Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form


Robert Venturi - 1972
    This revision includes the full texts of Part I of the original, on the Las Vegas strip, and Part II, "Ugly and Ordinary Architecture, or the Decorated Shed," a generalization from the findings of the first part on symbolism in architecture and the iconography of urban sprawl. (The final part of the first edition, on the architectural work of the firm Venturi and Rauch, is not included in the revision.) The new paperback edition has a smaller format, fewer pictures, and a considerably lower price than the original. There are an added preface by Scott Brown and a bibliography of writings by the members of Venturi and Rauch and about the firm's work. Synopsis Learning from Las Vegas created a healthy controversy on its appearance in 1972, calling for architects to be more receptive to the tastes and values of "common" people and less immodest in their erections of "heroic," self-aggrandizing monuments. This revision includes the full texts of Part I of the original, on the Las Vegas strip, and Part II, "Ugly and Ordinary Architecture, or the Decorated Shed," a generalization from the findings of the first part on symbolism in architecture and the iconography of urban sprawl. (The final part of the first edition, on the architectural work of the firm Venturi and Rauch, is not included in the revision.) The new paperback edition has a smaller format, fewer pictures, and a considerably lower price than the original. There are an added preface by Scott Brown and a bibliography of writings by the members of Venturi and Rauch and about the firm's work. About Author: Biography Steven Izenour (1940-2001)

Overwhelming Odds


Susan O'Leary - 2004
    The book unveils a truth of universal importance, namely, by helping others in need we can become their miracles.

The Oil Painting Course You've Always Wanted: Guided Lessons for Beginners and Experienced Artists


Kathleen Staiger - 2006
    Or maybe you weren’t afraid—maybe you just didn’t know what to ask or where to start. In The Oil Painting Course You’ve Always Wanted, author Kathleen Staiger presents crystal clear, step-by-step lessons that build to reinforce learning. Brush control, creating the illusion of three dimensions, foolproof color mixing, still-life painting, landscapes, and portraits—every topic is covered in clear text, diagrams, illustrations, exercises, and demonstrations. Staiger has taught oil painting for more than thirty-five years; many of her students are now exhibiting and selling their paintings. Everyone from beginning hobby painters, to art students, to BFA graduates has questions about oil painting. Here at last are the answers!

Urban Code: 100 Lessons for Understanding the City


Anne Mikoleit - 2011
    Considering the urban landscape not from the abstract perspective of an urban planner but from the viewpoint of an attentive observer, Urban Code offers 100 "lessons"--maxims, observations, and bite-size truths, followed by short essays--that teach us how to read the city. This is a user's guide to the city, a primer of urban literacy, at the pedestrian level. The reader (like the observant city stroller) can move from "People walk in the sunshine" (lesson 1) to "Street vendors are positioned according to the path of the sun" (lesson 2); consider possible connections between the fact that "Locals and tourists use the streets at different times" (lesson 41) and "Tourists stand still when they're looking at something" (lesson 68); and weigh the apparent contradiction of lesson 73, "Nightlife hotspots increase pedestrian traffic" and lesson 74, "People are afraid of the dark."A lesson may seem self-evident ("Grocery stores are important local destinations"--of course they are!) but considered in the context of other lessons, it becomes part of a natural logic. With Urban Code, we learn what to notice if we want to understand the city. We learn to detect patterns in the relationships between people and the urban environment. Each lesson is accompanied by an icon-like image; in addition to these 100 drawings, thirty photographs of street scenes illustrate the text. The photographs are stills from films shot in the Manhattan neighborhood of SoHo; the lessons are inspired by the authors' observations of SoHo, but hold true for any cityscape.

Data Flow 2: Visualizing Information In Graphic Design


Nicolas Bourquin - 2010
    Today, more and more graphic designers, advertising agencies, motion designers, and artists work in this area. New techniques and forms of expression are being developed. Consequently, the demand for information on this topic has grown enormously. Data Flow 2 expands the definition of contemporary information graphics. The book features new possibilities for diagrams, maps, and charts. It investigates the visual and intuitive presentation of processes, data, and information. Concrete examples of research and art projects as well as commercial work illuminate how techniques such as simplification, abstraction, metaphor, and dramatization function. The book also includes interviews with experts such as The New York Times s Steve Duenes, Infosthetics's Andrew Vande Moere, Visualcomplexity's Manuel Lima, ART+COM's Joachim Sauter, and passionate cartographer Menno-Jan Kraak as well as text features by Johannes Schardt about the challenges in creating effective information graphics and about the relationship between complexity, clarity, content, and innovation. Offering practical advice, background information, case studies, and inspiration, Data Flow 2 is a valuable reference for anyone working with or interested in information graphics.

The Devil Reads Derrida - and Other Essays on the University, the Church, Politics, and the Arts


James K.A. Smith - 2009
    Has anyone considered Jamie Smith? This whirling dervish of public philosophy generates enough intellectual energy to supply a middle-size city all by himself. - John Wilson (editor of Books & Culture)By now, Jamie Smith is not just a leading philosophical or postmodern or Reformed theologian: he is simply a leading theologian. This volume shows that he has not only ascended to that height but also descended to a depth that terrifies most academics journalism. He offers a theology as everyday as the neighborhood, the movies, partisan politics, the university, and the street corner and with a twinkle in his eye he shows us Jesus lordship in each place. I hope others will not just read Jamies book, but will go and do likewise. - Jason Byassee (Center for Theology, Writing & Media, Duke Divinity School)A notable young voice in the academy, James K. A. Smith has consistently spoken to the church as the most important public for his intellectual work. Bringing together essays both thoughtful and entertaining, The Devil Reads Derrida displays some of Smiths most significant forays into the public arena.In this engaging work Smith grapples with the Wild at Heart phenomenon and the challenges of secularization, deals with sex and consumerism, and comments on creative works from American Beauty and Harry Potter to A History of Violence and the poetry of Franz Wright. No matter what.

Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture


Ross King - 2000
    Not a master mason or carpenter, Filippo Brunelleschi was a goldsmith and clock maker. Over twenty-eight years, he would dedicate himself to solving puzzles of the dome's construction. In the process, he did nothing less than reinvent the field of architecture. He engineered the perfect placement of brick and stone (some among the most renowned machines of the Renaissance) to carry an estimated seventy million pounds hundreds of feet into the air, and designed the workers' platforms and routines so carefully that only one man died during the decades of construction. This drama was played out amid plagues, wars, political feuds, and the intellectual ferments of Renaissance Florence - events Ross King weaves into a story to great effect. An American Library Association Best Book of the Year Boston Globe: "An absorbing tale." Los Angeles Times: "Ross King has a knack for explaining complicated processes in a manner that is not only lucid but downright intriguing... Fascinating."

Frank Lloyd Wright: The Masterworks


Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer - 1993
    In entirely new photographs taken especially for this book by two leading architectural photographers under the direction of co-editor David Larkin, such internationally famous buildings as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Fallingwater and Wright's homes Taliesin, Taliesin West, and the Oak Park Home and Studio are seen afresh, benefiting from the photographers' special access. Several lesser-known residences, such as Auldbrass Plantation in South Carolina, an array of wooden buildings that is Wright's American alternative to antebellum architecture, the William H. Winslow house in River Forest, Illinois, one of the architect's earliest and most surprisingly decorative houses, and the Kenneth Laurent house in Rockford, Illinois, a masterful curvilinear design, are seen in full color and demonstrate dimensions of Wright's work less often seen before. Public buildings, such as the dramatic concrete, glass, and steel Marin County Civic Center and Beth Sholom Synagogue show Wright as engineering virtuoso as well as creative architect. In addition to these existing masterworks, only the most famous of which are open to the public, the book covers buildings that have been demolished, notably the Larkin Company Administration Building, Midway Gardens, and the Imperial Hotel, which are represented here by drawings and rich archival photographs. Each of the buildings is presented from conceptual sketch, plan, or drawing to finished masterwork, andeach is accompanied by an in-depth essay detailing the development of the work. Extensive quotes from Wright's writings, unpublished talks, and private letters to the clients give valuable insight into the architect's own thinking about each commission. Never before has Wright's architecture been presented so elaborately in one volume.

Brian Eno's Another Green World (33 1/3 Book 67)


Geeta Dayal - 2009
    It was the first Brian Eno album tobe composed almost completely in the confines of a recording studio,over a scant few months in the summer of 1975. The album was a proofof concept for Eno's budding ideas of "the studio as musicalinstrument," and a signpost for a bold new way of thinking aboutmusic.In this book, Geeta Dayal unravels Another Green World's abundantmysteries, venturing into its dense thickets of sound. How was analbum this cohesive and refined formed in such a seemingly ad hoc way?How were electronics and layers of synthetic treatments used to createan album so redolent of the natural world? How did a deck of cardsfigure into all of this? Here, through interviews and archivalresearch, she unearths the strange story of how Another Green Worldformed the link to Eno's future -- foreshadowing his metamorphosisfrom unlikely glam rocker to sonic painter and producer.

Yaarukkum Vetkamillai (Nobody is Ashamed)


Cho Ramaswamy
    

The Tower and the Bridge: The New Art of Structural Engineering


David P. Billington - 1985
    Aided by a number of stunning illustrations, David Billington discusses leading structural engineer-artists, such as John A. Roebling, Gustave Eiffel, Fazlur Khan, and Robert Maillart.

U2 Show


Diana Scrimgeour - 2004
     Everything about U2 is huge-from their music to their tours to their influence on popular culture and politics worldwide. They are cultural icons as well as multimillion-album-selling pop stars. Underpinning the band's popularity, from the beginning, is their passion for touring. For more than twenty years, U2 has been primarily a live band-hardly ever off the road. Performing live is what they love to do best. And it is their touring that defines their creativity and reflects the direction of the band. From the first bare-bones Tick Tock Tour of 1980 through the massive, seminal Joshua Tree and ZooTV tours of the eighties and nineties to the most recent, more intimate Elevation Tour of 2001, it is their live shows that have set U2's agenda. For the first time, the band has agreed to chronicle this vital part of its creative energy. More than 500 photos from hundreds of performances have been handpicked from a twenty-five-year archive. Many of these photos are behind-the-scenes shots that have never been published before. The book includes commentary by Diana Scrimgeour, the official photographer on recent tours, as well as first-person accounts from band members, the core creative team, friends, and associates. "U2 Show" is the music publishing event of 2004.

The Glass Room


Simon Mawer - 2009
    But, when the storm clouds of WW2 gather, the family must flee, accompanied by Viktor's lover and her child. But the house's story is far from over, as it passes from hand to hand, from Czech to Russian.

Nightmares in the Sky: Gargoyles and Grotesques


Stephen King - 1988
    The masterful blending of text and photos sweeps readers into a maelstrom of monsters watching from above--a nightmare in the sky. 24 full-color photos, 100 duotones.

Oil Painting Secrets From a Master


Linda Cateura - 1984
    This is such a book. For more than two years, Linda Cateura has pursued teacher / artist David A. Leffel, notebook in hand, as he critiqued the work of students. Linda Cateura's succinct notes capture his insights, philosophy, painting hints, and general comments.Leffel's classic, painterly, twentieth-century old master style, much in the manner of Rembrandt or Chardin, affords ample illustration of the ideas expressed - through his many paintings, details, demonstrations, and diagrams, almost all in color.No matter what your level of ability, there is something here to apply to your own work, ideas that will cause you to rething your own ways of painting, hints to save you effort, or solutions to persistent painting problems.