Book picks similar to
Landscape Urbanism Reader by Charles Waldheim
architecture
nature
urban-theory
Stories in Stone: Travels Through Urban Geology
David B. Williams - 2009
Williams any rock used as building material can tell a fascinating story. All he has to do is look at building stone in any urban center to find a range of rocks equal to any assembled by plate tectonics. In Stories in Stone, he takes you on his explorations to find 3.5-billion-year-old rock that looks like swirled pink and black taffy, a gas station made of petrified wood, and a Florida fort that has withstood 300 years of attacks and hurricanes, despite being made of a stone that has the consistency of a granola bar.In Stories in Stone, Williams also weaves in the cultural history of stone. He shows why a white, fossil-rich limestone from Indiana became the only building stone to be used in all 50 states; how in 1825, the construction of the Bunker Hill Monument led to America's first commercial railroad; and why when the same kind of marble used by Michelangelo was used on a Chicago skyscraper it warped so much after 19 years that all 44,000 panels of the stone had to be replaced. A love letter to building stone, from New England brownstone and Morton Gneiss of Minnsota to the limestone of Salem, Indiana; from granite and travertine to Carrara marble, David Willilams brings to life the stones you will see in the structures of every city, large and small. After reading his book, you will forever look at stone buildings with new eyes.
Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World
Timothy Morton - 2013
But the environmental emergency is also a crisis for our philosophical habits of thought, confronting us with a problem that seems to defy not only our control but also our understanding. Global warming is perhaps the most dramatic example of what Timothy Morton calls “hyperobjects”—entities of such vast temporal and spatial dimensions that they defeat traditional ideas about what a thing is in the first place. In this book, Morton explains what hyperobjects are and their impact on how we think, how we coexist with one another and with nonhumans, and how we experience our politics, ethics, and art.Moving fluidly between philosophy, science, literature, visual and conceptual art, and popular culture, the book argues that hyperobjects show that the end of the world has already occurred in the sense that concepts such as world, nature, and even environment are no longer a meaningful horizon against which human events take place. Instead of inhabiting a world, we find ourselves inside a number of hyperobjects, such as climate, nuclear weapons, evolution, or relativity. Such objects put unbearable strains on our normal ways of reasoning.Insisting that we have to reinvent how we think to even begin to comprehend the world we now live in, Hyperobjects takes the first steps, outlining a genuinely postmodern ecological approach to thought and action.
Castles: Their Construction and History
Sidney Toy - 1939
Nearly 200 photos & drawings illustrate moats, keeps, baileys etc. Covers Caernarvon Castle, Dover Castle, Hadrian's Wall, the Tower of London etc. 199 black-&-white illustrations.PrefaceThe ancient fortresses of Babylon, Mesopotamia, Assyria, Asia Minor & GreeceFortifications of Greece & Rome, 300 to 200 BCFortifications of the Levant, Rome & Western Europe, 200 to 30 BCFortifications of the Roman Empire Byzantine fortifications from the 5th to the 10th centuryFortifications of Western Europe from the 5th to the 11th centuryRectangular keeps or donjonsByzantine & Saracen fortifications of the 12th centuryTransitional keeps of the 12th centuryFortifications & buildings of the bailey in the 11th & 12th centuriesCastles from about 1190 to 1270Siege engines & siege operations of the Middle AgesEdwardian & contemporary castlesTowns, fortified bridges & towersGatehouses & defences of the curtain during the 13th & 14th centuriesDevelopment of the tower-house16th-century fortsIndex
Earth Odyssey: Around the World in Search of Our Environmental Future
Mark Hertsgaard - 1998
But in 1991, he decided to act on his own concern and investigate the escalating crisis for himself. Traveling on his own dime, he embarked on an odyssey lasting most of the decade and spanning nineteen countries. Now, in Earth Odyssey he reports on our environmental predicament through the eyes of the people who live it.Earth Odyssey is a vivid, passionate narrative about one man's journey around the world in search of the answer to the essential question of our time: Is the future of the human species at risk? Combining first-rate reportage with irresistible storytelling, Mark Hertsgaard has written an essential--and ultimately hopeful--book about the uncertain fate of humankind.
Outside the Not So Big House: Creating the Landscape of Home
Julie Moir Messervy - 2006
After all, who doesn't yearn for a landscape that is as well designed as the interior of their home? In "Outside the Not So Big House," Julie and Sarah teach you everything you need to know about the design concepts essential to extending your home beyond its four walls.Lushly photographed and illustrated with vivid drawings, "Outside the Not So Big House" explores how to build pathways and journeys in your gardens; how to make the most of your site; how to use details to bring it all together. Twenty homes from across the country aptly illustrate these easy-to-grasp design ideas. Fans of Sarah's previous Not So Big books will be pleased to discover not only Julie's clear, concise prose but also a new vision for creating home.
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.
Gotham Unbound: The Ecological History of Greater New York
Ted Steinberg - 2014
Ted Steinberg brings a vanished New York back to vivid, rich life. You will see the metropolitan area anew, not just as a dense urban goliath but as an estuary once home to miles of oyster reefs, wolves, whales, and blueberry bogs. That world gave way to an onslaught managed by thousands, from Governor John Montgomerie, who turned water into land, and John Randel, who imposed a grid on Manhattan, to Robert Moses, Charles Urstadt, Donald Trump, and Michael Bloomberg.“Weighty and wonderful…Resting on a sturdy foundation of research and imagination, Steinberg’s volume begins with Henry Hudson’s arrival aboard the Half Moon in 1609 and ends with another transformative event—Hurricane Sandy in 2012” (The Plain Dealer, Cleveland). This book is a powerful account of the relentless development that New Yorkers wrought as they plunged headfirst into the floodplain and transformed untold amounts of salt marsh and shellfish beds into a land jam-packed with people, asphalt, and steel, and the reeds and gulls that thrive among them.With metropolitan areas across the globe on a collision course with rising seas, Gotham Unbound helps explain how one of the most important cities in the world has ended up in such a perilous situation. “Steinberg challenges the conventional arguments that geography is destiny….And he makes the strong case that for all the ecological advantages of urban living, hyperdensity by itself is not necessarily a sound environmental strategy” (The New York Times).
The Power of Place: How Our Surroundings Shape Our Thoughts, Emotions, and Actions
Winifred Gallagher - 1993
Drawing on the latest research on behavioral and environmental science, THE POWER OF PLACE examines our reactions to light, temperatiure, the seasons, and other natural phenomena, and explores the interactions between our external and internal worlds.Gallagher's broad and dynamic definition of place includes mountaintops and the womb, Alaska's hinterlands and Manhattan's subways, and she relates these settings to everything from creativity to PMS, jet lag to tales of UFOs.Full of complex information made totally accessible, THE POWER OF PLACE offers the latest insights into the many ways we can change our lives by changing the places we live.
Shelters, Shacks & Shanties: And How to Build Them
Daniel Carter Beard - 1914
D. C. Beard explains how to construct a variety of worry-free shelters appropriate to a natural environment that is by turns both friendly and foreboding. Included are a sod house for the lawn, a treetop house, over-water camps, and an American log cabin. Fully recognizing that the Outdoorsman builds a shelter with the intention of inhabiting it, Beard explains how to build hearths and chimneys, notched log ladders, and even how to rig secret locks. Illustrated throughout with instructional line drawings, "Shelters, Shacks and Shanties" harkens back to the can-do spirit of the American frontier and belongs in the knapsack of every modern scout, young and old alike.
Ecocriticism
Greg Garrard - 2004
Greg Garrard's animated and accessible volume traces the development of the movement and explores the concepts which have most occupied ecocritics, including:* pollution* wilderness* apocalypse* dwelling* animals* earth.Featuring an invaluable glossary of terms and suggestions for further reading, this is the first student-friendly introduction to one of the newest and most exciting trends in literary and cultural studies.
Lost on the Appalachian Trail
Kyle S Rohrig - 2015
Confront the terrain, severe weather, injury, dangerous wildlife and questionable characters as you grow and learn as Kyle did from start to finish of this epic adventure. Make some friends for life, learn the finer points of long distance hiking, and realize that what you take within your backpack is not nearly as important as what you bring within yourself... This exciting and often times humorous narrative does more than simply tell the story of Kyle and Katana's adventures on trail. You will be inspired, while learning what it takes mentally and physically to accomplish an undertaking such as hiking thousands of miles through mountainous wilderness while braving countless obstacles all determined to make you quit. Nobody said it was easy, but if you can make it to the end, your life will be changed forever. What are you waiting for? Adventure is calling...For more content from the Author, as well as to follow his past, present, and future adventures; check out the following pages!Website/Blog: BoundlessRoamad.comInstagram: @_roamad_Facebook: facebook.com/kyle.rohrig.7Youtube: youtube.com/c/NomadWisdom
A Field Guide to the Birds of Borneo, Sumatra, Java, and Bali: The Greater Sunda Islands
John MacKinnon - 1993
This book provides the first complete identification guides to the birds of this teeming tropical paradise. It gives descriptions of 820 regional species, illustrated in 88 specially commissioned color plates accompanied by notes detailing distinctive features and habitats. Entries cover nomenclature, plumage, markings, voice, global range, distribution and regional status, habits, and diet. The main text gives practical information on where to find many exotic species, citing major birdwatching locations. Introductory chapters discuss habitats, climate, land-use, and conservation concerns. Professional ornithologists and amateur bird watchers alike will find this the indispensable bird guide for eastern Malaysia and western Indonesia for many years to come. It is also an unrivalled source of information for casual travellers and ecotourists.
Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth
R. Buckminster Fuller - 1969
Fuller expresses what may well be his penultimate view of the human condition. Here, in a mood at once philosophical and involved, Mr. Fuller traces man's intellectual evolution and weighs his capability for survival on this magnificent craft, this Spaceship Earth, this superbly designed sphere of almost negligible dimension in the great vastness of space.Mr. Fuller is optimistic that man will survive and, through research and development and increased industrialization, generate wealth so rapidly that he can do very great things. But, he notes, there must be an enormous educational task successfully accomplished right now to convert man's tendency toward oblivion into a realization of his potential, to a universe-exploring advantage from this Spaceship Earth.It has been noted that Mr. Fuller spins ideas in clusters, and clusters of his ideas generate still other clusters. The concept spaceship earth is Mr. Fuller's, and though used by Barbara Ward as the title of a work of her own the idea was acknowledged by her there as deriving from Mr. Fuller. The brilliant syntheses of some fundamental Fuller principles given here makes of this book a microcosm of the Fuller system.
Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution
David Harvey - 2012
Consequently, they have been the subject of much utopian thinking about alternatives. But at the same time, they are also the centers of capital accumulation, and therefore the frontline for struggles over who has the right to the city, and who dictates the quality and organization of daily life. Is it the developers and financiers, or the people?Rebel Cities places the city at the heart of both capital and class struggles, looking at locations ranging from Johannesburg to Mumbai, and from New York City to Sao Paulo. By exploring how cities might be reorganized in more socially just and ecologically sane ways, David Harvey argues that cities can become the focus for anti-capitalist resistance.
Divided: A Walk on the Continental Divide Trail
Brian Cornell - 2019
However, trail life is not always as rewarding and romantic as the pictures you see or second-hand stories you hear. "Divided" provides an accurate account of life on trail: what hikers ponder, eat, love, loathe, and the questions they tire of answering. Some moments are too short, some are painfully long while others are whisked away unceremoniously with the wind. Follow along on the journey as Brian navigates difficulties, successes and everything between while attempting to walk from Mexico to Canada. “The greatest challenge of being a long-distance backpacker is learning how to live fully on - and off - the trail. In 'Divided,' Brian shares the rugged beauty and grueling challenges of the Continental Divide Trail along with thought-provoking insights which encourage the reader to reassess his or her own path and consider new alternatives.” Jennifer Pharr Davis, "The Pursuit of Endurance" “If you’ve ever wondered what it is like to wander along the entire length of the multi-thousand mile Continental Divide Trail, Brian Cornell’s 'Divided' will take you on a journey from Mexico to Canada that just may have you planning your own hike of this magnificent trail!” Lawton Grinter, "I Hike Again" " 'Divided' is unlike any hiking memoir I've read. Cornell is undeniably talented and his unique prose vividly conveys the hypnotic nature of long-distance hiking without leaving the reader in a trance. A modern-day 'Desert Solitaire.' " Gary Sizer, "Where’s the Next Shelter?" "An honest look at what life on the Divide is truly like." Heather Anderson, "Thirst: 2600 Miles to Home"