reflect our experience in ways of which we remain unconscious. Whether designed to house a grand ceremony or provide shelter for a daily meal, all buildings coordinate and consolidate social relations by giving orientation and focus to the spatial practices of those who use them. Peter Blundell Jones investigates these connections between the social and the spatial, providing critical insights into the capacity for architecture to structure human ritual, from the grand and formal to the mundane. This is achieved through deep readings of individual pieces of architecture, each with a detailed description of its particular social setting and use. The case studies are drawn from throughout architectural history and from around the globe, each enabling a distinct theoretical theme to emerge, and showing how social conventions vary with time and place, as well as what they have in common. Case studies range from the Nuremberg Rally to the Centre Pompidou, and from the Palace of Westminster to Dogon dwellings in Africa and a Modernist hospital. In considering how all architecture has to mesh with the habits, beliefs, rituals and expectations of the society that created it, the book presents deep implications for our understanding of architectural history and theory. It also highlights the importance for architects of understanding how buildings frame social space before they prescribe new architectural designs of their own. The book ends with a recent example of user participation, showing how contemporary user interest and commitment to a building can be as strong as ever.

Download or read book How a House Is Built written by Gail Gibbons and published by Holiday House. This book was released on 2014-01-24 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Houses are built with many different materials, and in many shapes and sizes. Step by step, this picture book explains how homes are built—from the architect's plans through the arrival of a happy family. The many processes of construction are explained with simple language and bright, clear illustrations, perfect for kids starting to wonder about how the world around them works. Many different careers—including carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and landscapers—are introduced, each doing their part to bring the picture wood-frame house to life. A great read for kids who love construction sites, or who can't get enough of Building a House by Byron Barton. According to The Washington Post, Gail Gibbons "has taught more preschoolers and early readers about the world than any other children's writer-illustrator." Ms. Gibbons is the author of more than 100 books for young readers, including the bestselling titles From Seed to Plant and Monarch Butterfly. Her many honors include the Washington Post/Childrens Book Fuild Nonfiction Award and the NSTA Outstanding Science Trade Book Award.

Download or read book Why Buildings Fall Down written by Matthys Levy and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2002-03-05 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: About the reasons for structural collapse, including earthquakes, metal fatigue, and terrorism.

Download or read book A Pattern Language written by Christopher Alexander and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-20 with total page 1216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You can use this book to design a house for yourself with your family; you can use it to work with your neighbors to improve your town and neighborhood; you can use it to design an office, or a workshop, or a public building. And you can use it to guide you in the actual process of construction. After a ten-year silence, Christopher Alexander and his colleagues at the Center for Environmental Structure are now publishing a major statement in the form of three books which will, in their words, "lay the basis for an entirely new approach to architecture, building and planning, which will we hope replace existing ideas and practices entirely." The three books are The Timeless Way of Building, The Oregon Experiment, and this book, A Pattern Language. At the core of these books is the idea that people should design for themselves their own houses, streets, and communities. This idea may be radical (it implies a radical transformation of the architectural profession) but it comes simply from the observation that most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by architects but by the people. At the core of the books, too, is the point that in designing their environments people always rely on certain "languages," which, like the languages we speak, allow them to articulate and communicate an infinite variety of designs within a forma system which gives them coherence. This book provides a language of this kind. It will enable a person to make a design for almost any kind of building, or any part of the built environment. "Patterns," the units of this language, are answers to design problems (How high should a window sill be? How many stories should a building have? How much space in a neighborhood should be devoted to grass and trees?). More than 250 of the patterns in this pattern language are given: each consists of a problem statement, a discussion of the problem with an illustration, and a solution. As the authors say in their introduction, many of the patterns are archetypal, so deeply rooted in the nature of things that it seemly likely that they will be a part of human nature, and human action, as much in five hundred years as they are today.

Download or read book Building Evolutionary Architectures written by Neal Ford and published by "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". This book was released on 2017-09-18 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The software development ecosystem is constantly changing, providing a constant stream of new tools, frameworks, techniques, and paradigms. Over the past few years, incremental developments in core engineering practices for software development have created the foundations for rethinking how architecture changes over time, along with ways to protect important architectural characteristics as it evolves. This practical guide ties those parts together with a new way to think about architecture and time.

Download or read book Wild Buildings and Bridges written by Etta Kaner and published by Kids Can Press Ltd. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The surprising ways nature has influenced architecture. It may come as a surprise to learn that architects have found solutions to all kinds of design challenges in nature! Some have looked to nature to solve a structural problem, like creating an earthquake-proof bridge by mimicking the extremely long roots of a special type of grass. Others have turned to nature for artistic inspiration, designing buildings and bridges that evoke the movement of swimming fish or a bird in flight. When it comes to style and structure, nature and architecture make perfect partners! From cactuses to birdsê wings, termite towers to honeycombs, inspiration for ingenious design is everywhere around us!

Download or read book The Art of Reading Buildings written by John Mittendorf and published by Fire Engineering Books. This book was released on 2015-01-07 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Art of Reading Buildings focuses on the practical art of reading a building and applying its positive and negative attributes in developing a size-up for fireground operations that center on structure fires. First-due company officers, incident commanders, and safety officers will appreciate the practical “street-wise” lessons captured in the book. Chief officers, training officers, engineers, firefighters, and fire science degree candidates will benefit from the wide range of building construction topics covered in this text. Features include: • Understand the technical and practical aspects of building construction • Learn on-the-spot building construction assessment using the authors’ custom Rapid Street-Read Guides • Develop a quick construction size-up for immediate application to fireground operations • Recognize firefighter traps in newer and alternative construction methods • This text covers objectives for the National Fire Academy’s Fire and Emergency Services in Higher Education (FESHE) Building Construction for Fire Protection course

Download or read book Why Buildings Stand Up written by Mario Salvadori and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1990 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is a clear and enthusiastic introduction to building methods from ancient time to the present day, illustrated throughout with line drawings. In addition, Mr. Salvadori discusses recent advances in science and technology that have had important effects on the planning and construction of buildings.

Download or read book Architecture A Very Short Introduction written by Andrew Ballantyne and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2002-08-22 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This highly original and sophisticated look at architecture helps us to understand the cultural significance of the buildings that surround us. It avoids the traditional style-spotting approach in favour of giving an idea of what it is about buildings that moves us, and what it is that makes them important artistically and culturally. The book begins by looking at how architecture acquires meaning through tradition, and concludes with the exoticism of the recent avant garde. Illustrations of particular buildings help to anchor the general points with specific examples, from ancient Egypt to the present day. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.