Download or read book Origins of Architectural Pleasure written by Grant Hildebrand and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1999-06-30 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This engaging study discusses ways in which architectural forms emulate some archetypal settings that humans have found appealing--and useful for survival--from ancient times to the present. 119 photos. 6 line figures.

Download or read book The Pleasures of Architecture written by Clough Williams-Ellis and published by . This book was released on 1924 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The City s Pleasures written by Shirine Hamadeh and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The City's Pleasures is the first historical investigation of the tremendous changes that affected the fabric and architecture of Istanbul in the century that followed the decisive return of the Ottoman court to the capital in 1703. These were spectacular times that witnessed the most extraordinary urban expansion and building explosion in the history of the city. Showing how architecture and urban form became involved in the representation and construction of a changing social order, Shirine Hamadeh reassesses the dominance of the paradigm of Westernization in interpretations of this period and challenges the suggestion that change in the eighteenth century could only occur by turning toward a now superior West. Drawing on a genre of Ottoman poetry written in celebration of the built environment and on a vast array of related textual and visual sources, Hamadeh demonstrates that architectural change was the result of a dynamic synthesis between internal and external factors, and closely mirrored the process of décloisonnement of the city's social landscape. Examining novel forms, spaces, and decorative vocabularies; changing patterns of patronage; and new patterns of architectural perception; The City's Pleasures shows how these exposed and reinforced the internal dynamics that were played out between a society in flux and a state anxious to recreate an ideal system of social hierarchies. Profoundly hybrid in nature, the new architectural idiom reflected a growing permeability between elite and middle-class sensibilities, an unprecedented degree of receptivity to Western and Eastern foreign traditions, and a clear departure from the parameters of the classical canon. Innovation became the new operative doctrine. As the built environment was experienced, perceived, and appreciated by contemporary observers, it increasingly revealed itself as a perpetual source of sensory pleasures.

Download or read book The Architecture of Happiness written by Alain De Botton and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2010-12-03 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bestselling author Alain de Botton considers how our private homes and public edifices influence how we feel, and how we could build dwellings in which we would stand a better chance of happiness. In this witty, erudite look at how we shape, and are shaped by, our surroundings, Alain de Botton applies Stendhal’s motto that “Beauty is the promise of happiness” to the spaces we inhabit daily. Why should we pay attention to what architecture has to say to us? de Botton asks provocatively. With his trademark lucidity and humour, de Botton traces how human needs and desires have been served by styles of architecture, from stately Classical to minimalist Modern, arguing that the stylistic choices of a society can represent both its cherished ideals and the qualities it desperately lacks. On an individual level, de Botton has deep sympathy for our need to see our selves reflected in our surroundings; he demonstrates with great wisdom how buildings — just like friends — can serve as guardians of our identity. Worrying about the shape of our sofa or the colour of our walls might seem self-indulgent, but de Botton considers the hopes and fears we have for our homes at a new level of depth and insight. When shopping for furniture or remodelling the kitchen, we don’t just consider functionality but also the major questions of aesthetics and the philosophy of art: What is beauty? Can beautiful surroundings make us good? Can beauty bring happiness? The buildings we find beautiful, de Botton concludes, are those that represent our ideas of a meaningful life. The Architecture of Happiness marks a return to what Alain does best — taking on a subject whose allure is at once tantalizing and a little forbidding and offering to readers a completely beguiling and original exploration of the subject. As he did with Proust, philosophy, and travel, now he does with architecture.

Download or read book Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment written by Henri Lefebvre and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment is the first publication in any language of the only book devoted to architecture by Henri Lefebvre. Written in 1973 but only recently discovered in a private archive, this work extends Lefebvre’s influential theory of urban space to the question of architecture. Taking the practices and perspective of habitation as his starting place, Lefebvre redefines architecture as a mode of imagination rather than a specialized process or a collection of monuments. He calls for an architecture of jouissance—of pleasure or enjoyment—centered on the body and its rhythms and based on the possibilities of the senses. Examining architectural examples from the Renaissance to the postwar period, Lefebvre investigates the bodily pleasures of moving in and around buildings and monuments, urban spaces, and gardens and landscapes. He argues that areas dedicated to enjoyment, sensuality, and desire are important sites for a society passing beyond industrial modernization. Lefebvre’s theories on space and urbanization fundamentally reshaped the way we understand cities. Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment promises a similar impact on how we think about, and live within, architecture.

Download or read book Architecture and Disjunction written by Bernard Tschumi and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1996-02-28 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Avant-garde theorist and architect Bernard Tschumi is equally well known for his writing and his practice. Architecture and Disjunction, which brings together Tschumi's essays from 1975 to 1990, is a lucid and provocative analysis of many of the key issues that have engaged architectural discourse over the past two decades—from deconstructive theory to recent concerns with the notions of event and program. The essays develop different themes in contemporary theory as they relate to the actual making of architecture, attempting to realign the discipline with a new world culture characterized by both discontinuity and heterogeneity. Included are a number of seminal essays that incited broad attention when they first appeared in magazines and journals, as well as more recent and topical texts.Tschumi's discourse has always been considered radical and disturbing. He opposes modernist ideology and postmodern nostalgia since both impose restrictive criteria on what may be deemed "legitimate" cultural conditions. He argues for focusing on our immediate cultural situation, which is distinguished by a new postindustrial "unhomeliness" reflected in the ad hoc erection of buildings with multipurpose programs. The condition of New York and the chaos of Tokyo are thus perceived as legitimate urban forms.

Download or read book The Architecture of Pleasure written by Josephine Kane and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-16 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The amusement parks which first appeared in England at the turn of the twentieth century represent a startlingly novel and complex phenomenon, combining fantasy architecture, new technology, ersatz danger, spectacle and consumption in a new mass experience. Though drawing on a diverse range of existing leisure practices, the particular entertainment formula they offered marked a radical departure in terms of visual, experiential and cultural meanings. The huge, socially mixed crowds that flocked to the new parks did so purely in the pursuit of pleasure, which the amusement parks commodified in exhilarating new guises. Between 1906 and 1939, nearly 40 major amusement parks operated across Britain. By the outbreak of the Second World War, millions of people visited these sites each year. The amusement park had become a defining element in the architectural psychological pleasurescape of Britain. This book considers the relationship between popular modernity, pleasure and the amusement park landscape in Britain from 1900-1939. It argues that the amusement parks were understood as a new and distinct expression of modern times which redefined the concept of public pleasure for mass audiences. Focusing on three sites - Blackpool Pleasure Beach, Dreamland in Margate and Southend's Kursaal - the book contextualises their development with references to the wider amusement park world. The meanings of these sites are explored through a detailed examination of the spatial and architectural form taken by rides and other buildings. The rollercoaster - a defining symbol of the amusement park - is given particular focus, as is the extent to which discourses of class, gender and national identity were expressed through the design of these parks.

Download or read book Body and Building written by George Dodds and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays on the changing relationship of the human body and architecture.

Download or read book On the Art of Building in Ten Books written by Leon Battista Alberti and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1991-07-01 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: De Re Aedificatoria, by Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472), was the first modern treatise on the theory and practice of architecture. Its importance for the subsequent history of architecture is incalculable, yet this is the first English translation based on the original, exceptionally eloquent Latin text on which Alberti's reputation as a theorist is founded.

Download or read book Architecture and You written by William Wayne Caudill and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "If you're looking for a book to introduce you to the pleasures of architecture; if you want to be able to enjoy buildings, just like music and art; if you want to learn how to appreciate the buildings you experience every day, as well as the ageless masterpieces, but you don't know where to begin, this is the book you've been waiting for. Here is a book that explains how to experience and appreciate the spaces and forms of architecture just as you experience a painting or a symphony. Written by practicing architects whose buildings are used by millions of people throughout the world, this down-to-earth, easy-to-read text answers the fundamental question: what is architecture and how do you perceive it? The authors communicate their love of architecture and take the mystery out of buildings so you can learn how to enjoy their magic. Richly illustrated with 280 photographs and line drawings and summarized periodically with memorable aphorisms, the text begins by defining the term "architecture appreciation" and shows why architecture is "a personal, enjoyable, necessary experience." and shows why architecture is "a personal, enjoyable, necessary experience." Then the authors cover the basics of space, form, and total-form. The "envelope" is analyzed: wall, roof, floor, window, structure, materials, connections. Style is described through such concepts as proportion, scale, and composition. Physical environment, including site and light, and psychological environment, consisting of ownership, symbolism, and color, are explored. The book shows the impact of societal needs on architecture, and the concept of economy is evaluated in terms of simplicity, cost, and energy. Time quality is defined in relation to history and technology. The authors conclude by discussing the idea that "design reconciles function, form, economy, and time," and then they review all the preceding chapters in a final brief wrap-up. This book will lead you to a new awareness of architecture and a new pleasure in your environment. You can enjoy buildings every day of your life." --

Download or read book Architecture and Utopia written by Manfredo Tafuri and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1979-10-02 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Architecture and Utopia leads the reader beyond architectural form into a broader understanding of the relation of architecture to society and the architect to the workforce and the marketplace. Written from a neo-Marxist point of view by a prominent Italian architectural historian, Architecture and Utopia leads the reader beyond architectural form into a broader understanding of the relation of architecture to society and the architect to the workforce and the marketplace. It discusses the Garden Cities movement and the suburban developments it generated, the German-Russian architectural experiments of the 1920s, the place of the avant-garde in the plastic arts, and the uses and pitfalls of seismological approaches to architecture, and assesses the prospects of socialist alternatives.

Download or read book The Manhattan Transcripts written by Bernard Tschumi and published by Wiley. This book was released on 1994-04-29 with total page 63 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through a set of theoretical drawings developed between 1976 and 1981. Bernard Tschumi argues that the disjunction between spaces and their use, objects and events, being and meaning is no accident today. But when this disjunction becomes an architectural confrontation, a new relation of pleasure and violence inevitably occurs. 'They found the Transcripts by accident ... a lifetime's worth of urban pleasures - pleasures that they had no intention of giving up. So when she threatened to run and tell the authorities, they had no alternative but to stop her. And that's when the second accident occurred ... the accident of murder ... They had to get out of the Park - quick. And the only thing which could help them was Architecture, beautiful trusting Architecture that they had used before, but never so cruelly or so selfishly ...

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 Kissing Architecture written by Sylvia Lavin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-09 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Architecture's growing intimacy with new types of art Kissing Architecture explores the mutual attraction between architecture and other forms of contemporary art. In this fresh, insightful, and beautifully illustrated book, renowned architectural critic and scholar Sylvia Lavin develops the concept of "kissing" to describe the growing intimacy between architecture and new types of art—particularly multimedia installations that take place in and on the surfaces of buildings—and to capture the sensual charge that is being designed and built into architectural surfaces and interior spaces today. Initiating readers into the guilty pleasures of architecture that abandons the narrow focus on function, Lavin looks at recent work by Pipilotti Rist, Doug Aitken, the firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and others who choose instead to embrace the viewer in powerful affects and visual and sensory atmospheres. Kissing Architecture is the first book in a cutting-edge new series of short, focused arguments written by leading critics, historians, theorists, and practitioners from the world of urban development and contemporary architecture and design. These books are intended to spark vigorous debate. They stake out the positions that will help shape the architecture and urbanism of tomorrow. Addressing one of the most spectacular and significant developments in the current cultural scene, Kissing Architecture is an entertainingly irreverent and disarmingly incisive book that offers an entirely new way of seeing--and experiencing--architecture in the age after representation.

Download or read book What is Architecture written by Andrew Ballantyne and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Architecture can influence the way we feel, and can help us along as we go about our lives, or sabotage our habitual ways of doing things. The essays collected here challenge, and help to define a view of architecture which ranges from the minimal domesticity of Diogenes' barrel, to the exuberant experiments of the contemporary avant-garde. There are essays by philosophers, architects and art historians, including Roger Scruton, Bernard Tschumi, Demetri Pophyrios, Kenneth Frampton, Diane Ghirardo and David Goldblatt.

Download or read book Architecture and Interpretation written by Jill A. Franklin and published by Boydell Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays centred on the methods, pleasures, and pitfalls of architectural interpretation. Architecture affects us on a number of levels. It can control our movements, change our experience of our own scale, create a particular sense of place, focus memory, and act as a statement of power and taste, to name but a few. Yet the ways in which these effects are brought about are not yet well understood. The aim of this book is to move the discussion forward, to encourage and broaden debate about the ways in which architecture is interpreted, with aview to raising levels of intellectual engagement with the issues in terms of the theory and practice of architectural history. The range of material covered extends from houses constructed from mammoth bones around 15,000 years ago in the present-day Ukraine to a surfer's memorial in Carpinteria, California; other subjects include the young Michelangelo seeking to transcend genre boundaries; medieval masons' tombs; and the mythographies of early modern Netherlandish towns. Taking as their point of departure the ways in which architecture has been, is, and can be written about and otherwise represented, the editors' substantial Introduction provides an historiographical framework for, and draws out the themes and ideas presented in, the individual contributors' essays. Contributors: Christine Stevenson, T. A. Heslop, John Mitchell, Malcolm Thurlby, Richard Fawcett, Jill A. Franklin, StephenHeywood, Roger Stalley, Veronica Sekules, John Onians, Frank Woodman, Paul Crossley, David Hemsoll, Kerry Downes, Richard Plant, Jenifer Ní Ghrádraigh, Lindy Grant, Elisabeth de Bièvre, Stefan Muthesius, Robert Hillenbrand, AndrewM. Shanken, Peter Guillery.

Download or read book Architecture and Violence written by Bechir Kenzari and published by ACTAR Publishers. This book was released on 2011 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In today's turbulent times few subjects deserve a closer scrutiny than the interactions between violence and constructed environment. Modernity's contradictory histories laid bare the fact that it is impossible to consider architecture simply a benign, passive victim of humanity's violent vices. Built space is as capable of incarnating violent acts as enacting them, disciplining and silencing the subject in the process. In this compelling volume, some of the most incisive thinkers of contemporary architectural theory make manifest the intricacies of interrelations between architecture and violent events. Employing a wide variety of perspectives and methodical approaches, the authors examine some of the most dramatic and unexpected instances of these vexing relations"--Back cover.