How Buildings Learn is a masterful new synthesis that proposes that buildings adapt best when constantly refined and reshaped by their occupants, and that architects can mature from being artists of space to becoming artists of time. From the connected farmhouses of New England to I.M. Pei's Media Lab, from "satisficing" to "form follows funding," from the evolution of bungalows to the invention of Santa Fe Style, from Low Road military surplus buildings to a High Road English classic like Chatsworth—this is a far-ranging survey of unexplored essential territory.More than any other human artifacts, buildings improve with time—if they're allowed to. How Buildings Learn shows how to work with time rather than against it.

    Jaffe and Sherwood reveal the shocking inside story of a city polarized by race, class, poverty, and power.

    Since 1870, however, they have been the target of an official war led by people whose concept of home does not include the hotel. Do these residences constitute an essential housing resource, or are they, as charged, a public nuisance?Living Downtown, the first comprehensive social and cultural history of life in American residential hotels, adds a much-needed historical perspective to this ongoing debate. Creatively combining evidence from biographies, buildings and urban neighborhoods, workplace records, and housing policies, Paul Groth provides a definitive analysis of life in four price-differentiated types of downtown residence. He demonstrates that these hotels have played a valuable socioeconomic role as home to both long-term residents and temporary laborers. Also, the convenience of hotels has made them the residence of choice for a surprising number of Americans, from hobo author Boxcar Bertha to Calvin Coolidge.Groth examines the social and cultural objections to hotel households and the increasing efforts to eliminate them, which have led to the seemingly irrational destruction of millions of such housing units since 1960. He argues convincingly that these efforts have been a leading contributor to urban homelessness.This highly original and timely work aims to expand the concept of the American home and to recast accepted notions about the relationships among urban life, architecture, and the public management of residential environments.

    Heir to the energetic Quaker reformist tradition in Philadelphia in the 1820s, the penitentiary was a model of idealism in penal reform and a model of prison architecture for the world. About three hundred prisons worldwide trace their paternity to Eastern State Penitentiary. This book shows how the novel experiment in prison reform contended with the realities of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and explores the legacy of this crucible of good intentions.

    From Art Deco to Beaux-Arts, Spanish Colonial to Mission Revival, Winter discusses an impressive variety of architectural styles in this popular guide that he co-authored with the late David Gebhard. New buildings and sites have been added, along with all new photography. Considered the most thorough L.A. architecture guide ever written, this new edition features the best of the past and present, from Charles and Henry Greene's Gamble House to Frank Gehry's Disney Philharmonic Hall. This was, and is again, a must-have guide to a diverse and architecturally rich area.

    Its 'collection' includes…virtually every important style found throughout the United States."—From the IntroductionPhiladelphia Architecture provides descriptions and photographs of over 400 of the city's important buildings. With seven walking tours, historical timelines, and short biographies of Philadelphia architects (including Frank Furness and Louis Kahn), the book will appeal to visitors, residents, and architecture enthusiasts.The core of the guide is a catalog of 250 buildings representing a broad range of building types and architectural styles. The building entries are divided into three chronological sections: 1682–1820; 1821–1900; 1900–1983. Each entry gives the name, date, location, and architect as well as information about the client, events related to the building, its use and major architectural features. The descriptions show how the buildings fit into the social and economic history of the city as well as how they relate to the evolution of architectural styles.Each chronological section is introduced by an essay which describes the physical, social, and economic growth of the city, thereby placing the buildings in a broader context. These essays are illustrated by maps and decorative arts representative of the period. There is an illustrated glossary of architectural terms and biographies of the most important Philadelphia architects.The guide also contains nine walking and driving tours with four-color maps of areas with significant concentrations of important buildings, and cross-referenced to the building entries. Places of interest in the city and region such as the Italian Market, Longwood Gardens, and The Philadelphia Zoo are highlighted. A reference section (places to get information about architecture, tours and the like) and an index conclude this handy, informative book.Philadelphia Architecture is copublished with The Foundation for Architecture, a non-profit organization affiliated with the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Institute for Architects.John Andrew Gallery has been a member of Philadelphia's community development and historic preservation community for close to fifty years. From 2002 to 2013, he was Executive Director of the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia, where he advocated for the city's historic built environment. He is the author of The Planning of Center City Philadelphia: From William Penn to the Present and editor of Sacred Sites of Center City, both available from Paul Dry Books.

    In these four essays, which were presented as the 1992 Calvin P. Horn Lectures in Western History and Culture, Donald Worster incisively discusses the role of the natural environment in the making of the West--and often in its unmaking and remaking. His subjects are four linked topics: the legacy of John Wesley Powell to western resource management; the domination of water policy by state, science, and capital since the mid-nineteenth century; the fate of wildlife in the push to settle the West; and the threat of global warming to the Great Plains. The landscape of the West has for too long been an obstacle to be overcome. But in Worster's view it is in seeing how people have dealt with and, all too often, mishandled nature that gives urgency to better understanding the region's ecological history. Worster argues for a new relationship of western people to their surroundings based on benefits to a community rather than on gains to individuals.

    The present edition brings the history of Dallas up to date, reaching into the year 2000. It's a lively but authoritative history of Dallas in the 20th century. Special attention to local politics, race relations, crime, and civic leadership.