Download or read book Essays in Architectural Criticism written by Alan Colquhoun and published by Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press. This book was released on 1981 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preface by Kenneth Frampton Winner of the 1985 Architectural Critics Award for the best book published on architectural criticism over the past three years. Since the early 1950s, Alan Colquhoun's criticism and theory have acted as a conscience to a generation of architects. His rigor and conceptual clarity have consistently stimulated debate and have served as an impetus for the pursuit of new directions in both theory and practice. This collection of 17 of his essays marks a watershed in the development of architectural thinking over the past three decades, comprising a virtual "theory of Modernism" in architecture. In his earliest essays, Colquhoun concentrated on themes that for him comprised the modernist attitude in architecture - language, typology, and the structure of form. His stance since then has consistently been to try to relate these issues to current practice and to analyze the nature of architectural expression in relation to culture. Alan Colquhoun divides his time between England, where is is a principal in the firm of Colquhoun & Miller, and the United States, where he is Professor of Architecture at Princeton University. An Oppositions Book.

Download or read book The Duty and Power of Architectural C written by WANG and published by . This book was released on 2022-04-11 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rich collection of essays that offer essential, independent voices on architecture criticism in a highly challenging media environment. Should architectural criticism be enlightening? Should it help in the creation of a better built environment? Is there a factual basis to it? Does it have a duty to present evidence in the evaluation of a building? Or should it take on what architects say about their designs? In the context of a flat internet, should architectural criticism be able to define best practices? Does it wield the power over who is in and who is out? Architectural criticism is at a crucial juncture. While serious architecture struggles for recognition, much so-called architectural criticism is merely a poorly paid, decorative legitimation for hyperbolic practice. Incisive architectural criticism is rare, while the definition of criticism itself has become opaque. The 2021 International Conference on Architecture Criticism has gathered exceptional papers that define the purposes and methods of architectural criticism: What should be the ethical basis of architectural criticism? Can it be objective in the context of paid content? Should it outline ideal practices? Or what else should it do? All contributions in this book address either the duty or the power of architectural criticism. In both cases, the authors offer the outline of one analysis of an existing building. Incisive and thought-provoking, On the Duty and Power of Architectural Criticism provides concrete case studies for future generations of architectural critics.

Download or read book Writing About Architecture written by Alexandra Lange and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2012-02-29 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Extraordinary architecture addresses so much more than mere practical considerations. It inspires and provokes while creating a seamless experience of the physical world for its users. It is the rare writer that can frame the discussion of a building in a way that allows the reader to see it with new eyes. Writing About Architecture is a handbook on writing effectively and critically about buildings and cities. Each chapter opens with a reprint of a significant essay written by a renowned architecture critic, followed by a close reading and discussion of the writer's strategies. Lange offers her own analysis using contemporary examples as well as a checklist of questions at the end of each chapter to help guide the writer. This important addition to the Architecture Briefs series is based on the author's design writing courses at New York University and the School of Visual Arts. Lange also writes a popular online column for Design Observer and has written for Dwell, Metropolis, New York magazine, and The New York Times. Writing About Architecture includes analysis of critical writings by Ada Louise Huxtable, Lewis Mumford, Herbert Muschamp, Michael Sorkin, Charles Moore, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Jane Jacobs. Architects covered include Marcel Breuer, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Field Operations, Norman Foster, Frank Gehry, Frederick Law Olmsted, SOM, Louis Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Download or read book Critical Architecture written by Jane Rendell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-09-12 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical Architecture examines the relationship between critical practice in architecture and architectural criticism. Placing architecture in an interdisciplinary context, the book explores architectural criticism with reference to modes of criticism in other disciplines - specifically art criticism - and considers how critical practice in architecture operates through a number of different modes: buildings, drawings and texts. With forty essays by an international cast of leading architectural academics, this accessible single source text on the topical subject of architectural criticism is ideal for undergraduate as well as post graduate study.

Download or read book Landscape Architecture Criticism written by Jacky Bowring and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-04-29 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Landscape Architecture Criticism offers techniques, perspectives and theories which relate to landscape architecture, a field very different from the more well-known domains of art and architectural criticism. Throughout the book, Bowring delves into questions such as, how do we know if built or unbuilt works of landscape architecture are successful? What strategies are used to measure the success or failure, and by whom? Does design criticism only come in written form? It brings together diverse perspectives on criticism in landscape architecture, establishing a substantial point of reference for approaching design critique, exploring how criticism developed within the discipline. Beginning with an introductory overview to set the framework, the book then moves on to historical perspectives, the purpose of critique, theoretical positions ranging from aesthetics, to politics and experience, unbuilt projects, techniques, and communication. Written for professionals and academics, as well as for students and instructors in landscape architecture, it includes strategies, diagrams, matrices, and full colour illustrations to prompt discussion and provide a basis for exploring design critique.

Download or read book Critique of Architecture written by Douglas Spencer and published by Birkhäuser. This book was released on 2021-01-18 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critique of Architecture offers a renewed and radical theorization of the relations between capital and architecture. It explicates the theoretical gymnastics through which architecture legitimates its services to neoliberalism, examines the discipline’s production of platforms for happily compliant consumers, and challenges its entrepreneurial self-image. Critique of Architecture also addresses the discourse of autonomy, questioning its capacity to engage effectively with the terms and conditions of capitalism today, analyses the post-political turns of contemporary architecture theory, and reckons with the legacies and limitations of critical theory.

Download or read book Not Interesting written by Andrew Atwood and published by ORO Applied Research + Design. This book was released on 2018-09-26 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Not Interesting proposes another set of terms and structures to talk about architecture, without requiring that it be interesting. This book explores a set of alternatives to the interesting and imagines how architecture might be positioned more broadly in the world using other terms: boring, confusing, and comforting. Along with interesting, these three terms make up the four chapters of the book. Each chapter introduces its topic through an analysis of a different image, which serves to unpack the specific character of each term and its relationship to architecture. In addition to text, the book contains over 50 case studies using 100 drawings and images. These are presented in parallel to the text and show what architecture may look like through the lens of these other terms.

Download or read book Architecture Beyond Criticism written by Wolfgang F. E. Preiser and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-11-27 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time, this book demonstrates that the two paradigms of architectural criticism and performance evaluation can not only co-exist but complement each other in the assessment of built works. As architecture takes more principled stances worldwide, from environmental sustainability to social, cultural, and economic activism, this book examines the roles of perceived and measured quality in architecture. By exploring in tandem both subjective traditional architectural criticism and environmental design and performance evaluation and its objective evaluation criteria, the book argues that both methodologies and outcomes can achieve a comprehensive assessment of quality in architecture. Curated by a global editorial team, the book includes: Contributions from international architects and critics based in the UK, USA, Brazil, France, Qatar, Egypt, New Zealand, China, Japan and Germany Global case studies which illustrate both perspectives addressed by the book and comparative analyses of the findings A six part organization which includes introductions and conclusions from the editors, to help guide the reader and further illuminate the contributions. By presenting a systematic approach to assessing building performance, design professionals will learn how to improve building design and performance with major stakeholders in mind, especially end users/occupants.

Download or read book Architecture and Modernity written by Hilde Heynen and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2000-02-28 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bridges the gap between the history and theory of twentieth-century architecture and cultural theories of modernity. In this exploration of the relationship between modernity, dwelling, and architecture, Hilde Heynen attempts to bridge the gap between the discourse of the modern movement and cultural theories of modernity. On one hand, she discusses architecture from the perspective of critical theory, and on the other, she modifies positions within critical theory by linking them with architecture. She assesses architecture as a cultural field that structures daily life and that embodies major contradictions inherent in modernity, arguing that architecture nonetheless has a certain capacity to adopt a critical stance vis-à-vis modernity. Besides presenting a theoretical discussion of the relation between architecture, modernity, and dwelling, the book provides architectural students with an introduction to the discourse of critical theory. The subchapters on Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno, and the Venice School (Tafuri, Dal Co, Cacciari) can be studied independently for this purpose.

Download or read book Building Up and Tearing Down written by Paul Goldberger and published by Random House Digital, Inc.. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PAUL GOLDBERGER ON THE AGE OF ARCHITECTURE The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao by Frank Gehry, the CCTV Headquarters by Rem Koolhaas, the Getty Center by Richard Meier, the Times Building by Renzo Piano: Pulitzer Prize–winning critic Paul Goldberger’s tenure atThe New Yorkerhas documented a captivating era in the world of architecture, one in which larger-than-life buildings, urban schemes, historic preservation battles, and personalities have commanded an international stage. Goldberger’s keen observations and sharp wit make him one of the most insightful and passionate architectural voices of our time. In this collection of fifty-seven essays, the critic Tracy Kidder called “America’s foremost interpreter of public architecture” ranges from Havana to Beijing, from Chicago to Las Vegas, dissecting everything from skyscrapers by Norman Foster and museums by Tadao Ando to airports, monuments, suburban shopping malls, and white-brick apartment houses. This is a comprehensive account of the best—and the worst—of the “age of architecture.” On Norman Foster: Norman Foster is the Mozart of modernism. He is nimble and prolific, and his buildings are marked by lightness and grace. He works very hard, but his designs don’t show the effort. He brings an air of unnerving aplomb to everything he creates—from skyscrapers to airports, research laboratories to art galleries, chairs to doorknobs. His ability to produce surprising work that doesn’t feel labored must drive his competitors crazy. On the Westin Hotel: The forty-five-story Westin is the most garish tall building that has gone up in New York in as long as I can remember. It is fascinating, if only because it makes Times Square vulgar in a whole new way, extending up into the sky. It is not easy, these days, to go beyond the bounds of taste. If the architects, the Miami-based firm Arquitectonica, had been trying to allude to bad taste, one could perhaps respect what they came up with. But they simply wanted, like most architects today, to entertain us. On Mies van der Rohe: Mies’s buildings look like the simplest things you could imagine, yet they are among the richest works of architecture ever created. Modern architecture was supposed to remake the world, and Mies was at the center of the revolution, but he was also a counterrevolutionary who designed beautiful things. His spare, minimalist objects are exquisite. He is the only modernist who created a language that ranks with the architectural languages of the past, and while this has sometimes been troubling for his reputation . . . his architectural forms become more astonishing as time goes on.

Download or read book Collected Essays in Architectural Criticism written by Alan Colquhoun and published by Black Dog Architecture. This book was released on 2009 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collected Essays in Architectural Criticism is an indispensable anthology of writing by one of the most important voices in architectural theory of the last 50 years. Born in 1921, Colquhoun graduated from the Architectural Association in 1949. Currently Professor Emeritus of Architecture at Princeton University, he has taught at the AA, Cornell University and University College Dublin, among many other schools of architecture. He is the author of several books including the seminal Essays in Architectural Criticism, 1981, Modernity and the Classical Tradition, 1991, (both republished here in their entirety) and The Oxford History of Modern Architecture, 2002. This book includes essays from throughout Colquhoun's distinguished career. In his early writing Colquhoun subjects modern architecture to a far more thorough reading than was then customary. His meticulous evaluation of Modernism raised the standard of architectural historiography and has influenced new directions in theory and practice ever since. Collected Essays in Architectural Criticism encompasses the clarity of style and rigorous, erudite analysis that Colquhoun has brought to bear on a diverse range of subjects, including Le Corbusier, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, the Pompidou Centre, Postmodernism and the design of museums.

Download or read book From Crisis to Crisis written by Nasrine Seraji-Bozorgzad and published by Actar. This book was released on 2018-12-31 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors examine how reading, writing, and criticism can address the urgent issues faced by architecture as it is practiced, taught, and studied today. The publication is drawn from an international public symposium organized in the spring of 2017 by the Department of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong.

Download or read book Why Architecture Matters written by Blair Kamin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text collects the best of architecture critic Blair Kamin's columns. Using Chicago as a barometer of national design trends, the book sheds light on the state of American architecture during 'the Nervous Nineties'.

Download or read book The SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory written by C. Greig Crysler and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2012-01-20 with total page 1012 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Offers an intense scholarly experience in its comprehensiveness, its variety of voices and its formal organization... the editors took a risk, experimented and have delivered a much-needed resource that upends the status-quo." - Architectural Histories, journal of the European Architectural History Network "Architectural theory interweaves interdisciplinary understandings with different practices, intentions and ways of knowing. This handbook provides a lucid and comprehensive introduction to this challenging and shifting terrain, and will be of great interest to students, academics and practitioners alike." - Professor Iain Borden, UCL Bartlett School of Architecture "In this collection, architectural theory expands outward to interact with adjacent discourses such as sustainability, conservation, spatial practices, virtual technologies, and more. We have in The Handbook of Architectural Theory an example of the extreme generosity of architectural theory. It is a volume that designers and scholars of many stripes will welcome." - K. Michael Hays, Eliot Noyes Professor of Architectural Theory, Harvard University The SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory documents and builds upon the most innovative developments in architectural theory over the last two decades. Bringing into dialogue a range of geographically, institutionally and historically competing positions, it examines and explores parallel debates in related fields. The book is divided into eight sections: Power/Difference/Embodiment Aesthetics/Pleasure/Excess Nation/World/Spectacle History/Memory/Tradition Design/Production/Practice Science/Technology/Virtuality Nature/Ecology/Sustainability City/Metropolis/Territory. Creating openings for future lines of inquiry and establishing the basis for new directions for education, research and practice, the book is organized around specific case studies to provide a critical, interpretive and speculative enquiry into the relevant debates in architectural theory.

Download or read book Architecture and the Text written by Jennifer Bloomer and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this profoundly original book, Jennifer Bloomer addresses important philosophical questions concerning the relation between writing and architecture. Drawing together two cultural fantasies from different periods--one literary and one architectural--Bloomer uses the allegorical strategies she finds in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake to analyze three works of Giambattista Piranesi (Campo Marzio, Collegio, and the Carceri). Bloomer argues that architecture is a system of representation, with signifying possibilities that go beyond the merely symbolic. Bloomer reads the texts and ideas of Joyce and Piranesi against one another, further illuminating them with insights from myth, religion, linguistics, film theory, nursery rhymes, and personal anecdotes, as well as from poststructuralist, Marxist, and feminist criticism. Combining the strategies of Finnegans Wake, which Joyce himself called architectural, with conventional strategies of architectural thinking, Bloomer creates a new way of thinking architecturally that is not dominated by linear models and that appropriates ideas, parts, and theoretical frameworks from many other disciplines. Demonstrating her argument by dramatic example, Bloomer's treatise--like Joyce's word-play and Piranesi's play with visual representation--offers the pleasure of ongoing discovery.

Download or read book Canadian Modern Architecture written by Elsa Lam and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2019-11-19 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) President's Medal Award (multi-media representation of architecture). Canada's most distinguished architectural critics and scholars offer fresh insights into the country's unique modern and contemporary architecture. Beginning with the nation's centennial and Expo 67 in Montreal, this fifty-year retrospective covers the defining of national institutions and movements: • How Canadian architects interpreted major external trends • Regional and indigenous architectural tendencies • The influence of architects in Canada's three largest cities: Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver Co-published with Canadian Architect, this comprehensive reference book is extensively illustrated and includes fifteen specially commissioned essays.

Download or read book Exquisite Corpse written by Michael Sorkin and published by Verso. This book was released on 1991 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Exquisite Corpse' was a game played by the surrealists in which someone drew on a piece of paper, folded it and passed it to the next person to draw on until, finally, the sheet was opened to reveal a calculated yet random composition. In this entertaining and provocative book, Michael Sorkin suggests that cities are similarly assembled by many players acting with varying autonomy in a complicit framework. An unfolding terrain of invention, the city is also a means of accommodating disparity, of contextualizing sometimes startling juxtapositions. Sorkin's aim is to widen the debate about the creation of buildings beyond the immediate issues of technology and design. He discusses the politics and culture of architecture with daring, often devastating, observations about the institutions and personalities who have dominated the profession over the past decade. Their preoccupation with the empty style of 'beach houses and Disneyland' has consistently trivialized the full constructive scope of contemporary architecture's possibilities. Sorkin's interventions range from the development scandals of New York where 'skyscrapers stand at the intersection between grid and greed', through the deconstructivist architectural culture of Los Angeles, to the work and ideas of architects, developers and critics such as Alvar Aalto, Norman Foster, Paul Goldberger, Michael Graves, Coop Himmelblau, Philip Johnson, Leon Krier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Rogers, Carlo Scarpa, James Stirling, Donald Trump, Tom Wolfe and Lebbeus Woods. Throughout Sorkin combines stinging polemic with a powerful call for a rebirth of architecture that is visionary and experimental--a recuperated 'dreamy science'