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Book The Edifice Complex

Download or read book The Edifice Complex written by Deyan Sudjic and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-11-28 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative look at architecture-"exceptionally intelligent and original" (Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World) Deyan Sudjic-"probably the most influential figure in architecture you've never heard of" - argues that architecture, far from being auteur art, must be understood as a naked expression of power. From the grandiose projects of Stalin and Hitler to the "theme park" excess of today's presidential libraries, Sudjic goes behind the scenes of history's great manipulators of building propaganda-and exposes Rem Koolhaas, Frank Gehry, and other architects in a disturbing new light. This controversial book is essential reading for all those interested in the power of architecture-or the architecture of power. * A Washington Post Book World Best Book of the Year

Book Edifice Complex

    Book Details:
  • Author : Gerard Lico
  • Publisher : Ateneo University Press
  • Release : 2003
  • ISBN : 9789715504355
  • Pages : 200 pages

Download or read book Edifice Complex written by Gerard Lico and published by Ateneo University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book The Edifice Complex

Download or read book The Edifice Complex written by Deyan Sudjic and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2011-04-07 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Edifice Complex explores the intimate and inextricable relationship between power, money and architecture in the twentieth century. How and why have presidents, prime ministers, mayors, millionaires and bishops come to share such a fascination with grand designs? From Blair to Mitterrand, from Hitler to Stalin to Saddam Hussein, architecture has become an end in itself, as well as a means to an end. This is a book of genuine timeliness, throwing new light on the motivations of the rich and powerful around the world - and on the ways they seek to affect us.

Book The English Folly

    Book Details:
  • Author : Gwyn Headley
  • Publisher : Liverpool University Press
  • Release : 2020-06-24
  • ISBN : 1800346727
  • Pages : 260 pages

Download or read book The English Folly written by Gwyn Headley and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-24 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If this were a novel, the tales of astounding wealth, sexual perversion, murder, munificence, rape, insanity, brutality, slavery, religious mania, selfishness, snobbery, charity, suicide, generosity, theft, madness, wickedness, failure and eccentricity which unfold in these pages would be too concentrated to allow for the willing suspension of disbelief. All these sins and virtues, and more, are displayed by the characters in this book, some exhibiting several of them simultaneously. Folly builders were not as we are. They never built what we now call follies. They built for beauty, utility, improvement; it is only we, struggling after them with our imperfect understanding, who dismiss their prodigious constructions as follies. Follies can be found around the world, but England is their spiritual home. Having written the definitive books on follies in Great Britain, Benelux and the USA, Headley & Meulenkamp have turned their attention to the folly builders themselves, people so blinded by fashion or driven by some nameless ideology that they expended great fortunes on making their point in brick, stone and flint. Most follies are simply misunderstood buildings, and this book studies the motives, characters, decisions and delusions of their builders. If there was madness in their building, fortunately there was no method in it.

Book B is for Bauhaus

    Book Details:
  • Author : Deyan Sudjic
  • Publisher : Penguin UK
  • Release : 2014-03-27
  • ISBN : 0718199472
  • Pages : 351 pages

Download or read book B is for Bauhaus written by Deyan Sudjic and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2014-03-27 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is not a dictionary, though it tells you all you need know about everything from Authenticity to Zips. It's not an autobiography, though it does offer a revealing and highly personal inside view of contemporary culture. It's an essential tool kit for understanding the modern world. It's about what makes a Warhol a genuine fake; the creation of national identities; the mania to collect. It's also about the world seen from the rear view mirror of Grand Theft Auto V; digital ornament and why we value imperfection. It's about drinking a bruisingly dry martini in Adolf Loo's American bar in Vienna, and about Hitchcock's film sets. It's about fashion and technology, about politics and art.

Book Building the Skyline

Download or read book Building the Skyline written by Jason M. Barr and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-12 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Manhattan skyline is one of the great wonders of the modern world. But how and why did it form? Much has been written about the city's architecture and its general history, but little work has explored the economic forces that created the skyline. In Building the Skyline, Jason Barr chronicles the economic history of the Manhattan skyline. In the process, he debunks some widely held misconceptions about the city's history. Starting with Manhattan's natural and geological history, Barr moves on to how these formations influenced early land use and the development of neighborhoods, including the dense tenement neighborhoods of Five Points and the Lower East Side, and how these early decisions eventually impacted the location of skyscrapers built during the Skyscraper Revolution at the end of the 19th century. Barr then explores the economic history of skyscrapers and the skyline, investigating the reasons for their heights, frequencies, locations, and shapes. He discusses why skyscrapers emerged downtown and why they appeared three miles to the north in midtown-but not in between the two areas. Contrary to popular belief, this was not due to the depths of Manhattan's bedrock, nor the presence of Grand Central Station. Rather, midtown's emergence was a response to the economic and demographic forces that were taking place north of 14th Street after the Civil War. Building the Skyline also presents the first rigorous investigation of the causes of the building boom during the Roaring Twenties. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the boom was largely a rational response to the economic growth of the nation and city. The last chapter investigates the value of Manhattan Island and the relationship between skyscrapers and land prices. Finally, an Epilogue offers policy recommendations for a resilient and robust future skyline.

Book Fernando Romero EnterprisE

Download or read book Fernando Romero EnterprisE written by FR-EE and published by Rizzoli Publications. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book will represent one of the most effective and extravagant visions of architecture, one that links the new generations and the old world. In the past few years, Mexico has brought to light a new generation of architects whose extraordinary vision and productivity has positioned the country among the most creative design cultures of the world. Under his own firm FR-EE, since 2000 Fernando Romero has designed and created a number of projects which represent a new vision of Mexican and world architecture. Romero's approach to architecture is innovative and an inspirational tool for empowering future generations. The volume will focus on three themes that intertwine throughout the content of the book. On-site photographs (mainly aerial views) highlight the different places where FR-EE works, from urban centers to the desert. The location is what drives FR-EE's creative work, while the practice strives to investigate the dynamic forces of each site and client. Inspirational photographs give the reader a vision of how Romero's perspective shifts between different focuses of references, and reimagines them in new symbolic visions of the world (from monuments to colors, from natural elements to animals). The images include renderings, photographs, diagrams, plans, and sections. The projects are presented in situ and through architectural drawings, so as to explain the projects' concepts and contents.

Book Stalin s Architect

Download or read book Stalin s Architect written by Deyan Sudjic and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-06-14 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Boris Iofan—designer of the iconic but unbuilt Palace of the Soviets—whose buildings came to define the language of Soviet architecture. What would an architect do for the chance to build the tallest building in the world? What would he sacrifice to stay alive in the midst of Stalin’s murderous purges? This is the first major publication on the remarkable life and career of Boris Iofan (1891–1976), state architect to Joseph Stalin. Iofan’s story is an insight into the troubled relationship of all successful architects with power. A gifted designer and a committed Communist, Iofan became the Soviet Union’s most celebrated architect after Alexei Rykov, Lenin’s successor, persuaded him to return to Moscow from Rome with his aristocratic wife, Olga Sasso-Ruffo. Iofan was at the heart of political life in the Soviet Union and his work is key to understanding its official culture. When Stalin’s henchmen crushed the architectural avant-garde, it was Iofan who created the new national style, from the grand projects he realized—including the House on the Embankment, a megastructure of 505 homes for the Soviet elite—to even more ambitious unbuilt projects, in particular the Palace of the Soviets, a baroque Stalinist dream whose image was reproduced throughout the Soviet Union. His career took him to New York and Paris, and to the destroyed city of Stalingrad. He was a friend of Frank Lloyd Wright; a rival of Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Erich Mendelsohn; and an enemy of Hitler’s architect Albert Speer, whose Nazi pavilion faced Iofan’s Soviet one at the Paris Expo in 1937. He kept silent when Stalin executed his friends, including Rykov; he also sacrificed his own talent by following the dictator’s instructions to the letter in creating the regime’s landmarks. Generously illustrated, with a wide range of previously unpublished material, this book is an exploration of architecture as an instrument of statecraft. It is an insight into the key moments of 20th-century politics and culture from a unique perspective, and the personal story of a remarkable individual who witnessed many of the most dramatic turning points of modern history.

Book The Language of Cities

Download or read book The Language of Cities written by Deyan Sudjic and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2016-10-06 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The director of the Design Museum defines the greatest artefact of all time: the city We live in a world that is now predominantly urban. So how do we define the city as it evolves in the twenty-first century? Drawing examples from across the globe, Deyan Sudjic decodes the underlying forces that shape our cities, such as resources and land, to the ideas that shape conscious elements of design, whether of buildings or of space. Erudite and entertaining, he considers the differences between capital cities and the rest to understand why it is that we often feel more comfortable in our identities as Londoners, Muscovites, or Mumbaikars than in our national identities.

Book The Iconic Building

    Book Details:
  • Author : Charles Jencks
  • Publisher : Rizzoli International Publications
  • Release : 2005
  • ISBN :
  • Pages : 230 pages

Download or read book The Iconic Building written by Charles Jencks and published by Rizzoli International Publications. This book was released on 2005 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A new type of achitecture has emerged in the last decade : the iconic landmark building, which challenges the traditional architectural monument. In the past, public buildings expressed shared meaning through well-known conventions. Today those conventions are superceded by commercial forces and the quest for instant fame. Public architecture is now required to be an amazing piece of surreal sculpture as well as something that appeals to a diverse audience - at once provocative and practical yet without the context that religion and ideaology once provided. Such contrary demands drive the architect toward a new convention : the enigmatic signifier. This curious sign suggests many meanings without naming of them. The most publized version of the genre, Frank Gehry's New Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, 1997, became an instant media event that forces other architects to design event buildings routinely. This 'Bilbao effect' has led to a series of landmark buildings by architects such as Norman Foster, Peter Eisenman, Enric Miralles, Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind, Renzo Piano, Will Alsop, and Rem Koolhaas. Some of these buildings are successful creations, while others make us wince." -- book jacket.

Book Giovanna Silva  Imeldific

    Book Details:
  • Author : Giovanna Silva
  • Publisher :
  • Release : 2021-02-23
  • ISBN : 9788867494187
  • Pages : 96 pages

Download or read book Giovanna Silva Imeldific written by Giovanna Silva and published by . This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imelda Romualdez Marcos is a Filipino politician who was first lady of the Philippines for twenty-one years, during which time she and her husband are widely believed to have illegally amassed a multibillion dollar fortune, the bulk of which still remains unrecovered. Her personal wealth was estimated at $24 billion in 1979, and today it is thought to be at least $30 billion. She married Ferdinand Marcos in 1954 and became first lady in 1965, when he was elected president of the Philippines. During her tenure as first lady, Marcos owned three thousand pairs of shoes. She imported giraffes?just because she could. Her habit of initiating ostentatious architectural projects using public funds came to be described in common parlance as ?Imeldific.? In 1966, Ferdinand Marcos issued Executive Order no. 60, establishing the Cultural Center of the Philippines and appointing its board of directors. The board would elect Imelda Marcos as chair, giving her legal mandate to negotiate and manage funds for the center. The CCP is considered the central symbol of Imelda Marcos?s ?edifice complex.? Its enormous modernist concrete structures were designed by Filipino architect Leandro Locsin. Imelda Marcos declared the center the ?sanctuary of the Filipino soul.? In these pages, Giovanna Silva inspects the heritage of the country, illustrating the robust relationship between architecture and history.

Book The Language of Things

    Book Details:
  • Author : Deyan Sudjic
  • Publisher : Penguin UK
  • Release : 2008-10-02
  • ISBN : 0141900105
  • Pages : 210 pages

Download or read book The Language of Things written by Deyan Sudjic and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2008-10-02 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in a world drowning in objects. But what do they tell us about ourselves?In The Language of Things, Deyan Sudjic charts our relationship - both innocent and knowing - with all things designed. From the opulent excesses of the catwalk, or the technical brilliance of a laptop computer, to the subtle refinement of a desk lamp, he shows how we can be manipulated and seduced by our possessions. Sudjic delivers an exhilarating insider’s history of design as he introduces us to the world's most original innovators and reveals the hidden meanings in their work. How did the design of a pistol influence a car? Why did a chair make a cafe the most fashionable place in Paris? What can we learn from a banknote, a police uniform or a typeface? And why can't any of us decide what size to wear our trousers? In an age when the word ‘designer’ has become synonymous with the cynical and manipulative, Sudjic examines the qualities behind successful design and explores the conflicting tensions between high art and mass production. Brilliant and courageous, The Language of Things defines the visual vocabulary of our time and gives us a powerful new way of seeing the world.

Book Rottenomics

    Book Details:
  • Author : Peter Dyer
  • Publisher :
  • Release : 2019-10
  • ISBN : 9781869539986
  • Pages : 192 pages

Download or read book Rottenomics written by Peter Dyer and published by . This book was released on 2019-10 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over 25 years our building industry, economy and Government have failed to provide this basic guarantee: new buildings will not rot. Leaky buildings are the result of an unfortunate confluence of industrial, legislative, historical and cultural factors. Collectively, these elements stubbornly continue to defy a full and final resolution. Featuring personal stories of homeowners faced with insurmountable repair costs of hundreds of thousands to their 'dream home', often leading to sickness, depression and financial loss. And revealed for the first time, withheld Government reports that estimate the total cost of leaky dwellings at $47 Billion. Rottenomics is an engaging expose into a national crisis that refuses to go away.

Book Norman Foster

Download or read book Norman Foster written by Deyan Sudjic and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2010-09-02 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of The Language of Things “takes readers on an engrossing tour of Foster’s life” from childhood to the world-renowned buildings he designed (Publishers Weekly, starred review). A leading pioneer of high-tech architecture, Norman Foster has worked across the globe, collaborating with luminaries such as R. Buckminster Fuller to Steve Jobs. Born in Manchester, England, Foster grew up in poverty, the son of a machine painter. He served in the Royal Air Force and worked in a local architect’s office before returning to school for architecture. Foster went on to design the Reichstag, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banks headquarters in London and China, the new Wembley stadium and the British Museum's new court. He is also responsible for the design of Beijing's new airport, the Rossiya tower in Moscow, one of the towers at Ground Zero in Manhattan, as well as numerous other buildings around the world. In this insightful biography, Deyan Sudjic charts Foster’s remarkable life and career.

Book Future Systems

    Book Details:
  • Author : Deyan Sudjic
  • Publisher : Phaidon
  • Release : 2006-11-07
  • ISBN :
  • Pages : 246 pages

Download or read book Future Systems written by Deyan Sudjic and published by Phaidon. This book was released on 2006-11-07 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A selection of ground-breaking work by this pioneering architectural and design practice.

Book Cult Objects

    Book Details:
  • Author : Deyan Sudjic
  • Publisher : Grafton Books
  • Release : 1985-01-01
  • ISBN : 9780586084830
  • Pages : 159 pages

Download or read book Cult Objects written by Deyan Sudjic and published by Grafton Books. This book was released on 1985-01-01 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book The Architecture of Richard Rogers

Download or read book The Architecture of Richard Rogers written by Deyan Sudjic and published by ABRAMS. This book was released on 1995 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: