Breaking Ground


Daniel Libeskind - 2004
     Drawing on his uncommon background and global perspective, in Breaking Ground Daniel Libeskind explores ideas about tragedy and hope, and the way in which architecture can memorialize-and reshape-human experience. Born in 1946 to Holocaust survivors in Poland, Daniel Libeskind eventually emigrated to New York City in 1959. A virtuoso musician before studying architecture, Libeskind has designed iconic buildings around the world, including the Jewish Museum Berlin and the Imperial War Museum in Manchester, England. In February 2003, Libeskind was chosen as the Master Plan Architect for the World Trade Center reconstruction. Full of the vitality, humor, and visionary spark that helped win him the Trade Center Commission, Breaking Ground invites readers to see architecture-and the larger world-through new perspectives.

The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces


William H. Whyte - 1980
    Whyte published the findings from his revolutionary Street Life Project in The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Both the book and the accompanying film were instantly labeled classics, and launched a mini-revolution in the planning and study of public spaces. They have since become standard texts, and appear on syllabi and reading lists in urban planning, sociology, environmental design, and architecture departments around the world.Project for Public Spaces, which grew out of Holly's Street Life Project and continues his work around the world, has acquired the reprint rights to Social Life, with the intent of making it available to the widest possible audience and ensuring that the Whyte family receive their fair share of Holly's legacy.From the forward: For more than 30 years, Project for Public Spaces has been using observations, surveys, interviews and workshops to study and transform public spaces around the world into community places. Every week we give presentations about why some public spaces work and why others don't, using the techniques, ideas, and memorable phrases from William H. "Holly" Whyte's The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces.Holly Whyte was both our mentor and our friend. Perhaps his most important gift was the ability to show us how to discover for ourselves why some public spaces work and others don't. With the publication of The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces and its companion film in 1980, the world could see that through the basic tools of observation and interviews, we can learn an immense amount about how to make our cities more livable. In doing so, Holly Whyte laid the groundwork for a major movement to change the way public spaces are built and planned. It is our pleasure to offer this important book back to the world it is helping to transform.

Lawns into Meadows: Growing a Regenerative Landscape


Owen Wormser - 2020
    This is a how-to book on meadow-making that's also about sustainability, regeneration, and beauty.In a world where lawns have wreaked havoc on our natural ecosystems, meadows offer a compelling solution. It is garden landscaping that is beautiful, all year round. Meadows establish wildlife and pollinator habitats, are low-maintenance and low-cost, have a built-in resilience that helps them weather climate extremes, and can draw down and store far more carbon dioxide than any manicured lawn. Wormser describes how to plant an organic meadow garden or traditional meadow, that’s right for your site. His book includes guidance on:-Preparing your plot-Designing your meadow-Planting without using synthetic chemicals-Growing 21 starter native grasses and wildflowers, including butterfly weed, smooth blue aster, purple coneflower, wild bergamot, and many more.He also includes tips on building support in neighborhoods where a tidy lawn is the standard, and how to become a meadow activist. To illuminate the many joys of meadow-building, Wormser draws on his own stories, including how growing up off the grid in northern Maine, with no electricity or plumbing, prepared him for his work."It’s time to rebuild meadows wherever we can, including the deadscape we call lawn. Owen Wormser explains why, and how to do this, with oodles of highly readable, ecologically sound advice." -Douglas W. Tallamy, Professor of Entomology, author of Bringing Nature Home and Nature's Best Hope"The author tells us how to grow a meadow, and become a positive force on behalf of the planet. I highly recommend this book." -Dr. John Todd, Ecologist, author of Healing Earth

Design of Cities


Edmund N. Bacon - 1967
    . . Splendidly presented, filled with thoughtful and brilliant intuitive insights." —The New Republic In a brilliant synthesis of words and pictures, Edmund N. Bacon relates historical examples to modern principles of urban planning. He vividly demonstrates how the work of great architects and planners of the past can influence subsequent development and be continued by later generations. By illuminating the historical background of urban design, Bacon also shows us the fundamental forces and considerations that determine the form of a great city. Perhaps the most significant of these are simultaneous movement systems—the paths of pedestrian and vehicular traffic, public and private transportation—that serve as the dominant organizing force, and Bacon looks at movement systems in cities such as London, Rome, and New York. He also stresses the importance of designing open space as well as architectural mass and discusses the impact of space, color, and perspective on the city-dweller. That the centers of cities should and can be pleasant places in which to live, work, and relax is illustrated by such examples as Rotterdam and Stockholm.

Design Drawing


Francis D.K. Ching - 1997
    Design Drawing covers the traditional basics of drawing, including line, shape, tone, and space. The supplemental CD-ROM contains information and instruction that elucidates a broad range of design drawing concepts through animation, video, and three-dimensional models. Intended for use with the book or as a stand-alone product, the CD-ROM includes 25 interactive lessons which demonstrate concepts and techniques in a way that a 2-D book format cannot.

Great Streets


Allan B. Jacobs - 1993
    With more than 200 illustrations, all prepared by the author, along with analysis and statistics, Great Streets offers a wealth of information on street dimensions, plans, sections, and patterns of use, all systematically compared. It also reveals Jacobs's eye for the telling human and social details that bring streets and communities to life.An extensive introduction discusses the importance of streets in creating communities and criteria for identifying the best streets. The essays that follow examine 15 particularly fine streets, ranging from medieval streets in Rome and Copenhagen to Venice's Grand Canal, from Parisian boulevards to tree-lined residential streets in American cities. Jacobs also looks at several streets that were once very fine but are less successful today, such as Market Street in San Francisco, identifying the factors that figure in their decline.To broaden his coverage, Jacobs adds briefer treatments of more than 30 other streets arranged by street type, including streets from Australia, Japan, and classical antiquity in addition to European and North American examples. For each of these streets he has prepared plans, sections, and maps, all drawn at the same scales to facilitate comparisons, along with perspective views and drawings of significant design details.Another remarkable feature of this book is a set of 50 one square-mile maps, each reproduced at the same scale, of the street plans of representative cities around the world. These reveal much about the texture of the cities' street patterns and hence of their urban life. Jacobs's analysis of the maps adds much original data derived from them, including changes of street patterns over time.Jacobs concludes by summarizing the practical design qualities and strategies that have contributed most to the making of great streets.

Wall


Andy Goldsworthy - 2000
    This sensitive and detailed response to the land-former farmland in an area once rich in stone walls-is one of his most impressive and important permanent artworks. This new work starts by closely following the foundations of an old, dilapidated wall and then makes a series of increasingly voluptuous arabesques before plunging down into a lake. It rises again on the other side and heads straight up a grassy slope to stop dead at a major highway. The book's stunning color photographs show the wall from every vantage point and in all four seasons, as well as documenting ephemeral work made around it. Kenneth Baker's essay considers the Storm King wall in the context of Goldsworthy's other work. The book accompanies an exhibition at Storm King that opens in May 2000. More than 60 photographs in full color, 9 1/2 x 10 1/2" ANDY GOLDSWORTHY was born in 1956 in Cheshire, England. His work is regularly exhibited in Britain, France, the United States, Japan, and elsewhere. Although commissions take him all over the world, the landscape around his home in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, remains at the heart of his work. His previous books include Abrams' Andy Goldsworthy: A Collaboration with Nature, Hand to Earth, Stone, Wood, and Arch. JERRY L. THOMPSON is a highly regarded photographer who has contributed to a number of books, including Abrams' Mark di Suvero. KENNETH BAKER is art critic of the San Francisco Chronicle. EXHIBITION SCHEDULE Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York May-November 2000

The Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World


Emma Marris - 2011
    For decades people have unquestioningly accepted the idea that our goal is to preserve nature in its pristine, pre-human state. But many scientists have come to see this as an outdated dream that thwarts bold new plans to save the environment and prevents us from having a fuller relationship with nature. Humans have changed the landscapes they inhabit since prehistory, and climate change means even the remotest places now bear the fingerprints of humanity. Emma Marris argues convincingly that it is time to look forward and create the "rambunctious garden," a hybrid of wild nature and human management.In this optimistic book, readers meet leading scientists and environmentalists and visit imaginary Edens, designer ecosystems, and Pleistocene parks. Marris describes innovative conservation approaches, including rewilding, assisted migration, and the embrace of so-called novel ecosystems.Rambunctious Garden is short on gloom and long on interesting theories and fascinating narratives, all of which bring home the idea that we must give up our romantic notions of pristine wilderness and replace them with the concept of a global, half-wild rambunctious garden planet, tended by us.

Design With Nature


Ian L. McHarg - 1969
    --LewisMumford. . . important to America and all the rest of the world in ourstruggle to design rational, wholesome, and productive landscapes.--Laurie Olin, Hanna Olin, Ltd.This century's most influential landscape architecture book.--Landscape Architecture. . . an enduring contribution to the technical literature oflandscape planning and to that unfortunately small collection ofwritings which speak with emotional eloquence of the importance ofecological principles in regional planning. --Landscape and UrbanPlanningIn the twenty-five years since it first took the academic world bystorm, Design With Nature has done much to redefine the fields oflandscape architecture, urban and regional planning, and ecologicaldesign. It has also left a permanent mark on the ongoing discussionof mankind's place in nature and nature's place in mankind withinthe physical sciences and humanities. Described by one enthusiasticreviewer as a user's manual for our world, Design With Natureoffers a practical blueprint for a new, healthier relationshipbetween the built environment and nature. In so doing, it providesnothing less than the scientific, technical, and philosophicalfoundations for a mature civilization that will, as Lewis Mumfordecstatically put it in his Introduction to the 1969 edition, replace the polluted, bulldozed, machine-dominated, dehumanized, explosion-threatened world that is even now disintegrating anddisappearing before our eyes.

Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings


Robert Smithson - 1996
    In addition to a new introduction by Jack Flam, The Collected Writings includes previously unpublished essays by Smithson and gathers hard-to-find articles, interviews, and photographs. Together these provide a full picture of his wide-ranging views on art and culture.

Straw Bale Gardening


Joel Karsten - 2013
    He has perfected the perfect way for anyone to have a garden without weeding, bending over, or using chemicals. If you follow his step by step methods and suggestions you will be assured to grow a beautiful and productive garden this year, even if you have never gardened before. The best part is that if the soil in your backyard is less than productive it doesn't matter at all. If you have sunlight and water, you will have a great garden this year. From the Arctic Circle in Northern Alaska to the heat of the desert in Saudi Arabia, people are using this method, and having great success. The booklet is full color with 78 pages, and has a perfect bind booklet binding.

The Living Landscape: Designing for Beauty and Biodiversity in the Home Garden


Rick Darke - 2014
    Sure, it’s a tall order, but The Living Landscape shows you how to do it. You’ll learn the strategies for making and maintaining a diverse, layered landscape—one that offers beauty on many levels, provides outdoor rooms and turf areas for children and pets, incorporates fragrance and edible plants, and provides cover, shelter, and sustenance for wildlife. Richly illustrated and informed by both a keen eye for design and an understanding of how healthy ecologies work, The Living Landscape will enable you to create a garden that fulfills both human needs and the needs of wildlife communities.

Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design with Nature


Douglas Farr - 2007
     Providing a historic perspective on the standards and regulations that got us to where we are today in terms of urban lifestyle and attempts at reform, Douglas Farr makes a powerful case for sustainable urbanism, showing where we went wrong, and where we need to go. He then explains how to implement sustainable urbanism through leadership and communication in cities, communities, and neighborhoods. Essays written by Farr and others delve into such issues as: Increasing sustainability through density. Integrating transportation and land use. Creating sustainable neighborhoods, including housing, car-free areas, locally-owned stores, walkable neighborhoods, and universal accessibility. The health and environmental benefits of linking humans to nature, including walk-to open spaces, neighborhood stormwater systems and waste treatment, and food production. High performance buildings and district energy systems. Enriching the argument are in-depth case studies in sustainable urbanism, from BedZED in London, England and Newington in Sydney, Australia, to New Railroad Square in Santa Rosa, California and Dongtan, Shanghai, China. An epilogue looks to the future of sustainable urbanism over the next 200 years. At once solidly researched and passionately argued, Sustainable Urbanism is the ideal guidebook for urban designers, planners, and architects who are eager to make a positive impact on our--and our descendants'--buildings, cities, and lives.

City Comforts: How to Build an Urban Village


David Sucher - 1994
    Many of these small details are so obvious as to be invisible.

Architecture Theory Since 1968


K. Michael Hays - 1998
    The development of interpretive modes of various stripes--post-structuralist, Marxian, phenomenological, psychoanalytic, as well as others dissenting or eccentric--has given scholars a range of tools for rethinking architecture in relation to other fields and for reasserting architectures general importance in intellectual discourse.This anthology presents forty-seven of the primary texts of architecture theory, introducing each with an explication of the concepts and categories necessary for its understanding and evaluation. It also presents twelve documents of projects or events that had major theoretical repercussions for the period. Several of the essays appear here in English for the first time.ContributorsDiana Agrest, Stanford Anderson, Archizoom, George Baird, Jennifer Bloomer, Massimo Cacciari, Jean-Louis Cohen, Beatriz Colomina, Alan Colquhoun, Maurice Culot, Jacques Derrida, Ignasi de Sol�-Morales, Peter Eisenman, Robin Evans, Michel Foucault, Kenneth Frampton, Mario Gandelsonas, Frank Gehry, J�rgen Habermas, John Hejduk, Denis Hollier, Bernard Huet, Catherine Ingraham, Fredric Jameson, Charles A. Jencks, Jeffrey Kipnis, Fred Koetter, Rem Koolhaas, Leon Krier, Sanford Kwinter, Henri Lefebvre, Daniel Libeskind, Mary McLeod, Alberto P�rez-G�mez, Jos� Quetglas, Aldo Rossi, Colin Rowe, Massimo Scolari, Denise Scott Brown, Robert Segrest, Jorge Silvetti, Robert Somol, Martin Steinmann, Robert A. M. Stern, James Stirling, Manfredo Tafuri, Georges Teyssot, Bernard Tschumi, Anthony Vidler, Paul Virilio, Mark Wigley