It is thousands of years old, and the same today as it has always been. The great traditional buildings of the past, the villages and tents and temples in which man feels at home, have always been made by people who were very close to the center of this way. It is not possible to make great buildings, or great towns, beautiful places, places where you feel yourself, places where you feel alive, except by following this way. And, as you will see, this way will lead anyone who looks for it to buildings which are themselves as ancient in their form as the trees and hills, and as our faces are.”The Timeless Way of Building is the introductory volume to Alexander’s other works, A Pattern Language and The Oregon Experiment, in the Center for Environmental Structure series.

    Back in print in a newly designed edition, this influential cultural, architectural, and social history of New York is even more popular, selling out its first printing on publication. Rem Koolhaas's celebration and analysis of New York depicts the city as a metaphor for the incredible variety of human behavior. At the end of the nineteenth century, population, information, and technology explosions made Manhattan a laboratory for the invention and testing of a metropolitan lifestyle -- "the culture of congestion" -- and its architecture. "Manhattan," he writes, "is the 20th century's Rosetta Stone . . . occupied by architectural mutations (Central Park, the Skyscraper), utopian fragments (Rockefeller Center, the U.N. Building), and irrational phenomena (Radio City Music Hall)." Koolhaas interprets and reinterprets the dynamic relationship between architecture and culture in a number of telling episodes of New York's history, including the imposition of the Manhattan grid, the creation of Coney Island, and the development of the skyscraper. Delirious New York is also packed with intriguing and fun facts and illustrated with witty watercolors and quirky archival drawings, photographs, postcards, and maps. The spirit of this visionary investigation of Manhattan equals the energy of the city itself.

    Gordon strips engineering of its confusing technical terms, communicating its founding principles in accessible, witty prose.For anyone who has ever wondered why suspension bridges don't collapse under eight lanes of traffic, how dams hold back--or give way under--thousands of gallons of water, or what principles guide the design of a skyscraper, a bias-cut dress, or a kangaroo, this book will ease your anxiety and answer your questions.Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down is an informal explanation of the basic forces that hold together the ordinary and essential things of this world--from buildings and bodies to flying aircraft and eggshells. In a style that combines wit, a masterful command of his subject, and an encyclopedic range of reference, Gordon includes such chapters as "How to Design a Worm" and "The Advantage of Being a Beam," offering humorous insights in human and natural creation.Architects and engineers will appreciate the clear and cogent explanations of the concepts of stress, shear, torsion, fracture, and compression. If you're building a house, a sailboat, or a catapult, here is a handy tool for understanding the mechanics of joinery, floors, ceilings, hulls, masts--or flying buttresses.Without jargon or oversimplification, Structures opens up the marvels of technology to anyone interested in the foundations of our everyday lives.

    The latest edition of this urban classic takes a fresh look at the architectural treasures that define New York -- from its most characteristic landmarks to its less famous local favorites.To prepare this edition -- the first revision since 1987 -- Norval White has visited and revisited more than 5,000 buildings, making this by far the most complete guide of its kind. This generously illustrated handbook presents the structures of the New York City--from the magnificent to the obscure -- in over 3,000 new photographs, more than 130 new maps, and hundreds of revised and new entries. Beyond the skyscrapers and historical buildings, the guide also leads the way to the city's bridges, parks, and public monuments.From the tip of the Empire State Building to the brownstones in Brooklyn, the AIA Guide to New York City reveals how the city's spirit, fortitude, and character are captured and expressed in its architecture. Thoughtful and humorous descriptions include fascinating bits of local information that bring the city's history to life, telling the stories behind the bricks and mortar. Together, the maps, photographs, and expert critiques invite you on a special grand tour of the city at your own pace.This guide is a definitive record of New York's architectural heritage and provides a compact, authoritative directory for lovers of New York City all over the world. Its portability and encyclopedic quality make it an ideal traveling companion for any walker in the city. For the sightseer, the architect, or anyone on a casual stroll, the AIA Guide to New York City is the book to grab on your way out the door.

    From Barnsdall Park in Los Angeles to the Zimmerman house in New Hampshire, from Florida Southern College to Taliesin in Wisconsin, with Fallingwater in between, Frank Lloyd Wright buildings open to the public receive thousands of visitors each year, and there is a thriving commerce in reproductions of Wright's furniture and fabric designs. Among the many books available on Frank Lloyd Wright, William Allin Storrer's classic—now fully revised and updated—remains the only authoritative guide to all of Wright's built work.This edition includes a number of new features. It provides information on Frank Lloyd Wright buildings discovered since the first edition. It features full-color photographs to highlight those buildings that remain essentially as they were first built. To facilitate its use as a convenient field guide, this durable flexibound edition gives full addresses with each entry, as well as GPS coordinates, and offers maps giving the shortest route to each building. Preserving the chronological order of past editions, the catalog allows readers to trace the progression of Frank Lloyd Wright's built designs from the early Prairie school works to the last building constructed to Wright's specifications on the original site—the Aime and Norman Lykes residence.The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright will be indispensable for anyone fascinated with Wright's unique architectural genius.

    Although Islamic buildings may make an immediate visual impact, it can be useful to know something of the society which they serve. This text relates the architecture to the social areas of religion, power structure, commerce and communal life, placing emphasis on function and meaning rather than on style and chronology.

    Timber-framed buildings catch the imagination of those who work with them because of their beauty, their strength and the quality of the material of which they were made: English oak. Many thousands of buildings of all ages still remain to remind us the strength of the tradition. This book looks behind the commong image of 'black and white' houses, showing how timber buildings were built and how they vary from region to region.

    It has often been said that nowhere in the United States can one find a greater collection of magnificent and historic synagogues than on New York's Lower East Side. As the ultimate destination for millions of immigrant eastern European Jews during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it became the new homeland and hoped-for goldene medinah (promised land) for immigrants fleeing persecution, poverty, and oppression, while struggling to live a new and productive life. Yet to many visitors and students today these synagogues are shrouded in mystery, asdocumentary information on them tends to be dispersed and difficult to find. With The Synagogues of New York's Lower East Side, Gerard R. Wolfe fills that void, giving readers unparalleled access to the story of how the Jewish community took root on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Using archival photographs taken by Jo Renee Fine and contemporary shots taken by Norman Borden alongside his text, Wolfe focuses on the synagogues built or acquired by eastern European Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants during the great era of mass immigration, painting vivid portraits of the individual congregations and the new and vital culture that was emerging. For many, the Lower East Side became the portal to America and the stepping-stone toa new and better life. Today, the synagogues in which these immigrants worshiped remain as a poignant visual reminder of what had become the largest Jewish community in the world. Originally published in 1978, The Synagogues of New York's Lower East Side became the authoritative study of the subject. Now completely revised and updated with new text, photographs, and maps, along with an invaluable glossary, Wolfe's book is an essential and accessible source for those who want to understand thevaried and rich history of New York's Lower East Side and its Jewish population. Its readable and illuminating view into the diversity of synagogues--large and small, past and present--and their people makes this book ideal for teachers, students, museum educators, and general readers alike.

    

    Their stories--the palaces, mansions, cottages, and castles--and their owners are dramatically presented along with sumptuous photographs. Includes such individuals as Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Hadrian, avant garde architect Frank Lloyd Wright, Eastern potentates, inspired women such as Sarah Winchester, and great American builders such as Thomas Jefferson, the Vanderbilts and John Ringling....An intimate look at the most fantastic private homes in the world and the remarkable men and women who could afford to build as imaginatively as their fancies dictated-and did. The improbable dreams of individuals who knew what they wanted and how to get it-at any cost-have resulted in some of the most envied and admired dwellings ever created. The stories of those intriguing homes-mansions, palaces, cottages, castles-and their owners are dramatically presented, through photographs, art, and evocative text, in THE MAGNIFICENT BUILDERS. Here, in splendid visual array, are some of the most beautiful buildings ever designed: Francis I's Chambord, the Alhambra of the caliphs of Granada, John Ringling's Ca'd'Zan, the Duchess of Marlborough's Blenheim Palace. Here also you will find the unpretentious charm of handmade houses built by modern do-it-your-self dreamers. More than architecture, however, this book is about people-some of the most dynamic individualsin history as well as contemporary times: poets, kings, queens, self-made men, architects, oil barons, the idle rich, dictators, entertainers. THE MAGNIFICENT BUILDERS ventures behind the public faces to explore the private motivations of personalities as diverse as the Emperor Hadrian and Wilt Chamberlain, Mrs. Jack Gardner and Frank Lloyd Wright, the Tiger Balm King and Alva Vanderbilt. THE MAGNIFICENT BUILDERS takes readers to Marie Antoinette's "rustic" cottage in the village of Le Hameau, where she played dairymaid with a Sevres milk pail; to fabulous San Simeon, which William Randolph Hearst filled with treasures-and junk-from European palaces; to Chenonceaux, the lovely prize in a romantic rivalry between Henry II's queen, Catherine de Medicis, and his mistress, Diane de Poitiers; to the Alhambra, where Moorish caliphs. "tasted all the pleasures and forgot all the duties" of life; to Hardwick Hall, one of the stately Elizabethan mansions the Countess of Shrewsbury built with the fortunes of four successive husbands.-. -from the book jacketContents:Rulers in search of glory: Louis XIV, Marie Antoinette, Henri Christophe, Philip II --Kings for their pleasure: Hadrian, Diocletian, Ludwig II, George IV, Francis I --Architects for themselves: Frank Lloyd Wright, Juan O'Gorman, Herbert Greene, Philip Johnson, Richard Foster, Paolo Soleri, John Soane --Inspired women: Diane de Poitiers, Elizabeth Shrewsbury, Sarah Winchester, Sarah Churchill, Isabella Gardner --Artists as builders: Mark Twain, Sir Walter Scott, William Gillette, Frederick Church, Peter Paul Rubens, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Horace Walpole --Easern potentates: Darius the Great, Shah Jahan, Maharana Jagat Singh, Ibn al-Ahmar --Princely Americans: Thomas Jefferson, Haller Nutt, The Vanderbilt family, George Boldt, John Ringling, William Randolph Hearst.

    The great photographs show us, and the delightful text and captions tell us, how San Francisco's Painted Ladies have enjoyed an astonishing renaissance.

    

    

    

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    The principles outlined in Shelter, published almost 40 years ago, seem even more important today: relearning the still-usable skills of the past and doing more hand work in providing life's necessities. Shelter II provides a basic manual of design and construction for the first time house-builder. The book begins with simple shelters still being built and lived in by people with minimal resources. They can be viewed for historical or anthropological interest, or as sensible, instructive examples of efficient construction by those who lack the choices available in industrialized societies. There are also personal accounts and seasoned advice from builders in different climates, with a variety of design approaches, construction techniques, and building materials. A home is still a place for working, resting, sharing, healing, dreaming . . . some things haven't changed that much.