Kahn sought the spiritual in his powerful forms, and encouraged his students to seek the essential nature of architecture. His Philadelphia-based practice was responsible for such masterpieces as the Richards Medical Research building in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; the Yale Art Gallery extension in New Haven, Connecticut; the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas; the government complex at Dhaka, Bangladesh; and the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California.This title, in the same format as our highly successful Rem Koolhaas: Conversations with Students, contains a little-known essay by Kahn on his sources of inspiration, an interview with the architect on his working methods and his vision for the future of the profession, and writings on Kahn by Michael Bell and Lars Lerup, contributors to our title Stanley Saitowitz. Louis Kahn: Conversations with Students is the latest title in the series from the Rice University School of Architecture.

    But is it? In an age when we are endlessly urged to do “more with less”, can we still romanticise the pretensions of minimalism? For Pier Vittorio Aureli, the return of “austerity chic” is a perversion of what ought to be a meaningful way of life. Charting the rise of asceticism in early Christianity and its institutionalisation with the medieval monasteries, Aureli examines how the basic unit of the reclusive life – the monk’s cell – becomes the foundation of private property. And from there, he argues, it all starts to go wrong. By late capitalism, asceticism has been utterly aestheticised. It manifests itself as monasteries inspired by Calvin Klein stores, in the monkish lifestyle of Steve Jobs and Apple’s aura of restraint. Amid all the hypocrisy, it must still be possible to reprise the idea of “less” as a radical alternative, as the first step to living the life examined.

    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.

    It will enable making a design for almost any kind of building, or any part of the built environment. ‘Patterns,’ the units of this language, are answers to design problems: how high should a window sill be?; how many stories should a building have?; how much space in a neighborhood should be devoted to grass and trees?More than 250 of the patterns in this language are outlined, each consisting of a problem statement, a discussion of the problem with an illustration, and a solution. As the authors say in their introduction, many of the patterns are archetypal, so deeply rooted in the nature of things that it seems likely that they will be a part of human nature and human action as much in five hundred years as they are today.A Pattern Language is related to Alexander’s other works in the Center for Environmental Structure series: The Timeless Way of Building (introductory volume) and The Oregon Experiment.

    Now revised, enlarged and expanded, Kenneth Frampton brings the story up to date and adds an entirely new concluding chapter that focuses on four countries where individual talent and enlightened patronage have combined to produce a comprehensive and convincing architectural culture: Finland, France, Spain and Japan. The bibliography has also been reviewed and extended, making this volume more indispensable than ever.

    The present volume is an unabridged English translation of the 13th French edition of that historic manifesto, in which Le Corbusier expounded his technical and aesthetic theories, views on industry, economics, relation of form to function, the "mass-production spirit," and much else. A principal prophet of the "modern" movement in architecture, and a near-legendary figure of the "International School," he designed some of the twentieth century's most memorable buildings: Chapel at Ronchamp; Swiss dormitory at the Cité Universitaire, Paris; Unité d'Habitation, Marseilles; and many more.Le Corbusier brought great passion and intelligence to these essays, which present his ideas in a concise, pithy style, studded with epigrammatic, often provocative, observations: "American engineers overwhelm with their calculations our expiring architecture." "Architecture is stifled by custom. It is the only profession in which progress is not considered necessary." "A cathedral is not very beautiful . . ." and "Rome is the damnation of the half-educated. To send architectural students to Rome is to cripple them for life."Profusely illustrated with over 200 line drawings and photographs of his own works and other structures he considered important, Towards a New Architecture is indispensable reading for architects, city planners, and cultural historians―but will intrigue anyone fascinated by the wide-ranging ideas, unvarnished opinions, and innovative theories of one of this century's master builders.

    For an Architecture of Reality published in the year 1992. The author of this book is Michael Benedikt . We have a dedicated page displaying collection of Michael Benedikt books here. This is the Paperback version of the title "For an Architecture of Reality ". For an Architecture of Reality is currently Available with us.

    Here is a clear and enthusiastic introduction to buildings methods from ancient times to the present day, including recent advances in science and technology that have had important effects on the planning and construction of buildings: improved materials (steel, concrete, plastics), progress in antiseismic designs, and the revolutionary changes in both architectural and structural design made possible by the computer.

    His work spans some sixty years and includes original work on a diverse range of subjects, from dialectical materialism to architecture, urbanism and the experience of everyday life. The Production of Space is his major philosophical work and its translation has been long awaited by scholars in many different fields. The book is a search for a reconciliation between mental space (the space of the philosophers) and real space (the physical and social spheres in which we all live). In the course of his exploration, Henri Lefebvre moves from metaphysical and ideological considerations of the meaning of space to its experience in the everyday life of home and city. He seeks, in other words, to bridge the gap between the realms of theory and practice, between the mental and the social, and between philosophy and reality. In doing so, he ranges through art, literature, architecture and economics, and further provides a powerful antidote to the sterile and obfuscatory methods and theories characteristic of much recent continental philosophy. This is a work of great vision and incisiveness. It is also characterized by its author's wit and by anecdote, as well as by a deftness of style which Donald Nicholson-Smith's sensitive translation precisely captures.

    A brief examination of the theory and practice of Renaissance architecture that draws attention to the values underlying this style

    Introducing the science of "proxemics," Hall demonstrates how man's use of space can affect personal business relations, cross-cultural exchanges, architecture, city planning, and urban renewal.

    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.

    Every building contains clues embedded in its design that identify not only its architectural style but also the story of who designed it, who it was built for, and why. Organized by architectural element (roofs, doors, windows, columns, domes, towers, arches, etc.), the book is roughly chronological within each section, examining the elements across history, through different architectural styles, and by geographical distribution. Additional chapters offer overviews of how architecture has been affected by geography, history, and religion, along with an illustrated timeline of architectural elements. Also included is a chapter on applied ornament and a handy introduction to naming each part of a building. All entries are accompanied by examples in the forms of period engravings, line drawings, and pictures. The extended captions make the book invaluable for anyone who has ever pondered the meaning or importance of a hipped roof, rounded doorway, or classical pediment.

    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.

    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.