Book picks similar to
Superhumanity: Design of the Self by Beatriz Colomina


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architecture
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The Problem of China


Bertrand Russell - 1993
    Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

Massive Change: A Manifesto for the Future of Global Design


Bruce Mau - 2004
    The book is a part of a broader research project by Bruce Mau Design intended to provoke debate and discussion about the future of design culture, broadly defined as the "familiar objects and techniques that are transforming our lives." In essays, interviews, and provocative imagery aimed at a broad audience, Massive Change explores the changing force of design in the contemporary world, and in doing so expands the definition of design to include the built environment, transportation technologies, revolutionary materials, energy and information systems, and living organisms. The book is divided into 11 heavily illustrated sections covering major areas of change in contemporary society — such as urbanism and architecture, the military, health and living, and wealth and politics. Each section intersperses intriguing documentary images with a general introductory essay, extended captions, and interviews with leading thinkers, including engineers, designers, philosophers, scientists, architects, artists, and writers. Concluding the book is a graphic timeline of significant inventions and world events from 10,000 B.C. to the present.

Move up


Clotaire Rapaille - 2013
    Si todos debemos movernos para sobrevivir, vale la pena preguntarse: ¿qué factores de nuestro entorno nos impulsan a movernos y cuáles, por el contrario, nos detienen? ¿Por qué algunas personas tienen la oportunidad de moverse hacia donde quieren y otras no? ¿Por qué ciertas sociedades evolucionan y otras no? Para responder a estas interrogantes, los autores del libro estudiaron los códigos culturales y el comportamiento Bio-Lógico de 71 países para desarrollar un índice de que permite medir la movilidad social dentro de estas sociedades.Andrés Roemer y Clotaire Rapaille señalan que las culturas más exitosas son aquellas que han sabido preservar los mejores aspectos de su tradición, al mismo tiempo que han estado dispuestas a innovar y buscar nuevos horizontes. Se trata de sociedades abiertas al cambio y sin temor al statu quo. Otra clave del éxito evolutivo de las sociedades es el equilibrio entre el aspecto biológico (determinado por cuatro factores: supervivencia, sexo, seguridad y superación) y el aspecto cultural. El reto, concluyen los autores, es aprender a armonizar nuestros instintos (nuestro cerebro reptiliano) con nuestras emociones (nuestro cerebro límbico) y nuestra lógica (el neocórtex).ENGLISH DESCRIPTION If we all know we must move to survive, shouldn’t we ask ourselves which factors in our environment propel us and which halt us? Why do certain societies evolve while others don’t? In this book, Andrés Roemer and Clotaire Rapaille point out that the most successful cultures are those that are not afraid of the status quo: they have learned to preserve the best qualities of their traditions while being open to innovation and to uncovering new horizons. Another key to the success of these societies is the equilibrium between biological and the cultural aspects. The challenge is to harmonize our instincts, our emotions, and our logic.

Shaping Things


Bruce Sterling - 2005
    He adds: Seen from sufficient distance, this is a small topic.Sterling offers a brilliant, often hilarious history of shaped things. We have moved from an age of artifacts, made by hand, through complex machines, to the current era of gizmos. New forms of design and manufacture are appearing that lack historical precedent, he writes; but the production methods, using archaic forms of energy and materials that are finite and toxic, are not sustainable. The future will see a new kind of object; we have the primitive forms of them now in our pockets and briefcases: user-alterable, baroquely multi-featured, and programmable, that will be sustainable, enhanceable, and uniquely identifiable. Sterling coins the term spime for them, these future-manufactured objects with informational support so extensive and rich that they are regarded as material instantiations of an immaterial system. Spimes are designed on screens, fabricated by digital means, and precisely tracked through space and time. They are made of substances that can be folded back into the production stream of future spimes, challenging all of us to become involved in their production. Spimes are coming, says Sterling. We will need these objects in order to live; we won't be able to surrender their advantages without awful consequences.The vision of Shaping Things is given material form by the intricate design of Lorraine Wild. Shaping Things is for designers and thinkers, engineers and scientists, entrepreneurs and financiers; and anyone who wants to understand and be part of the process of technosocial transformation.

War and Architecture


Lebbeus Woods - 1996
    Small in scale, low in price, but large in impact, these books present and disseminate new and innovative theories. The modest format of the books in the Pamphlet Architecture Series belies the importance and magnitude of the ideas within.

The Greek Philosophers: from Thales to Aristotle


W.K.C. Guthrie - 1960
    Guthrie has written a survey of the great age of Greek philosophy - from Thales to Aristotle - which combines comprehensiveness with brevity. Without pre-supposing a knowledge of Greek or the Classics, he sets out to explain the ideas of Plato and Aristotle in the light of their predecessors rather than their successors, and to describe the characteristic features of the Greek way of thinking and outlook on the world. Thus The Greek Philosophers provides excellent background material for the general reader - as well as providing a firm basis for specialist studies.

Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory


Edward W. Soja - 1989
    Building on the work of Foucault, Giddens, Jameson and Lefebvre, one of America's geographers argues for a rethinking of the dialectics of space, time and social being.

Lacan on Love: An Exploration of Lacan's Seminar VIII, Transference


Bruce Fink - 2015
    As wary as we may be of its illusions and disappointments, many of us fall blindly into its traps and become ensnared time and again. Deliriously mad excitement turns to disenchantment, if not deadening repetition, and we wonder how we shall ever break out of this vicious cycle.Can psychoanalysis - with ample assistance from philosophers, poets, novelists, and songwriters - give us a new perspective on the wellsprings and course of love? Can it help us fathom how and why we are often looking for love in all the wrong places, and are fundamentally confused about "what love really is"?In this lively and wide-ranging exploration of love throughout the ages, Fink argues that it can. Taking within his compass a vast array of traditions - from Antiquity to the courtly love poets, Christian love, and Romanticism - and providing an in-depth examination of Freud and Lacan on love and libido, Fink unpacks Lacan's paradoxical claim that "love is giving what you don't have." He shows how the emptiness or lack we feel within ourselves gets covered over or entwined in love, and how it is possible and indeed vital to give something to another that we feel we ourselves don't have.This first-ever commentary on Lacan's Seminar VIII, Transference, provides readers with a clear and systematic introduction to Lacan's views on love. It will be of great value to students and scholars of psychology and of the humanities generally, and to analysts of all persuasions.

Politics


Andrew Heywood - 1997
    Stimulating, succinct and accessible, it offers a truly comprehensive introduction to the study of politics, written from an international perspective. This second edition takes full account of new developments such as debates about globalization, the impact of the mass media, and the shift from government to governance. It also includes new boxed material on major thinkers and key concepts.

Home from Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the 21st Century


James Howard Kunstler - 1996
     In Home from Nowhere Kunstler not only shows that the original American Dream -- the desire for peaceful, pleasant places in which to work and live -- still has a strong hold on our imaginations, but also offers innovative, eminently practical ways to make that dream a reality. Citing examples from around the country, he calls for the restoration of traditional architecture, the introduction of enduring design principles in urban planning, and the development of public spaces that acknowledge our need to interact comfortable with one another.

Walkscapes: El andar como práctica estética/Walking as an Aesthetic Practice


Francesco Careri - 2005
    Here, walking is seen as an autonomous form of art, a primary act in the symbolic transformation of the territory, an aesthetic instrument of knowledge and a physical transformation of the "negotiated" space, which is converted into an urban intervention. From primitive nomadism to Dada and Surrealism, from the Lettrist to the Situationist International, and from minimalism to Land Art, this book narrates the perception of landscape through a history of the traversed city.

Savage Messiah


Laura Oldfield Ford - 2011
    Ford’s prose is scabrous and melancholic, incorporating theoretical shards from Guy Debord and Marc Augé, and mapping the transformations to the capital that the property boom and neoliberalist economics have wrought. Each zine is a drift, a wander through landscape that echoes certain strands of contemporary psychogeography. Ford—or a version of her, at least—is an occasional character, offering up narcotic memories of a forgotten metropolis. The images, hand-drawn, photographed and messily laid out, suggest both outtakes from a Sophie Calle project and the dust jacket of an early 1980s anarcho-punk compilation record: that is, both poetry and protest.”—Sukhdev Sandhu, New Statesman Savage Messiah collects the entire set of Laura Oldfield Ford’s fanzine to date. Part graphic novel, part artwork, the book is both an angry polemic against the marginalization of the city’s working class and an exploration of the cracks that open up in urban space.

On Painting


Leon Battista Alberti
    Inspired by the order and beauty inherent in nature, his groundbreaking work sets out the principles of distance, dimension and proportion; instructs the painter on how to use the rules of composition, representation, light and colour to create work that is graceful and pleasing to the eye; and stipulates the moral and artistic pre-requisites of the successful painter. On Painting had an immediate and profound influence on Italian Renaissance artists including Ghiberti, Fra Angelico and Veneziano and on later figures such as Leonardo da Vinci, and remains a compelling theory of art.

The Love Teachings of Kama Sutra: With Extracts from Koka Shastra, Anaga Ranga and Other Famous Indian Works on Love


Mallanaga Vātsyāyana - 1985
    In this new translation, Indra Sinha captures the beautiful, vivid language of the original as well as the humor that's been lost in previous versions.

Dark Matter and Trojan Horses: A Strategic Design Vocabulary


Dan Hill - 2012
    With conventional solutions failing, a new culture of decision-making is called for. Strategic design is about applying the principles of traditional design to "big picture" systemic challenges such as healthcare, education and the environment. It redefines how problems are approached and aims to deliver more resilient solutions. In this short book, Dan Hill outlines a new vocabulary of design, one that needs to be smuggled into the upper echelons of power. He asserts that, increasingly, effective design means engaging with the messy politics – the “dark matter” – taking place above the designer’s head. And that may mean redesigning the organisation that hires you.