It tells the story of a hardworking family man who finds himself in crisis when his company closes. Through his struggle, and guidance from unlikely sources, he learns subtle lessons in the form of "personal zen" principles, coming to understand that it is often the involuntary challenge, the setbacks, that harbor the power to transform. When approached as an opportunity -- no easy task when simple survival is the first order of business--unforeseen trials can sometimes result in an altogether new lease on life. Shows how "personal leadership" can lead to real (and not always easy) breakthroughs Includes key lessons on commitment, preparation, struggle, breakthrough, and transformation Is based on "Shibumi, " a Japanese word without literal definition that describes the height of personal excellence, elegant performance, and effortless effectiveness.For those struggling with personal breakthroughs, "The Shubimi Strategy" offers a new way to face work and life challenges for balanced solutions.

    He introduces the reader to communal architecture--architecture produced not by specialists but by the spontaneous and continuing activity of a whole people with a common heritage, acting within a community experience. A prehistoric theater district for a hundred thousand spectators on the American continent and underground towns and villages (complete with schools, offices, and factories) inhabited by millions of people are among the unexpected phenomena he brings to light.The beauty of primitive architecture has often been dismissed as accidental, but today we recognize in it an art form that has resulted from human intelligence applied to uniquely human modes of life. Indeed, Rudofsky sees the philosophy and practical knowledge of the untutored builders as untapped sources of inspiration for industrial man trapped in his chaotic cities.

    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.

    one of the best real estate investment books I have ever read. On my scale of 1 to 10, this unique book rates an off-the-charts 12." ---Robert BrussConfessions of a Real Estate Entrepreneur is for the individual who is ready to get serious about investing. Not a rah-rah or get-rich-quick book, this book is for someone who is prepared to think about what he or she wants to accomplish. James Randel provides the how and why.James Randel has been a successful investor and educator for 25 years. He teaches investing through stories and anecdotes - bringing to the limelight not just his successes (and there are some amazing stories of these) but also his mistakes. His candor is instructive and entertaining.It is said that "those who can, do, and those who can't, teach." James Randel is a rare exception as he is both a highly successful investor as well as an excellent teacher. As said by Jeff Dunne, Vice Chairman of the largest real estate company in the world, CB Richard Ellis:"I've tracked Jimmy's incredible run of successful real estate investments for 20 years and more recently invested very profitably with him. His new book is a must read for anyone interested in real estate investing."If you are tired of the "same old, same old" and prepared to play in the big leagues, this book is calling your name.

    In this trenchant illustrated essay, David Joselit describes how art and architecture are being transformed in the age of Google. Under the dual pressures of digital technology, which allows images to be reformatted and disseminated effortlessly, and the exponential acceleration of cultural exchange enabled by globalization, artists and architects are emphasizing networks as never before. Some of the most interesting contemporary work in both fields is now based on visualizing patterns of dissemination after objects and structures are produced, and after they enter into, and even establish, diverse networks. Behaving like human search engines, artists and architects sort, capture, and reformat existing content. Works of art crystallize out of populations of images, and buildings emerge out of the dynamics of the circulation patterns they will house.Examining the work of architectural firms such as OMA, Reiser + Umemoto, and Foreign Office, as well as the art of Matthew Barney, Ai Weiwei, Sherrie Levine, and many others, After Art provides a compelling and original theory of art and architecture in the age of global networks.

    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.

    Available for the first time, Sarah Susanka's best-selling books in one handsome slipcase set.-- Great gift package-- Offers all of Sarah Susanka's trendsetting architectural ideas in one set

    In 25 fast-moving chapters, based on thousands of sales conversations, and the experience of more than 1,000,000 salespeople worldwide, you learn how to make more sales, faster than you ever thought possible.This book can quickly take you to the top of your field in professional selling, saving you years of hard work, and earning you thousands of dollars that you would have left on the table.

    A century ago, the telegraph and the mechanical tabulator were used to tame cities of millions. Today, cellular networks and cloud computing tie together the complex choreography of mega-regions of tens of millions of people.In response, cities worldwide are deploying technology to address both the timeless challenges of government and the mounting problems posed by human settlements of previously unimaginable size and complexity. In Chicago, GPS sensors on snow plows feed a real-time "plow tracker" map that everyone can access. In Zaragoza, Spain, a "citizen card" can get you on the free city-wide Wi-Fi network, unlock a bike share, check a book out of the library, and pay for your bus ride home. In New York, a guerrilla group of citizen-scientists installed sensors in local sewers to alert you when stormwater runoff overwhelms the system, dumping waste into local waterways.As technology barons, entrepreneurs, mayors, and an emerging vanguard of civic hackers are trying to shape this new frontier, Smart Cities considers the motivations, aspirations, and shortcomings of them all while offering a new civics to guide our efforts as we build the future together, one click at a time.

    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.

    Munari insisted that design be beautiful, functional and accessible, and this enlightening and highly entertaining book sets out his ideas about visual, graphic and industrial design and the role it plays in the objects we use everyday. Lamps, road signs, typography, posters, children's books, advertising, cars and chairs - these are just some of the subjects to which he turns his illuminating gaze.How do we see the world around us? The Penguin on Design series includes the works of creative thinkers whose writings on art, design and the media have changed our vision forever.Bruno Munari (1907-1998), born in Milan, was the enfant terrible of Italian art and design for most of the twentieth century, contributing to many fields of both visual (paint, sculpture, film, industrial design, graphics) and non-visual arts (literature, poetry). He was twice awarded the Compasso d'Oro design prize for excellence in his field.If you enjoyed Design as Art, you might like John Berger's Ways of Seeing, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.'One of the most influential designers of the twentieth century ... Munari has encouraged people to go beyond formal conventions and stereotypes by showing them how to widen their perceptual awareness'International Herald Tribune

    2/27/34) has challenged corporations, government agencies & institutions to be more accountable to the public. In 1965, "Unsafe at Any Speed" changed the face of the automobile industry & made him a household name. As a result of his efforts, cars have more safety features. His lobbying & writing on the food industry insured that the food we buy is required to pass strict guidelines before reaching the consumer. One of his greatest achievements was the 1974 amendment to the Freedom of Information Act that gave increased public access to government documents. This brought freedom of press to a new level, resulting in increased access for journalists. He's cofounded numerous public interest groups including Public Citizen, Critical Mass, Commercial Alert & the Center for Study of Responsive Law. In 2000 he mounted a 2nd bid for president as a candidate for the Green Party, & today continues to be a relentless force for grassroots activism & democratic change in the USA.

    Like Andrew Marr's HISTORY OF MODERN BRITAIN or Michael Palin's HIMALAYA, the book will have a coherence and life beyond the television series, mirroring its basic structure, but looking at some issues in greater depth, and telling additional stories to illustrate some of the ideas.This book is about the things that Britain produces in order to pay its way in the world, from physical goods that we can see and feel, to intangible services that are much harder to quantify. We don't have to be prejudiced in favour of certain types of value: we shouldn't assume finance is modern, and manufacturing out of date for example. What matters is what sells and for how much. From manufacturing to technology, design and the services industries, this book will provide a cutting edge analysis - via entertaining stories - about what we make and why it matters.

    Equally important to Silicon Valley's world-altering innovation are the language and ideas it uses to explain and justify itself. And often, those fancy new ideas are simply old motifs playing dress-up in a hoodie. From the myth of dropping out to the war cry of "disruption," Daub locates the Valley's supposedly original, radical thinking in the ideas of Heidegger and Ayn Rand, the New Age Esalen Foundation in Big Sur, and American traditions from the tent revival to predestination. Written with verve and imagination, What Tech Calls Thinking is an intellectual refutation of Silicon Valley's ethos, pulling back the curtain on the self-aggrandizing myths the Valley tells about itself.FSG Originals � Logic dissects the way technology functions in everyday lives. The titans of Silicon Valley, for all their utopian imaginings, never really had our best interests at heart: recent threats to democracy, truth, privacy, and safety, as a result of tech's reckless pursuit of progress, have shown as much. We present an alternate story, one that delights in capturing technology in all its contradictions and innovation, across borders and socioeconomic divisions, from history through the future, beyond platitudes and PR hype, and past doom and gloom. Our collaboration features four brief but provocative forays into the tech industry's many worlds, and aspires to incite fresh conversations about technology focused on nuanced and accessible explorations of the emerging tools that reorganize and redefine life today.

    In this compact volume, Koolhaas addresses the urban and architectural implications of extra-large construction, using as examples three of OMA's important large-scale projects: the Zeebrugge Ferry Terminal in Belgium, the Tres Grande Bibliotheque in Paris, and the Karlsruhe Center for Art and Media Technology in Germany.Tackling questions about the difficult state of urbanism and modernism in contemporary Europe, America, and Asia, this slim volume forms a concise and coherent explanation of the theories and polemics of Koolhaas and OMA. This beautifully designed book serves as an inexpensive alternative and companion to Koolhaas's recent "S, M, L, XL."