These images are awesome not just for their beauty alone, but because they suggest an order underlying their growth, a harmony existing in nature. What does it mean that such an order exists; how far does it extend? The Power of Limits was inspired by those simple discoveries of harmony. The author went on to investigate and measure hundreds of patterns—ancient and modern, minute and vast. His discovery, vividly illustrated here, is that certain proportions occur over and over again in all these forms. Patterns are also repeated in how things grow and are made—by the dynamic union of opposites—as demonstrated by the spirals that move in opposite directions in the growth of a plant. The joining of unity and diversity in the discipline of proportional limitations creates forms that are beautiful to us because they embody the principles of the cosmic order of which we are a part; conversely, the limitlessness of that order is revealed by the strictness of its forms. The author shows how we, as humans, are included in the universal harmony of form, and suggests that the union of complementary opposites may be a way to extend that harmony to the psychological and social realms as well.

    This comprehensive book clearly explains every aspect of this endeavor, including design (siting, orientation, climate consideration), materials (sisal, cactus, bamboo, earth), and implementation. The author emphasizes throughout the book what is inexpensive and sustainable. Included are sections discussing urban planning, small-scale energy production, cleaning and storing drinking water, and dealing with septic waste, and all information is applied to three distinct tropical regions: humid areas, temporate areas, and desert climates. Hundreds of explanatory drawings by van Lengen allow even novice builders to get started.

    It is a book about houses and about culture and about how each affects the other, and it must stand as one of the major works on the history of modern housing. - Paul Goldberger, The New York Times Book ReviewLong before Betty Friedan wrote about the problem that had no name in The Feminine Mystique, a group of American feminists whose leaders included Melusina Fay Peirce, Mary Livermore, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman campaigned against women's isolation in the home and confinement to domestic life as the basic cause of their unequal position in society.The Grand Domestic Revolution reveals the innovative plans and visionary strategies of these persistent women, who developed the theory and practice of what Hayden calls material feminism in pursuit of economic independence and social equality. The material feminists' ambitious goals of socialized housework and child care meant revolutionizing the American home and creating community services. They raised fundamental questions about the relationship of men, women, and children in industrial society. Hayden analyzes the utopian and pragmatic sources of the feminists' programs for domestic reorganization and the conflicts over class, race, and gender they encountered. This history of a little-known intellectual tradition challenging patriarchal notions of women's place and women's work offers a new interpretation of the history of American feminism and a new interpretation of the history of American housing and urban design. Hayden shows how the material feminists' political ideology led them to design physical space to create housewives' cooperatives, kitchenless houses, day-care centers, public kitchens, and community dining halls. In their insistence that women be paid for domestic labor, the material feminists won the support of many suffragists and of novelists such as Edward Bellamy and William Dean Howells, who helped popularize their cause. Ebenezer Howard, Rudolph Schindler, and Lewis Mumford were among the many progressive architects and planners who promoted the reorganization of housing and neighborhoods around the needs of employed women. In reevaluating these early feminist plans for the environmental and economic transformation of American society and in recording the vigorous and many-sided arguments that evolved around the issues they raised, Hayden brings to light basic economic and spacial contradictions which outdated forms of housing and inadequate community services still create for American women and for their families.

    First published in hardcover under the title "A Theory of Good City Form"

    It pleases on two counts. It satisfies the curiosity of theinhabitants of a region, whether newcomers or old settlers, especially if noadequate history had existed before. It dispels myths, corrects old wives'tales. And, if the history is first-rate, it goes beyond a factual account ofpersons and places, the particularities of a region, and shows the significanceof these human happenings in a larger scheme of things, in this case theemergence of a new nation.Ellis's history succeeds on both counts. It is a delightful andauthoritative account of lore which not even St. Tammanyites may have heard of.Did you know, for example, that there was once a flourishing wine industry inSt. Tammany Parish? That local vineyards produced excellent red and whitewines, the red from Concord grapes, the white from Herbemont? Did you know thatin 1891 a rice crop of 50,000 barrels was harvested, half the entire output ofSouth Carolina? . . .Ellis has rendered this pleasant and authoritative history in a graceful andlively style and with a genuine affection for the people he writes about.Walker PercyFrom the Foreword

    The hundreds of drawings and photographs reproduced in this hardback volume offer almost endless variations on the many structural systems that can keep buildings together: within a few pages of one another, tents, domes and cubes are shown supported by poles, cables, ribs, rafters and beams. Heino Engel's presentation and explanation of this highly complex material differs fundamentally from others' work on the subject in that he focuses entirely upon the functions and design effects of these mechanisms, without regard for technical details: More than an engineering text, this is a catalogue of ideas and forms for architects and dreamers, a David Macaulay book for adults. Structure Systems skips over more commonly treated special designs and completed buildings for typical, representative and surprising shapes. As a reference work or daydream material, it is an indispensable repertoire of forms.

    It is being enthusiastically revived today not only for its sturdiness but because it can be easily insulated, it is attractive, and it offers the builder the unique satisfaction of working with timbers. Building the Timber Frame House is the most comprehensive manual available on the technique. In it you will find a short history, of timber framing and a fully illustrated discussion of the different kinds of joinery, assembly of timbers, and raising of the frame. There are also detailed sections on present-day design and materials, house plans, site development, foundation laying, insulation, tools, and methods.

    Beautifully illustrated in color. "An excellent book. Highly recommended".--Library Journal. Illustrated.

    His ruminations range from his obsession with theater to his concept of architecture as ritual. The illustrations--photographs, evocative images, as well as a set of drawings of Rossi's major architectural projects prepared particularly for this publication--were personally selected by the author to augment the text.

    Ancient urban dwellings were inward-looking, ranged around a courtyard. Until fairly recently, these dwelling types survived in indigenous urban house forms in the Islamic world, India, China, and the Iberian peninsula and Latin America. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, however, outward-looking house forms replaced the ancient form in most of Europe and the New World.In the Middle Ages houses served both as homes and as places of work, but gradually the domestic and business lives of the inhabitants became separate. In the wake of the Industrial Revolution, profound changes in the residential development of the western world occurred: housing became segregated along socioeconomic lines and dwelling types polarized, with low-density, single-family houses at one extreme, and tall, high-density, multifamily tenements and apartments at the other. Side effects of America s automobile-intensive suburban dream housing include inefficient land use, pollution, and urban decay. 6,000 Years of Housing chronicles how this came about, and suggests solutions based on a rich variety of historical precedents.

    Over 100 styles are covered, including 1700s Dutch Colonials and New England saltboxes, Southern plantation mansions, plain Shaker dewllings, whimsical Carpenter Gothics, as well as Deconstruction and Neomodern Styles. Architect Lester Walker's superb coverage features detailed drawings of each style, including exploded diagrams and floor plans -- essential reference to the American dwelling, past and present.

    

    Completely updated and filled with splendid new illustrations, this edition invites all visitors to Venice, armchair travelers, and students of Renaissance art and architecture to a fuller appreciation of the buildings of this uniquely beautiful city.“The best concise introduction to Venetian architecture in English.”—Times Literary Supplement“Compact and manageable . . . an excellent introduction to the novice preparing for a first Venetian experience.”—Society of Architectural Historians“A hugely rewarding and accessible book.”—Richard Cork, Modern Painters

    Motels, eating and drinking establishments, gas stations, and roadside attractions of great variety argue for the appreciation of the ordinary, the eccentric, and the whimsical, in addition to giving vivid evidence of the highly inventive nature of our commercial design.The photographs in this book chronicle buildings that survived seven decades of American road life. Located throughout the USA, these structures attest to a time when our cities and towns were marked by character, pride, personality, and humor; and to a time when the individual proprietor's vision of what the traveler was seeking had not yet been superseded by the homogeneity brought about by large corporations and the interstate highway system.The End of the Road celebrates the rich and splendid diversity of our vanishing vernacular. It is a book for anyone with an interest in America - past, present, and future.

    H. Richardson's massive Buffalo State Hospital, Richard Upjohn's Sr. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral, five prairie houses by Frank Lloyd Wright, and building by Daniel Burnham, Albert Kahn, and the firms of McKim, Mead, and White, and Lockwood, Green and Company, among others.These structures by prominent outsiders served to spur the efforts of local architects, builders, and craftsmen, and all of them built within the context of the city-wide park and parkway system designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. In addition, the city and its environs exhibit representative works by more recent architects, among them Eero and Eliel Saarinen, Walther Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Paul Rudloph, Minoru Yamasaki, and the firm of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill.Buffalo's rich architectural and planning heritage has attracted the attention of several prominent historians, capable of the challenge of evaluating its significance. Reyner Banham is one of the world's leading authorities on the theory and practice of architecture, and he has written extensively on design in the industrial age (and Buffalo's innovative manufacturing plants and grain elevators are important exemplars of such design). Charles Beveridge, whose essay covers the park and parkway system, is editor of the Olmsted papers at The American University. And Henry Russell Hitchcock is the dean of American architectural historians, and the organizer of a 1940 exhibition on Buffalo's built environment.Their essays are followed by seven sections that delineate the city's neighborhoods, each provided with a map, neighborhood history, and a full complement of photographs with descriptive building captions. An eighth section, Lost Buffalo, describes demolished buildings, chief among them Wright's great Larkin administration building, while the remaining sections venture out of town, exploring Erie and Niagara Counties, other parts of Western New York, and southern Ontario.

    Frederick D. Nichols and Ralph E. Griswold, in this close study of Jefferson's many notes, letters, and sketches, present a clear and detailed interpretation of his extraordinary accomplishments in the field.Thomas Jefferson, Landscape Architect investigates the many influences on--and of--the Jeffersonian legacy in architecture. Jefferson's personality, friendships, and convictions, complemented by his extensive reading and travels, clearly influenced his architectural work. His fresh approach to incorporating foreign elements into domestic designs, his revolutionary approach to relating the house to the surrounding land, and his profound influences on the architectural character of the District of Columbia are just a few of Jefferson's contributions to the American landscape.Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century maps, plans, and drawings, as well as pictures of the species of trees that Jefferson used for his designs, generously illustrate the engaging narrative in Thomas Jefferson, Landscape Architect.

    It also explores sources of and influences on his thought that have not been considered before. With the help of Narciso G. Menocal’s new work, both scholars and students of architectural and art history, as well as American cultural and intellectual history, will gain new insights into Sullivan and his work.

    The third edition of the leading introduction to traditional buildings contains a completely new chapter that carries forward the story to the Vernacular Revival of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and shows its influence on houses of today.