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Book The Australian Ugliness

Download or read book The Australian Ugliness written by Robin Boyd and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2010-03-29 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifty years after its first publication, Robin Boyd's bestselling The Australian Ugliness remains the definitive statement on how we live and think in the environments we create for ourselves. In it Boyd rallied against Australia's promotion of ornament, decorative approach to design and slavish imitation of all things American. 'The basis of the Australian ugliness,' he wrote, 'is an unwillingness to be committed on the level of ideas. In all the arts of living, in the shaping of all her artefacts, as in politics, Australia shuffles about vigorously in the middle - as she estimates the middle - of the road, picking up disconnected ideas wherever she finds them.' Boyd was a fierce critic, and an advocate of good design. He understood the significance of the connection between people and their dwellings, and argued passionately for a national architecture forged from a genuine Australian identity. His concerns are as important now, in an era of suburban sprawl and inner-city redevelopment, as they were half a century ago. Caustic and brilliant, The Australian Ugliness is a masterpiece that enables us to see our surroundings with fresh eyes. This handsome anniversary edition is complemented by Robin Boyd's original sketches for the book and a new afterword by major contemporary architects.

Book Robin Boyd  Spatial Continuity

Download or read book Robin Boyd Spatial Continuity written by Mauro Baracco and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-01-20 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Australian architect Robin Boyd (1919–1971) advocated tirelessly for the voice of Australian architects so that there could be an architecture that might speak to Australian conditions and sensibilities.His legacy continues in the work of contemporary Australian architects yet also prompts a way forward for architecture particularly in relationship to the landscapes they inhabit through a quality of continuous space found in his work where the buildings are spatially reliant and sympathetic to the places they occupy. A selection of 22 projects are documented comprehensively in this book for the first time. This slice through Boyd’s body of work reveals a gifted, complex and contemporary thinker.

Book Robin Boyd

    Book Details:
  • Author : Christine Marie Phillips
  • Publisher :
  • Release : 2020-04-15
  • ISBN : 9780648435594
  • Pages : 108 pages

Download or read book Robin Boyd written by Christine Marie Phillips and published by . This book was released on 2020-04-15 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robin Boyd: Late Works unveils the urban and public architectural projects designed by Robin Boyd, one of Australia's most iconic mid-century modernists, in the final decade before his untimely death in 1971. One of the few architects in Australia's history to have become a household name, Boyd rose to prominence as a public intellectual after the release of his book The Australian Ugliness in 1960, a biting attack on what he saw as the debased quality of Australia's cities and design culture. Upon its release, the book drew both condemnation and praise in Australia's media, but in the process gave Boyd a national platform from which to campaign throughout the 1960s for the betterment of Australia's built environment. Concomitant with his public pronouncements during this time, though, Boyd was hard at work attempting to prosecute his vision of a more coherent and contemporary Australian urban environment and culture. This work took the form of building and planning designs, at sometimes vast scales, that run counter to Boyd's reputation as an architect of polite modernist private houses.Robin Boyd: Late Works considers these important but largely forgotten architectural projects alongside his exhibition work, multimedia designs and his writing. Bringing to light material buried deep in the archives of several national institutions, this book documents Boyd's ambitions and struggles to shape Australia's understanding of itself as an urban nation during this time. For Boyd, the 1960s was a turbulent decade of architectural practice that, by the time of his death, had come with thwarted ambitions and high personal cost.

Book Living in Australia

Download or read book Living in Australia written by Robin Boyd and published by . This book was released on 2013-03-12 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1970 Living in Australia provided Boyd with an opportunity to describe his own approach to design. This new edition, co-published with the Robin Boyd Foundation, includes new colour photographs by John Gollings and essays by renowned architects Kerstin Thompson and Rachel Neeson reflecting upon the importance of Boyd's work.

Book The Puzzle of Architecture

Download or read book The Puzzle of Architecture written by Robin Boyd and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Robyn Boid

    Book Details:
  • Author : Maree Coote
  • Publisher :
  • Release : 2018-06
  • ISBN : 9780992491741
  • Pages : 0 pages

Download or read book Robyn Boid written by Maree Coote and published by . This book was released on 2018-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Clever Kids Australia, mind-growing books"--Back cover.

Book Robin Boyd

    Book Details:
  • Author : Geoffrey Serle
  • Publisher : Miegunyah Press
  • Release : 1991-11-30
  • ISBN : 9780522872989
  • Pages : 0 pages

Download or read book Robin Boyd written by Geoffrey Serle and published by Miegunyah Press. This book was released on 1991-11-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robin Boyd, gifted architect, writer, teacher and social commentator, was the leading Australian propagandist for the International Modern Movement in architecture. In partnership with Roy Grounds and Frederick Romberg, he was noted for his innovative domestic buildings. Indeed the suburban home was often a focus of Boyd's thinking, writing and criticism, and in Australia's Home (1952) he provided the first substantial interpretation of Australia's architectural history. But the most popular and controversial of Boyd's nine books was The Australian Ugliness (1960) in which he scourged prevailing tastes in both architecture and popular culture.The sentiments he expressed here made him one of Australia's liveliest social critics. But his criticism sprang from patriotism and ambition for his country. Boyd was a very private man who left few personal letters or records. In this highly acclaimed and beautifully-illustrated book Geoffrey Serle writes predominantly about Boyd's work and public activities, allowing key selections from Boyd's writings to reveal the inner man.

Book Not By Genes Alone

    Book Details:
  • Author : Peter J. Richerson
  • Publisher : University of Chicago Press
  • Release : 2008-06-20
  • ISBN : 0226712133
  • Pages : 343 pages

Download or read book Not By Genes Alone written by Peter J. Richerson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-06-20 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humans are a striking anomaly in the natural world. While we are similar to other mammals in many ways, our behavior sets us apart. Our unparalleled ability to adapt has allowed us to occupy virtually every habitat on earth using an incredible variety of tools and subsistence techniques. Our societies are larger, more complex, and more cooperative than any other mammal's. In this stunning exploration of human adaptation, Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd argue that only a Darwinian theory of cultural evolution can explain these unique characteristics. Not by Genes Alone offers a radical interpretation of human evolution, arguing that our ecological dominance and our singular social systems stem from a psychology uniquely adapted to create complex culture. Richerson and Boyd illustrate here that culture is neither superorganic nor the handmaiden of the genes. Rather, it is essential to human adaptation, as much a part of human biology as bipedal locomotion. Drawing on work in the fields of anthropology, political science, sociology, and economics—and building their case with such fascinating examples as kayaks, corporations, clever knots, and yams that require twelve men to carry them—Richerson and Boyd convincingly demonstrate that culture and biology are inextricably linked, and they show us how to think about their interaction in a way that yields a richer understanding of human nature. In abandoning the nature-versus-nurture debate as fundamentally misconceived, Not by Genes Alone is a truly original and groundbreaking theory of the role of culture in evolution and a book to be reckoned with for generations to come. “I continue to be surprised by the number of educated people (many of them biologists) who think that offering explanations for human behavior in terms of culture somehow disproves the suggestion that human behavior can be explained in Darwinian evolutionary terms. Fortunately, we now have a book to which they may be directed for enlightenment . . . . It is a book full of good sense and the kinds of intellectual rigor and clarity of writing that we have come to expect from the Boyd/Richerson stable.”—Robin Dunbar, Nature “Not by Genes Alone is a valuable and very readable synthesis of a still embryonic but very important subject straddling the sciences and humanities.”—E. O. Wilson, Harvard University

Book My Times in Black and White

Download or read book My Times in Black and White written by Gerald M. Boyd and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2010-02-01 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An inspiring and riveting tale.” —Patrik Henry Bass, Senior Editor, Essence After a career of many firsts, journalist Gerald Boyd became the first black managing editor of the New York Times. But the dream ended abruptly with Boyd's forced resignation in the wake of scandal over Jayson Blair, a reporter who had plagiarized and fabricated news stories. A rare inside view of power and behind-the-scenes politics at the nation's premier newspaper, My Times in Black and White is the inspirational tale of a man who rose from urban poverty to the top of his field, struggling against whitedominated media, tearing down racial barriers, and all the while documenting the most extraordinary events of the latter twentieth century.

Book The Boyds

    Book Details:
  • Author : Brenda Niall
  • Publisher : Melbourne Univ. Publishing
  • Release : 2007
  • ISBN : 9780522853841
  • Pages : 526 pages

Download or read book The Boyds written by Brenda Niall and published by Melbourne Univ. Publishing. This book was released on 2007 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Boyd family is Australia's most remarkable artistic dynasty. This work traces the emergence of an extraordinary artistic tradition. It places the Boyds in their historical and personal contexts, tells the interwoven stories of their brilliant careers, and analyses the shaping influences on their lives.

Book White Bicycles

Download or read book White Bicycles written by Joe Boyd and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2010-07-09 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Muddy Waters came to London at the start of the '60s, a kid from Boston called Joe Boyd was his tour manager; when Dylan went electric at the Newport Festival, Joe Boyd was plugging in his guitar; when the summer of love got going, Joe Boyd was running the coolest club in London, the UFO; when a bunch of club regulars called Pink Floyd recorded their first single, Joe Boyd was the producer; when a young songwriter named Nick Drake wanted to give his demo tape to someone, he chose Joe Boyd. More than any previous '60s music autobiography, Joe Boyd's White Bicycles offers the real story of what it was like to be there at the time. His greatest coup is bringing to life the famously elusive figure of Nick Drake - the first time he's been written about by anyone who knew him well. As well as the '60s heavy-hitters, this book also offers wonderfully vivid portraits of a whole host of other musicians: everyone from the great jazzman Coleman Hawkins to the folk diva Sandy Denny, Lonnie Johnson to Eric Clapton, The Incredible String Band to Fairport Convention.

Book The Figure of Knowledge

Download or read book The Figure of Knowledge written by Sebastiaan Loosen and published by Leuven University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-01 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is a major challenge to write the history of post-WWII architectural theory without boiling it down to a few defining paradigms. An impressive anthologising effort during the 1990s charted architectural theory mostly via the various theoretical frameworks employed, such as critical theory, critical regionalism, deconstructivism, and pragmatism. Yet the intellectual contours of what constitutes architectural theory have been constantly in flux. It is therefore paramount to ask what kind of knowledge has become important in the recent history of architectural theory and how the resulting figure of knowledge sets the conditions for the actual arguments made. The contributions in this volume focus on institutional, geographical, rhetorical, and other conditioning factors. They thus screen the unspoken rules of engagement that postwar architectural theory ascribed to.

Book Australia Modern

Download or read book Australia Modern written by Hannah Lewi and published by Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Sydney Opera House and the National Gallery of Victoria to sought-after homes across the country, the pervasive presence of modernism is inescapable in Australia. Led by the likes of Robin Boyd, Harry Seidler and Walter Burley Griffin, modernist architects and designers set out to rebuild at all scales, from vast infrastructure projects, to public health and education institutions, to new centres of culture, consumption and leisure.Australia Modern vividly captures this architectural legacy with a survey of 100 significant modern sites, richly illustrated with archival images and newly commissioned photographs. Contextual essays by leading voices in architecture and conservation explore modernism's influence on every facet of life in Australia and the ongoing challenges facing preservation. Showcasing projects from the iconic and the urban to the everyday, the regional and the lesser known, Australia Modern cultivates an appreciation for the modern architects and buildings that will increasingly constitute the heritage of tomorrow.

Book Kevin Borland

    Book Details:
  • Author : Huan Chen Borland
  • Publisher : RMIT Publishing
  • Release : 2006
  • ISBN : 9781921166204
  • Pages : 324 pages

Download or read book Kevin Borland written by Huan Chen Borland and published by RMIT Publishing. This book was released on 2006 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Italian Imprints on Twentieth Century Architecture

Download or read book Italian Imprints on Twentieth Century Architecture written by Denise Costanzo and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-05-19 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Italian architecture has long exerted a special influence on the evolution of architectural ideas elsewhere - from the Beaux-Arts academy's veneration of Rome, to modernist and postmodern interest in Renaissance proportion, Baroque space, and Mannerist ambiguity. This book critically examines this enduring phenomenon, exploring the privileged position of Italian architects, architecture, and cities in the architectural culture of the past century. Questioning the deep-rooted myth of Italy within architectural history, the book presents case studies of Italy's powerful yet problematic position in 20th-century architectural ideologies, at a time when established Eurocentric narratives are rightly being challenged. It reconciles the privileged position of Italian architecture and design with the imperative to write history across a more global, diverse, heterogenous cultural geography. Twenty chapters from distinguished international scholars cover subjects and architects ranging from Alberti to Gio Ponti, Aldo Rossi, Manfredo Tafuri, Vittorio Gregotti; cities from Rome and Venice to Milan; and an array of international architects, movements, and architectural ideas influenced by Italy. The chapters each question where, how, and why the disciplinary edifice of 20th-century architecture-its canon of built, visual, textual, and conceptual works-relied on Italian foundations, examining where and how those foundations have become insecure. Indispensable for students and scholars of both Italian and global architectural history, Italian Imprints on Twentieth-Century Architecture provides an opportunity to consider the architectural and urban landscape of Italy from substantially new points of view.

Book 150

    150

    Book Details:
  • Author : Geoffrey London
  • Publisher : University of Western Australia Press
  • Release : 2017
  • ISBN : 9781742586694
  • Pages : 474 pages

Download or read book 150 written by Geoffrey London and published by University of Western Australia Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Architect-designed houses of the period 1950-65 proposed an innovative response to the social, economic, and climatic conditions of post-war Australia. At the same time they embraced the aesthetic, technological, and egalitarian aspirations of modern architecture. An Unfinished Experiment in Living traces the emergence of this architectural phenomenon in Australia, documenting the full range of its expression: from the postwar optimism of the early 1950s through to the affluence of the 1960s. It is a catalogue of the most significant houses of the period. It includes comprehensive plans and period photographs of 150 houses from around Australia, dating from a time when the great Australian dream was the single family house. This book puts forward new research founded on the premise that the most significant houses of the 1950s and 60s represent an unfinished and undervalued experiment in modern living. Issues such as the open plan, the changing nature of the family, the embrace of advances in technology, the use of the courtyard, and the orientation of the house to capture sun and privacy, were valuable and critical lessons. This is a compelling reminder of their continuing relevance. [Subject: Architecture, Design, Australian History, Sociology]

Book Brutalism Resurgent

Download or read book Brutalism Resurgent written by Julia Gatley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-02 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brutalism had its origins in béton brut – concrete in the raw – and thus in the post-war work of Le Corbusier. The British architects Alison and Peter Smithson used the term "New Brutalism" from 1953, claiming that if their house in Soho had been built, "it would have been the first exponent of the ‘New Brutalism’ in England". Reyner Banham famously gave the movement a series of characteristics, including the clear expression of a building’s structure and services, and the honest use of materials in their "as-found" condition. The Smithsons and Banham promoted the New Brutalism as ethic rather than aesthetic, privileging truth to structure, materials and services and the gritty reality of the working classes over the concerns of the bourgeoisie. But Brutalist architecture changed as it was taken up by others, giving rise to more sculptural buildings flaunting their raw materials, including off-form concrete, often in conjunction with bold structural members. While Brutalism fell out of vogue in the 1980s, recent years have seen renewed admiration for it. This volume is consistent with this broader resurgence, presenting new scholarship on Brutalist architects and projects from Skopje to Sydney, and from Harvard to Haringey. It will appeal to readers interested in twentieth-century architecture, and modern and post-war heritage. This book was originally published as a special issue of Fabrications: the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand.