Indeed, readers of the Journal of the American Institute of Architects voted it the best American building of the last 125 years! Annually, more than 128,000 visitors seek out Fallingwater in its remote mountain site in southwestern Pennsylvania. Considered Frank Lloyd Wright's domestic masterpiece, the house is recognized worldwide as the paradigm of organic architecture, where a building becomes an integral part of its natural setting.This charming and provocative book is the work of the man best qualified to undertake it, who was both apprentice to Wright and son of the man who commissioned the house. Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., closely followed the planning and construction of Fallingwater, and lived in the house on weekends and vacations for twenty-seven years-until, following the deaths of his parents, he gave the house in 1963 to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy to hold for public enjoyment and appreciation.This is a personal, almost intimate record of one man's fifty-year relationship to a work of genius that only gradually revealed its complexities and originality. With full appreciation of the intentions of both architect and client, Mr. Kaufmann described this remarkable building in detail, telling of its extraordinary virtues but not failing to reveal its faults. One section of the book focuses on the realities of Fallingwater as architecture. A famous building right from its beginnings (only partly because it was Wright's first significant commission in more than a decade), Fallingwater has accumulated considerable publicity and analysis-much of it off the mark. Mr. Kaufmann outlined and dealt with the common misunderstandings that have obscured the building's true values and supplied accurate information and interpretations. In another section Mr. Kaufmann provided an in-depth essay on the subtleties of Fallingwater, the ideology underlying its esthetics. A key element of this is the close interweaving of the house and its rugged, challenging setting, which he explicated in fascinating detail.The author maintained throughout the direct approach of one who knew and loved Fallingwater. As an apprentice and loyal admirer of the architect, Mr. Kaufmann was well attuned to the architecture. And as a retired professor of architectural history and frequent lecturer and panelist, he had considerable experience in presenting and interpreting Wright's ideas. Thoroughly versed in the books, articles, drawings, and buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright, Mr. Kaufmann was eminently situated to place Fallingwater in that context. This unique record was presented in celebration of Fallingwater's fiftieth anniversary.Special features of this volume include: numerous never-before published photographs of the house under construction, during its entire history, and of the family in residence; a room-by-room pictorial survey in full color taken especially for this volume; isometric architectural perspectives that explain visually how the house was constructed; and the first accurate, measured plans of the house as built.

    The automobile, the effects of the Modern Movement in architectural design, urban-renewal and zoning policies, the dominance of private over public interests, as well as changes in land use in the inner city have resulted in the loss of values and meanings that were traditionally associated with urban open space. This text offers a comprehensive and systematic examination of the crisis of the contemporary city and the means by which this crisis can be addressed. Finding Lost Space traces leading urban spatial design theories that have emerged over the past eighty years: the principles of Sitte and Howard; the impact of and reactions to the Functionalist movement; and designs developed by Team 10, Robert Venturi, the Krier brothers, and Fumihiko Maki, to name a few. In addition to discussions of historic precedents, contemporary approaches to urban spatial design are explored. Detailed case studies of Boston, Massachusetts; Washington, D.C.; Goteborg, Sweden; and the Byker area of Newcastle, England demonstrate the need for an integrated design approach--one that considers figure-ground, linkage, and place theories of urban spatial design. These theories and their individual strengths and weaknesses are defined and applied in the case studies, demonstrating how well they operate in different contexts. This text will prove invaluable for students and professionals in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, and city planning. Finding Lost Space is going to be a primary text for the urban designers of the next generation. It is the first book in the field to absorb the lessons of the postmodern reaction, including the work of the Krier brothers and many others, and to integrate these into a coherent theory and set of design guidelines. Without polemics, Roger Trancik addresses the biggest issue in architecture and urbanism today: how can we regain in our shattered cities a public realm that is made of firmly shaped, coherently linked, humanly meaningful urban spaces? Robert Campbell, AIA Architect and architecture critic Boston Globe

    Sears ready-to-assemble houses were ordered by mail and shipped by rail wherever a boxcar or two could pull in to unload the meticulously precut lumber and all the materials needed to build an exceptionally sturdy and well-designed house. From Philadelphia, Pa., to Coldwater, Kans., and Cowley, Wyo., Sears put its guarantee on quality bungalows, colonials and Cape Cods, all with the latest modern conveniences--such as indoor plumbing. Houses by Mail tells the story of these precut houses and provides for the first time an incomparable guide to identifying Sears houses across the country. Arranged for easy identification in 15 sections by roof type, the book features nearly 450 house models with more than 800 illustrations, including drawings of the houses and floor plans. Because the Sears houses were built to last, thousands remain today to be discovered and restored. Houses by Mail shows how to return them to their original charm while it documents a highly successful business enterprise that embodied the spirit and domestic design of its time. After decades of obscurity, Sears houses have become chic. --Wall Street Journal These were . spacious, solidly built homes. --Parade Don't be surprised if your own cozy bungalow turns up [in the book].--Philadelphia Inquirer A nostalgic and informative look at the tastes of Americans in the years before World War II.--Publishers Weekly The bible to researchers of Sears' ready-cut homes.--Saturday Evening Post

    Von Meiss expertly bridges the gap between history and contemporary work by pinpointing the constant factors that exist in all architecture.A comprehensive analysis of the whole architectural phenomenon, this valuable book will prove especially useful to modern practitioners who need to make constant reference to buildings of the past.Staying away from the ineffectual arguments on styles that dominate today's architectural literature, this is the first recent book to attempt such a synthesis of architectural history and contemporary work. As such, it is unique.

    Coauthored with architect Edward Windhorst, this revised edition, three times the length of the original text, features extensive new research and commentary and draws on the best recent work of American and German scholars. The authors’ major new discoveries include the massive transcript of the early-1950s Farnsworth House court case, which discloses for the first time the facts about Mies’s epic battle with his client Edith Farnsworth. Giving voice to dozens of architects who knew and worked with (and sometimes against) Mies, this comprehensive biography tells the compelling story of how Mies and his students and followers created some of the most significant buildings of the twentieth century.   “Franz Schulze’s 1985 biography of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe has always been acknowledged as the most comprehensive and thoughtful biography of one of the key figures in twentieth-century architecture. This revised edition with significant new scholarship by its two authors will undoubtedly come to occupy the same position.”—Dietrich Neumann, Brown University

    The cross-fertilization of ideas, paradigms and methodologies have led to technological developments in areas such as information processing, full colour semiconductor displays, compact biosensors and controlled drug discovery. Experts in their respective fields discuss the latest developments and the future of micro-nano electronics.

    Includes over 1,200 references from current ecology, geography, forestry, and wildlife biologcy literature.

    This photographic and scholarly tribute includes the finest examples of architecture of the Old South from early colonial times to the onset of the Civil War.

    Leo L. Beranek. Source of practical acoustical concepts and theory, with information on microphones, loud-speakers and speaker enclosures, and room acoustics. 491 pp, hardcover 1986 (original published 1954).

    Initially the futuristic designs were outrageous, and detractors labeled these structures the Googie School of Architecture after a particularly outlandish coffee shop in Los Angeles. Googie would seem far from outlandish today as those once controversial design elements have become commonplace in both commercial and residential architecture. Author Alan Hess traces the evolution of these early post war designs in a lively yet learned essay profusely illustrated with both color and black-and-white photography. "Googie: Fifties Coffee Shop Architecture" is a nostalgic trip back to the Fifties and a look forward at the architectural future.

    But let us beware of American architects!" declared Le Corbusier, who like other European architects of his time believed that he saw in the work of American industrial builders a model of the way architecture should develop. It was a vision of an ideal world, a "concrete Atlantis" made up of daylight factories and grain elevators.In a book that suggests how good Modern was before it went wrong, Reyner Banham details the European discovery of this concrete Atlantis and examines a number of striking architectural instances where aspects of the International Style are anticipated by US industrial buildings.

    Book annotation not available for this title.

    

    Manfredo Tafuri presents a sophisticated account of the origins and development of the movements and schools that have shaped Italian architecture and urban design since the Liberation.Manfredo Tafuri is the Director of the Department of History of Architecture at the Instituto Universitario di Architetura in Venice. He is the author of "The Sphere and the Labyrinth: Avant-Gardes and Architecture from Piranesi to the 1970s "and "Architecture and Utopia."

    This book includes materials on deconstruction techniques, with increased emphasis given to energy conservation and the uses of solar energy.

    Lavishly illustrated with photographs and drawings, the book examines the architecture, decoration, and furniture of Virginia`s Anglican churches and puts them in the context of eighteenth-century life and society."The finest study ever done of early American religious architecture."—Jon Butler, Journal of British Studies"A splendid volume, thoroughly researched, well written, and handsomely produced. . . . The most satisfying and dexterous analysis of material culture to date."—Randall H. Balmer, Religious Studies Review"A remarkable book about the construction and meaning of Anglican churches in colonial Virginia."—Lois Green Carr, American Historical Review"Upton provides the general reader with a fascinating portrait of architecture as the physical embodiment of a certain time, place, and society without ignoring its technological or stylistic details and development."—Robin A. S. Haynes, American Quarterly"Upton . . . answers many questions about early Virginia life with deep insight through a study of a building type that mixed high style architecture with the vernacular."—Dennis Domer, Journal of Architectural EducationWinner of the 1987 Alice Davis Hitchcock Award given by the Society of Architectural Historians, the 1987 John Hope Franklin Prize of the American Studies Association, and the 1987 Abbott Lowell Cummings Award of the Vernacular Architecture Forum.Dell Upton is professor of architectural history at the University of California, Berkeley.

    It is an extraordinary compilation - part speculative biography, part meticulous research, with hundreds of intriguing drawings, many in color - that unravels the mystery of this eighteenth-century maverick artist whose drawings have established him variously as a visionary architect associated with Boullee and Ledoux, forerunner of surrealism, and inventor of bad taste. Lequeu's architectural drawings from the legendary portfolios Architecture civile and Nouvelle methode are presented here in their entirety, along with his Lewd Figures, perhaps the oddest feature of the whole collection. The drawings are accompanied by long captions, misspelt and ungrammatical, but written in a flawless bureaucratic hand. The artist's marginalia provide insights into his visions, which seem dominated by an obsession with petrified forms and a recurring preoccupation with sex. Interleaved with the drawings are curious autobiographical papers. And it is here that Duboy's investigation of Lequeu begins to reveal strange clues. He discovers that Lequeu was not an architect at all but a government bureaucrat, a draftsman who ended up living in a brothel. Between the brothel and the obscure office from which he was eventually fired, he produced his encyclopedia of the universe - bizarre portraits of nuns baring their breasts and other lewd figures, and architectural fantasies of vast imaginary cities. Duboy takes his study further, into the realm of Charles Fourier andhis brother-in-law Anthelme Brillat-Savarin and from there to the world of the dadaists, surrealists, and futurists, particularly the circles of Marcel Duchamp and Le Corbusier. He suggests that Duchamp and Raymond Rousell tampered with the Lequeu drawings to concoct a character and oeuvre even more puzzling. There are glimpses of Duchamp's convolutions of mind that will stir a reassessment of his work. Duchamp emerges here, for the first time, as an intrepid and unwavering despiser of Le Corbusier. Twentieth-century reputations are as much at stake in this study as those of the eighteenth-century artist, notes Robin Middleton. Philippe Duboy is Professor of the History of Cities, Paris-Belleville School of Architecture.

    It became a microcosm of Victorian life, industry and leisure, reflecting every aspect of its age. Designed by Joseph Paxton as a temporary structure its success meant that when it closed it was moved to Sydenham and rebuilt.

    It examines the individual achievements of Brunel, Joseph Paxton and Robert Stephenson among others, and explains how industrialization changed the face of the environment. The book concludes by considering why the Victorians' mood of optimism turned to one of disillusionment. It argues that the Victorians failed to come to terms with the consequences of industrialization, and that many of the innovations of British engineers found their best expression in other countries.

    

    

    This study offers a comprehensive look at American art, architecture, photography, film, and industrial and graphic design in the years between the two world wars.

    Wright responded with the in­novations—floor heating, flat roof, con­crete floor, solid walls, grouping of utili­ties, carport, seclusion from the street but openness to a garden through banks of door windows—that made their house the revolutionary “Usonia Num­ber One.” Within five years the Jacobs moved to the country, where Wright designed the “Solar Hemicycle,” which featured a windfoil design and the passive solar con­struction that became the prototype for such buildings. The 89 illustrations show the construction and important details of both houses.

    Hard Copy Book.

    It examines the Kandalama Hotel in Dambullah, the house on the Cinnamon Hill at Lunuganga, and his achievements in Sri Lanka and other parts of southern Asia. Personal in his approach, Bawa balances an appreciation of the western humanist tradition in architecture with local needs and lifestyles.

    HARDCOVER