Architect and Entrepreneur: A Field Guide to Building, Branding, and Marketing Your Startup Design Business


Eric Reinholdt - 2015
    The guide advocates novel strategies and tools that merge entrepreneurship with the practice of architecture and interior design. The Problem: Embarking on a new business venture is intimidating; you have questions. But many of the resources available to help entrepreneur architects and interior designers start their design business lack timeliness and relevance. Most are geared toward building colossal firms like SOM and Gensler using outdated methods and old business models. If you’re an individual or small team contemplating starting a design business, this is your field guide; crafted to inspire action. The Solution: Using the lean startup methodology to create a minimum viable product, the handbook encourages successive small wins that support a broader vision enabling one to, “think big, start small, and learn fast.” It’s a unique take on design practice viewed through the lens of entrepreneurship and is designed to answer the questions all new business owners face, from the rote to the existential. Questions about: - Startup costs - Business models (old and new) - Marriage of business and design - Mindset - Branding & naming (exercises and ideas) - Internet marketing strategies - Passive income ideas - Setting your fee - Taxes - Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) - Securing the work - Client relations - Software - Billing rates - Contracts Building a business isn’t a singular act; it’s a series of small steps. Using the outline found in Architect + Entrepreneur you can start today. The chapters are organized to guide you from idea to action. Rather than write a business plan you’ll be challenged to craft a brand and you’ll sell it using new technologies. Follow the guide sequentially and you’ll have both the tools and a profitable small business. The Author Award-winning architect, Eric Reinholdt has built his design practice, 30X40 Design Workshop using the strategies outlined in the book. He has successfully transitioned from an employee to architect entrepreneur and continues to refine his brand message, help other architects build their independent practice and serve his clients all from a Longhouse he designed for his family on Mount Desert Island in Maine.

Graphic Guide to Frame Construction


Rob Thallon - 1991
    This revised fourth edition reflects the most recent changes in residential frame construction. It contains more details for engineered wood products, fasteners, and seismic hold-down requirements, as well as the latest IRC code updates. It is well annotated and covers foundations, floors, walls, stairs, and roofs. Because examples are taken from actual job sites by a trusted expert, this book is an invaluable visual aid that can help builders and homeowners alike to tackle a wide range of framing projects.

Siteless: 1001 Building Forms


François Blanciak - 2008
    Others may think of it as the last architectural treatise, for it provides a discursive container for ideas that would otherwise be lost. Whatever genre it belongs to, SITELESS is a new kind of architecture book that seems to have come out of nowhere. Its author, a young French architect practicing in Tokyo, admits he "didn't do this out of reverence toward architecture, but rather out of a profound boredom with the discipline, as a sort of compulsive reaction." What would happen if architects liberated their minds from the constraints of site, program, and budget? he asks. The result is a book that is saturated with forms, and as free of words as any architecture book the MIT Press has ever published.The 1001 building forms in SITELESS include structural parasites, chain link towers, ball bearing floors, corrugated corners, exponential balconies, radial facades, crawling frames, forensic housing--and other architectural ideas that may require construction techniques not yet developed and a relation to gravity not yet achieved. SITELESS presents an open-ended compendium of visual ideas for the architectural imagination to draw from. The forms, drawn freehand (to avoid software-specific shapes) but from a constant viewing angle, are presented twelve to a page, with no scale, order, or end to the series. After setting down 1001 forms in siteless conditions and embryonic stages, Blanciak takes one of the forms and performs a "scale test," showing what happens when one of these fantastic ideas is subjected to the actual constraints of a site in central Tokyo. The book ends by illustrating the potential of these shapes to morph into actual building proportions.

The Architect's Studio Companion: Rules of Thumb for Preliminary Design


Edward Allen - 1995
    Now in its fourth edition, this industry standard continues its reputation as a reliable tool for the preliminary selecting, configuring, and sizing of the structural, mechanical, and egress systems of a building. Bestselling authors Edward Allen and Joseph Iano reduce complex engineering and building code information to simple approximations that enable the designer to lay out the fundamental systems of a building in a matter of minutes and get on with the design.Now in a flex binding that makes it even easier to use, The Architect's Studio Companion, Fourth Edition provides quick access to reliable rules of thumb that offer vital help for selecting, configuring, and sizing:Structural systems Heating, cooling, and electrical systems Egress provisions, including exit stairways, parking garages, and parking lots Daylight provisions The book concludes with precalculated tables of building code height and area limitations.

Constructing Architecture: Materials, Processes, Structures: A Handbook


Andrea Deplazes - 2004
    Since the first edition was published in 2005, it has been adopted as a textbook at many universities. Organized into chapters on "Raw Materials/Building Materials (Modules)," "Building Components (Elements)," "Building Methods (Structures)," and "Buildings (Examples)," the book now includes a new section on translucent materials and an article on the use of glass. The chapter on "Building Elements" now includes a discussion of facades, and the chapter on "Structures" has been expanded to cover "Principles of Space Creation." The examples section now includes extensive documentation of current projects whose systematic character is oriented around the production process.Experience with the preceding edition has shown that the book has become an indispensable handbook for reference and reading not only for students and teachers but also for architects.

How to Architect


Doug Patt - 2012
    Changing the function of a word, or a room, can produce surprise and meaning. In How to Architect, Patt--an architect and the creator of a series of wildly popular online videos about architecture--presents the basics of architecture in A-Z form, starting with A is for Asymmetry (as seen in Chartres Cathedral and Frank Gehry), detouring through N is for Narrative, and ending with Z is for Zeal (a quality that successful architects tend to have, even in fiction--see The Fountainhead's architect-hero Howard Roark.)How to Architect is a book to guide you on the road to architecture. If you are just starting on that journey or thinking about becoming an architect, it is a place to begin. If you are already an architect and want to remind yourself of what drew you to the profession, it is a book of affirmation. And if you are just curious about what goes into the design and construction of buildings, this book tells you how architects think. Patt introduces each entry with a hand-drawn letter, and accompanies the text with illustrations that illuminate the concept discussed: a fallen Humpty Dumpty illustrates the perils of fragile egos; photographs of an X-Acto knife and other hand tools remind us of architecture's nondigital origins.How to Architect offers encouragement to aspiring architects but also mounts a defense of architecture as a profession--by calling out a defiant verb: architect!

Modern Architecture


Alan Colquhoun - 2002
    The book focuses on the work of the main architects of the movementsuch as Frank Lloyd Wright, Adolf Loos, Le Corbusier, and Mies van der Rohe, re-examining their work and shedding new light on their roles as acknowledged masters. The author presents a fascinating analysis of architecture with regard to politics, technology, and ideology, all while offering cleardescriptions of the key elements of the Modern movement.Colquhoun shows clearly the evolution of the movement from Art Nouveau in the 1890s to the mega-structures of the 1960s, revealing the often-contradictory demands of form, function, social engagement, modernity and tradition.

Building Structures Illustrated: Patterns, Systems, and Design


Francis D.K. Ching - 2008
    Taking a new approach to strucural design, Ching and his co-authors show how structural systems of a building -- as an integrated assembly of elements with pattern, proportions, and scale -- are related to the essential aspects of architectural design: formal and spatial composition, program fit, coordination with other building systems such as enclosure and mechanical systems, code compliance, etc.No other work by Francis D.K. Ching brings together so many aspects of architectural design as an integrated reference. Designers, builders, and students alike will gain a new understanding of structural principles and planning, without the need for mathematics.Using Ching's trademark presentation, Structural Patterns is illustrated throughout with line drawings to present the essential presence of structural systems in buildings, but also helps the reader make informed decisions for architectural design.

Amber Earns Her Ears: My Secret Walt Disney World Cast Member Diary


Amber Michelle Sewell - 2013
    What’s it like to work at Walt Disney World?Amber Sewell spent two semesters “earning her ears” at the Happiest Place on Earth, first in the CareerStart Program and then in the better known Disney College Program.During her time backstage, as the Cast Member areas of the theme park are called, Amber kept a diary of her successes and her failures, her moments of delight and her moments of despair, and most of all, her discoveries about what happens when the pixie dust settles and the guests have gone home.Amber will never feel the same about Walt Disney World again.After you’ve read her book, neither will you.

Tadao Ando: Conversations with Students


Tadao Andō - 2012
    One of the most celebrated living architects, Ando is best known for crafting serenely austere structures that fuse Japanese building traditions with Western modernism. His minimalist masterworks-geometric forms clad in silky-smooth exposed concrete-are suffused with natural light and set in perfect harmony with the landscape. In these highlights from lectures delivered at the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Architecture, Ando candidly describes his experiences as a largely self-taught practitioner, tracing his development from an early interest in the traditional building craft of his native Japan through his political awakening in the turbulent 1960s to his current stature as one of the world's foremost architects. In addition to exploring his aesthetic influences and working process, Ando offers students a road map not only for maintaining professional integrity, but also for becoming effective agents of change in the world.

Informal


Cecil Balmond - 2002
    His structural thinking differs from that of others in his field, in its completely innovative conception of the engineer's contribution to architecture. The plasticity of architectural plans is enhanced through a decisive promotion of their structural designs. The borderline between structure and architecture thus becomes increasingly blurred. This process is explained in detail in "Informal" by reference to eight seminal projects. Balmond elucidates the theoretical basis of his engineering and architectural solutions, and his sketches transcend purely technical illustration - they are key to his approach. "Informal" invites readers to rethink their understanding of the relationships between architecture, design and engineering.

Four Walls and a Roof: The Complex Nature of a Simple Profession


Reinier de Graaf - 2017
    Four Walls and a Roof challenges this notion, presenting a candid account of what it is really like to work as an architect.Drawing on his own tragicomic experiences in the field, Reinier de Graaf reveals the world of contemporary architecture in vivid snapshots: from suburban New York to the rubble of northern Iraq, from the corridors of wealth in London, Moscow, and Dubai to garbage-strewn wastelands that represent the demolished hopes of postwar social housing. We meet oligarchs determined to translate ambitions into concrete and steel, developers for whom architecture is mere investment, and the layers of politicians, bureaucrats, consultants, and mysterious hangers-on who lie between any architectural idea and the chance of its execution.Four Walls and a Roof tells the story of a profession buffeted by external forces that determine--at least as much as individual inspiration--what architects design. Perhaps the most important myth debunked is success itself. To achieve anything, architects must serve the powers they strive to critique, finding themselves in a perpetual conflict of interest. Together, architects, developers, politicians, and consultants form an improvised world of contest and compromise that none alone can control.

Architecture and Disjunction


Bernard Tschumi - 1994
    Architecture and Disjunction, which brings together Tschumi's essays from 1975 to 1990, is a lucid and provocative analysis of many of the key issues that have engaged architectural discourse over the past two decades--from deconstructive theory to recent concerns with the notions of event and program. The essays develop different themes in contemporary theory as they relate to the actual making of architecture, attempting to realign the discipline with a new world culture characterized by both discontinuity and heterogeneity. Included are a number of seminal essays that incited broad attention when they first appeared in magazines and journals, as well as more recent and topical texts.Tschumi's discourse has always been considered radical and disturbing. He opposes modernist ideology and postmodern nostalgia since both impose restrictive criteria on what may be deemed legitimate cultural conditions. He argues for focusing on our immediate cultural situation, which is distinguished by a new postindustrial unhomeliness reflected in the ad hoc erection of buildings with multipurpose programs. The condition of New York and the chaos of Tokyo are thus perceived as legitimate urban forms.

The Function of Form


Farshid Moussavi - 2009
    We need to move away from the definition of function as utility, she argues, to align it with how function is defined in mathematics, biology or music. Form, on the other hand, should be considered not only in the way buildings are produced, but also how they perform sensorially. Function and form, considered together in architecture, stand in opposition to the dualism which defined our approach to the built environment throughout the twentieth century. This book provides a thought-provoking account of the challenges facing the 21st century built environment, and an enlivened awareness of the wider possibilities of architectural form.

Leadership: Tidbits and Treasures


Chris Brady - 2008
    Here is a book that will stimulate your thinking and help you to be successful in your work, your study, and in your every day living. Our prayer is that it will also educated the reader in the areas of history, politics, economics and the culture war that is currently upon us. the articles and illustrtions from great thinkers and doers throughout history outlined on these pages, will, if studied and applied to your life, help develop your inner qualities, and that is where your real wealth is.