Bruce Hoadley explains everything from how trees grow to how best to cut, season, machine, join, bend, and finish wood. Why do miters open and glue joints loosen? How do you get a really sharp edge? Examples of problems and solutions help woodworkers puzzle through their own projects, while full-color photos and helpful tables illustrate key points.

    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.

    In this revolutionary book, Gehl presents his latest work creating (or recreating) cityscapes on a human scale. He clearly explains the methods and tools he uses to reconfigure unworkable cityscapes into the landscapes he believes they should be: cities for people.Taking into account changing demographics and changing lifestyles, Gehl explains how to develop cities that are lively, safe, sustainable, and healthy.The book is extensively illustrated with over 700 photos and drawings of examples from Gehl’s work around the globe.

    With the increasingly hectic, stressful lives that more and more people are leading today, is it possible for anyone to handle the overwhelming demands on their time and still get through the day with ease? The Joy of Simple Living will teach you just how easy it is to get back to the basics.This book will change your life. It provides more than 1,500 easy, specific tips and techniques for cutting back, paring down, and breathing easier-- without sacrificing the quality of life you deserve. Open the book to any page and you'll find it filled with practical ideas. The Joy of Simple Living examines every single room of your house, plus your car and your office. Not only will you learn to create an orderly home, you'll become a more effective spouse, parent, and worker by learning how to prioritize and simplify. You'll have more free time, more money, and a greater peace of mind when you realize the joy that simple living can bring.* Conquer Clutter* Eliminate Daily Hassles* Organize Your Possessions* Create More Leisure Time* Streamline Your Work Habits* Ease Your Mind* Improve Your Relationships* Save Money* Erase Stress

    The Practical Encyclopedia of Feng Shui

    BUILDING CONSTRUCTION BY RANGWALA, 9789385039041

    This book will be helpful for students who want to prepare within a short time, covering the whole syllabus and all compilations at one place.

    Powering our digital lives and green technologies are some of the Earth’s most precious metals — but they are running out. And what will happen when they do?The green-tech revolution will reduce our dependency on nuclear power, coal, and oil, heralding a new era free of pollution, fossil-fuel shortages, and cross-border tensions. But there is a hidden dark side to this seemingly utopian vision.Drawing on six years of research across a dozen countries, award-winning journalist and documentarist Guillaume Pitron reveals that, by breaking free of fossil fuels, we are in fact setting ourselves up for a new dependence — on rare metals such as cobalt, gold, and palladium.These are essential to electric vehicles, wind turbines, and solar panels, as well as our smartphones, computers, tablets, and other technologies. But we know very little about how rare metals are mined and traded, or their environmental, economic, and geopolitical costs; meanwhile, China has captured the lion’s share of the market and is using it to consolidate its position as a leading global power.The Rare Metals War is a vital exposé of the ticking time-bomb that lies beneath our new technological order.

    It does, however, provide priceless tips for removing an ink stain, slicing a grapefruit, or painting a room. Inspired by a perennially popular Real Simple magazine feature, the book organizes its jiffy-fix tricks by activity that cover cooking, cleaning, decorating, entertaining, dressing, grooming, working, and more.

    Each chapter will offer practical answers to important questions, such as: Why does buying locally produced food make sense? What steps can we take to influence our workplace toward sustainability? How do we volunteer and advocate more effectively? How can we travel, live, work and learn in world changing ways? How, in short, can every human being help build a better future locally and globally? Illustrated with photographs and designed by Stefan Sagmeister, one of the most influential graphic designers working today, Worldchanging will prove that a life that is sustainably prosperous, just and democratic, dynamic and peaceful, is not just possible, it's here.

    With more than 200 illustrations, all prepared by the author, along with analysis and statistics, Great Streets offers a wealth of information on street dimensions, plans, sections, and patterns of use, all systematically compared. It also reveals Jacobs's eye for the telling human and social details that bring streets and communities to life.An extensive introduction discusses the importance of streets in creating communities and criteria for identifying the best streets. The essays that follow examine 15 particularly fine streets, ranging from medieval streets in Rome and Copenhagen to Venice's Grand Canal, from Parisian boulevards to tree-lined residential streets in American cities. Jacobs also looks at several streets that were once very fine but are less successful today, such as Market Street in San Francisco, identifying the factors that figure in their decline.To broaden his coverage, Jacobs adds briefer treatments of more than 30 other streets arranged by street type, including streets from Australia, Japan, and classical antiquity in addition to European and North American examples. For each of these streets he has prepared plans, sections, and maps, all drawn at the same scales to facilitate comparisons, along with perspective views and drawings of significant design details.Another remarkable feature of this book is a set of 50 one square-mile maps, each reproduced at the same scale, of the street plans of representative cities around the world. These reveal much about the texture of the cities' street patterns and hence of their urban life. Jacobs's analysis of the maps adds much original data derived from them, including changes of street patterns over time.Jacobs concludes by summarizing the practical design qualities and strategies that have contributed most to the making of great streets.

    The argument is illustrated with examples ranging from penknives to computers and from sewing machines to railway carriages. In opening up new ways of appraising the man-made world around us, Objects of Desire is required reading for anyone who has any involvement with design and a revealing document about our society.

    Winner of the National Book Award. “One of the major works of scholarship of the twentieth century” (Christian Science Monitor). Index; illustrations.

    Around the world, more and more money is being invested in buildings and land. Real estate is now a $217 trillion dollar industry, worth thirty-six times the value of all the gold ever mined. It forms sixty percent of global assets, and one of the most powerful people in the world—the president of the United States—made his name as a landlord and developer.Samuel Stein shows that this explosive transformation of urban life and politics has been driven not only by the tastes of wealthy newcomers, but by the state-led process of urban planning. Planning agencies provide a unique window into the ways the state uses and is used by capital, and the means by which urban renovations are translated into rising real estate values and rising rents.Capital City explains the role of planners in the real estate state, as well as the remarkable power of planning to reclaim urban life.

    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.