Book picks similar to
The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture by Pier Vittorio Aureli
architecture
theory
non-fiction
urbanism
Radical Cities: Across Latin America in Search of a New Architecture
Justin McGuirk - 2014
From Brazil to Venezuela, and from Mexico to Argentina, McGuirk discovers the people and ideas shaping the way cities are evolving. Ever since the mid twentieth century, when the dream of modernist utopia went to Latin America to die, the continent has been a testing ground for exciting new conceptions of the city. An architect in Chile has designed a form of social housing where only half of the house is built, allowing the owners to adapt the rest; Medellín, formerly the world’s murder capital, has been transformed with innovative public architecture; squatters in Caracas have taken over the forty-five-story Torre David skyscraper; and Rio is on a mission to incorporate its favelas into the rest of the city. Here, in the most urbanised continent on the planet, extreme cities have bred extreme conditions, from vast housing estates to sprawling slums. But after decades of social and political failure, a new generation has revitalised architecture and urban design in order to address persistent poverty and inequality. Together, these activists, pragmatists and social idealists are performing bold experiments that the rest of the world may learn from.Radical Cities is a colorful journey through Latin America—a crucible of architectural and urban innovation.
Visual Explanations
Edward R. Tufte - 1997
Through computers, the Internet, the media, and even our daily newspapers, we are awash in a seemingly endless stream of charts, maps, infographics, diagrams, and data. Visual Explanations is a navigational guide through this turbulent sea of information. The book is an essential reference for anyone involved in graphic, web, or multimedia design, as well as for educators and lecturers who use graphics in presentations or classes.Jacket design: Dmitry Krasny.Other artwork by Bonnie Scranton, Dmitry Krasny, and Weilin Wu.
Frank Lloyd Wright: The Houses
Alan Hess - 2005
In particular, his residential work has been the subject of continuing interest and controversy. Wright's Fallingwater (1935), the seminal masterpiece perched over a waterfall deep in the Pennsylvania highlands, is perhaps the best-known private house in the history of the world. In fact, Wright's houses-from his Prairie style Robie House (1906) in Chicago, to the Storer (1923) and Freeman (1923) houses in Los Angeles, and Taliesen West (1937) in the Arizona desert-are all touchstones of modern architecture. For the first time, all 289 extant houses are shown here in exquisite color photographs. Along with Weintraub's stunning photos and a selection of floor plans and archival images, the book includes text and essays by several leading Wright scholars. Frank Lloyd Wright: The Houses is an event of great importance and a major contribution to the literature on this titan of modern architecture.
Bauhaus
Jeannine Fiedler - 2000
As a school that strove to combine applied art with both the fine arts and technology, the Bauhaus movement has outlasted all other trends in architecture and design. This volume provides insight into the historical, cultural, philosophical, political and pedagogical background of the 1930s, when the Bauhaus was founded. It also portrays the famous Bauhaus directors and teachers and describes their signature pedagogical methods. Finally, the authors take readers inside Individual workshops, where they can discover for themselves the unique wealth of forms and ideas that remain the hallmark of Bauhaus products. Through its contributions to current discourse on the Bauhaus as a "fixed star of the avant-garde," its wealth of pictorial material (some of which has never before been published), as well as the rich variety of topics it addresses, this book offers a comprehensive look at one of the most significant institutions in the history of modern art and culture.
Unpacking My Library: Architects and Their Books
Jo Steffens - 2009
Each architect also presents a reading list of top ten influential titles, from architectural history to theory to fiction and nonfiction, that serves as a personal philosophy of literature and history, and advice on what every young architect, scholar, and lover of architecture should read. An inspiring cross-section of notable libraries, this beautiful book celebrates the arts of reading and collecting. Unpacking My Library: Architects and Their Books features the libraries of:Stan AllenHenry CobbLiz Diller & Ric ScofidioPeter EisenmanMichael GravesSteven HollToshiko MoriMichael SorkinBernard TschumiTodd Williams & Billie TsienPeter Eisenman's Recommended Titles:Robert Musil, The Man Without QualitiesLe Corbusier, Vers une ArchitectureThomas Pynchon, Gravity's RainbowRobert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in ArchitectureRem Koolhaas, Delirious New YorkJacques Derrida, Of GrammatologyAndrea Palladio, The Four Books on ArchitectureWalter Benjamin, IlluminationsJames Joyce, Finnegans WakeWilliam Faulkner, Light in August
On Painting
Leon Battista Alberti
Inspired by the order and beauty inherent in nature, his groundbreaking work sets out the principles of distance, dimension and proportion; instructs the painter on how to use the rules of composition, representation, light and colour to create work that is graceful and pleasing to the eye; and stipulates the moral and artistic pre-requisites of the successful painter. On Painting had an immediate and profound influence on Italian Renaissance artists including Ghiberti, Fra Angelico and Veneziano and on later figures such as Leonardo da Vinci, and remains a compelling theory of art.
The Lego Architect
Tom Alphin - 2015
You'll learn about styles like Art Deco, Modernism, and High-Tech, and find inspiration in galleries of LEGO models. Then take your turn building 12 models in a variety of styles. Snap together some bricks and learn architecture the fun way!
Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art
James Clifford - 1988
Analyzing cultural practices such as anthropology, travel writing, collecting, and museum displays of tribal art, James Clifford shows authoritative accounts of other ways of life to be contingent fictions, now actively contested in post-colonial contexts. His critique raises questions of global significance: Who has the authority to speak for any group's identity and authenticity? What are the essential elements and boundaries of a culture? How do self and "the other" clash in the encounters of ethnography, travel, and modern interethnic relations?In chapters devoted to the history of anthropology, Clifford discusses the work of Malinowski, Mead, Griaule, L�vi-Strauss, Turner, Geertz, and other influential scholars. He also explores the affinity of ethnography with avant-garde art and writing, recovering a subversive, self-reflexive cultural criticism. The surrealists' encounters with Paris or New York, the work of Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris in the Coll�ge de Sociologie, and the hybrid constructions of recent tribal artists offer provocative ethnographic examples that challenge familiar notions of difference and identity. In an emerging global modernity, the exotic is unexpectedly nearby, the familiar strangely distanced.
TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone (New Autonomy)
Hakim Bey - 1991
Recipes for poetic terror, anarcho -black magic, post-situ psychotropic surgery, denunciations of spiritual addictions to vapid infotainment cults - this is the bastard classic, the watermark impressed upon our minds. Where conscience informs praxis, and action infects consciousness, T.A.Z. is beginning to worm its way into above-ground culture. This book offers inspired blasts of writing, from slogans to historical essays, on the need to insert revolutionary happiness into everyday life through poetic action, and celebrating the radical optimism present in outlaw cultures. It should appeal to alternative thinkers and punks everywhere, as it celebrates liberation, love and poetic living. The new edition contains the full text of Chaos: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism, the complete communiques and flyers of the Association fo Ontological Anarchy, the long essay 'The Temporary Autonomous Zone, ' and a new preface by the author
The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape
Brian Ladd - 1997
Ladd surveys the urban landscape, excavating its ruins, contemplating its buildings and memorials, and carefully deconstructing the public debates and political controversies emerging from its past."Written in a clear and elegant style, The Ghosts of Berlin is not just another colorless architectural history of the German capital. . . . Mr. Ladd's book is a superb guide to this process of urban self-definition, both past and present."—Katharina Thote, Wall Street Journal"If a book can have the power to change a public debate, then The Ghosts of Berlin is such a book. Among the many new books about Berlin that I have read, Brian Ladd's is certainly the most impressive. . . . Ladd's approach also owes its success to the fact that he is a good storyteller. His history of Berlin's architectural successes and failures reads entertainingly like a detective novel."—Peter Schneider, New Republic"[Ladd's] well-written and well-illustrated book amounts to a brief history of the city as well as a guide to its landscape."—Anthony Grafton, New York Review of Books
Eames
Gloria Koenig - 2015
Though best known for their furniture, the husband and wife team were also forerunners in architecture, textile design, photography, and film.The Eames work defined anew, multifunctional modernity, exemplary for its integration of craft and design, as well as for the use of modern materials, notablyplywood and plastics.The Eames Lounge Chair Wood, designed with molded plywood technology, became a defining furniture piece of the twentieth century, while the couple s contribution to theCase Study Housesproject not only made inventive use of industrial materials but also developed anadaptable floor plan of multipurpose spaceswhich would become ahallmark of postwar modern architecture.From the couple s earliest furniture experiments to their seminal short filmPowers of Ten, this book covers all the aspects of the illustrious Eames repertoire and itsrevolutionary impact on middle-class American living. About the Series: Each book in TASCHEN s Basic Architecture Series features: an introduction to the life and work of the architect the major works in chronological order information about the clients, architectural preconditions as well as construction problems and resolutions a list of all the selected works and a map indicating the locations of the best and most famous buildings approximately 120 illustrations (photographs, sketches, drafts and plans) "