It tells the stories of the real architects and thinkers whose imagined cities became the blueprints for the world we live in.From the nineteenth century to today, what began as visionary concepts—sometimes utopian, sometimes outlandish, always controversial—were gradually adopted and constructed on a massive scale in cities around the world, from Dubai to Ulan Bator to London to Los Angeles. Wade Graham uses the lives of the pivotal dreamers behind these concepts, as well as their acolytes and antagonists, to deconstruct our urban landscapes—the houses, towers, civic centers, condominiums, shopping malls, boulevards, highways, and spaces in between—exposing the ideals and ideas embodied in each.From the baroque fantasy villages of Bertram Goodhue to the superblocks of Le Corbusier’s Radiant City to the pseudo-agrarian dispersal of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City, our upscale leafy suburbs, downtown skyscraper districts, infotainment-driven shopping malls, and “sustainable” eco-developments are seen as never before. In this elegantly designed and illustrated book, Graham uncovers the original plans of brilliant, obsessed, and sometimes megalomaniacal designers, revealing the foundations of today’s varied municipalities. Dream Cities is nothing less than a field guide to our modern urban world.Illustrated with 59 black-and-white photos throughout the text.

    It also contains the easy to follow instructions on how to analyze and compute the structural design of critical building parts such as: reinforced concrete slabs, beams, columns and footings. There are also simple designs and floor plans for a variety of building types to be found in this book.BUILDING DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION should be of interest to architects, engineers, contractors, developers and allied professionals who are engaged in building design, planning and construction. Students and graduates reviewing for the board examinations for architects and engineers would find in this book valuable practical knowledge to supplement the theories learned in their classrooms.Project owners studying this book would appreciate and get a clear understanding of how their envisioned pet project, which sprang only from a mere idea - is transformed slowly step-by-step - into concrete form.Explanations and instructions in BUILDING DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION are conveyed in direct and simple language for easy understanding even by the layman. Plans and drawings are clearly presented, to be easily interpreted by construction workers.

    Passionately argued, brilliantly written, and filled with Paglia’s trademark audacity, Glittering Images takes us on a tour through more than two dozen seminal images, some famous and some obscure or unknown—paintings, sculptures, architectural styles, performance pieces, and digital art that have defined and transformed our visual world. She combines close analysis with background information that situates each artist and image within its historical context—from the stone idols of the Cyclades to an elegant French rococo interior to Jackson Pollock’s abstract Green Silver to Renée Cox’s daring performance piece Chillin’ with Liberty. And in a stunning conclusion, she declares that the avant-garde tradition is dead and that digital pioneer George Lucas is the world’s greatest living artist. Written with energy, erudition, and wit, Glittering Images is destined to change the way we think about our high-tech visual environment.

    The strange saga of American architecture in the twentieth century makes for both high comedy and intellectual excitement as Wolfe debunks the European gods of modern and postmodern architecture and their American counterparts.

     Lavinia writes: "It WAS in the fall and winter of eighteen fifty-nine that my husband and I decided to emigrate to the far West. Imprudent speculations and other misfortunes had embarrassed us financially to such an extent that our prospects for the future looked dark and forbidding; we then determined to use the small remnant of our fortune to provide a suitable outfit for a lengthy journey toward the setting sun. We were both young and inexperienced, my husband still in his twenties, and I a young and immature girl scarce twenty years of age. "A journey across the plains of the West was considered a great event in those early days. It was long thought of and planned seriously with and among the various members of the family to which the would be traveler belonged. Whoever had the temerity to propose turning their backs on civilized life and their faces toward the far-off Rocky mountains were supposed to be daring with a boldness bordering on recklessness. Emigration then meant the facing of unknown dangers in a half-savage country. "After many lengthy debates over the manner of transportation, and a diversified quantity of advice from our numerous friends, as to the merits of horses, mules or oxen, we at last decided (and it proved to be a wise decision) to purchase three yoke of strong, sturdy oxen and a large well-built emigrant wagon; roomy enough to hold all we wanted to take with us, and in which we might travel with some degree of comfort." CONTENTS CHAPTER I. Preparations For A Journey—Bidding Farewell—The Start CHAPTER II. Camping In Kansas— A Novice With Camp Fires —Marching On Foot CHAPTER III. Fire And Fuel—Storm Bound—Fellow Emigrants—Settlers In Nebraska CHAPTER IV. Buffalo Country—Returning Gold Seekers—Our Whiskey Barrel CHAPTER V. Indians CHAPTER VI. Trials Of The Spirit —Thirsting For Water—Gathering Buffalo Chips—Sick On The Desert—Bay Rum, Bergamont, And Castor Oil—Mirage CHAPTER VII. Infant Denver—Hanging By The Vigilance Committee—An Indian And His Scalps—The Parting With My Brother—A Sale Of Glassware—On To California CHAPTER VIII Toward Laramie—Fording A Dangerous Stream—celebrating The Fourth Of July—Entertaining Strangers—An Indian Village On The Move CHAPTER IX. The Rocky Mountains—Cheyenne Pass—Lost Cattle Restored—Crossing The Chugwater—Shoeing Lame Oxen—Arriving At Fort Laramie CHAPTER X. The Overland Road—Joining Company With A Band Of Emigrants—A Threatened Attack Of Indians—A Night Of Storm And Suspense Deserting The Company Of Emigrants—Independence Rock—Mormon Emigrants—Meeting Fellow Travelers Who Passed On To Destruction—Money Giving Out—Philip CHAPTER XI. In Mormon Land—The Trading Post—Discarded Possessions—The Pony Express—Our Indian Protector—Amusing The Children . CHAPTER XII. Salt Lake City—Disappointment At Fort Bridger—Letters From Home—An Old Acquaintance;—Mormon Women CHAPTER XIII. The Deserts—Indescribable Sunsets—Alkau Dust—Chance Acquaintances—The Welcome Sunday Morning Flap-jack—Salt Well—Fish Springs—Willow Springs—T

    Mike Davis shows us where the city's money comes from and who controls it while also exposing the brutal ongoing struggle between L.A.'s haves and have-nots.

    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

    He tells of the Nazi cult of the primeval German forest; the play of Christian and pagan myth in Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers; and the duel between a monumental sculptor and a feminist gadfly on the slopes of Mount Rushmore. The result is a triumphant work of history, naturalism, mythology, and art. "A work of great ambition and enormous intellectual scope...consistently provocative and revealing."--New York Times"Extraordinary...a summary cannot convey the riches of this book. It will absorb, instruct, and fascinate."--New York Review of Books

    See how they effortlessly mix contemporary furniture with thrift-store finds, and learn all sorts of tricks for creating a stylish home no matter what the obstacles: seven children, small spaces, or a tiny budget. From toddler-friendly bedroom for triplets to a beach retreat for two twenty-somethings, from a New Jersey basement to a Palm Beach cabana, Home by Novogratz proves that good design is just a book away.

    The Drive-By Truckers, as they named themselves, grew into one of the best and most consequential rock bands of the twenty-first century, a great live act whose songs deliver the truth and nuance rarely bestowed on Southerners, so often reduced to stereotypes.Where the Devil Don’t Stay tells the band’s unlikely story not chronologically but geographically. Seeing the Truckers’ albums as roadmaps through a landscape that is half-real, half-imagined, their fellow Southerner Stephen Deusner travels to the places the band’s members have lived in and written about. Tracking the band from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia, to the author’s hometown in McNairy County, Tennessee, Deusner explores the Truckers’ complex relationship to the South and the issues of class, race, history, and religion that run through their music. Drawing on new interviews with past and present band members, including Jason Isbell, Where the Devil Don’t Stay is more than the story of a great American band; it’s a reflection on the power of music and how it can frame and shape a larger culture.

    Increasingly this term is used to illustrate a bewildering array of ideas from key lines and the occult, to urban walking and political radicalism. But where does it come from and what exactly does it mean? This book examines the origins of psychogeography in the Situationist Movement of the 1950s, exploring the theoretical background and its political applications as well as the work of early practitioners such as Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem. Elsewhere, psychogeographic ideas continue to find retrospective validation in much earlier traditions from the visionary writing of William Blake and Thomas De Quincey to the rise of the flaneur on the streets of 19th century Paris and on through the avant-garde experimentation of the Surrealists. These precursors to psychogeography are discussed here alongside their modern counterparts, for today these ideas hold greater currency than ever through the popularity of writers and filmmakers such as Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd, Stewart Home and Patrick Keiller. From Urban Wandering to Cognitive Mapping, from the Derive to Detournement, psychogeography provides us with new ways of apprehending our surroundings, transforming the familiar streets of our everyday experience into something new and unexpected. This guide conducts the reader through this process, offering both an explanation and definition of the terms involved, and an analysis of the key figures and their work as well as practical information on psychogeographical groups and organizations.

    Today, museums are staging exhibitions of encaustic art, workshops in the technique are thriving, and art collectors and dealers are assimilating encaustic art into their collections and galleries. The word encaustic is taken from the Greek and means “to burn in.” In the encaustic process, pigmented wax is applied and then fused to a surface with heat. The result is a broad range of surface effects and a luminous translucency that is unique to the encaustic medium. Encaustic Art is a complete resource for artists who wish to learn to create fine art with wax. It features step-by-step techniques with easy-to-understand instructions and detailed illustrations, stunning examples of encaustic works of art (including sculpture), along with practical advice and thoughtful aesthetic observations from more than 60 professional artists working in the encaustic medium.

    He talks of the creation of the work of art, the importance of the community, the problem of communication, and the critical theories governing the artist and his audience.

    From the Docklands boom to cities such as Manchester, gated apartment developments, gleaming business districts and plazas have sprung up over the country. Has this 'regeneration' really made our lives better? This passionate and vivid polemic shows us the face of Britain today, revealing the untested urban planning that is transforming not only our cities, but the nature of public space, of citizenship and of trust. Anna Minton meets those who live and work in the new private spaces, those who've fought against them and those who are excluded from them, providing forceful evidence that physical barriers are leading to a divided nation. Yet there is another way. Offering some surprising solutions, Anna Minton argues for an alternative, continental approach that celebrates shared space. Ultimately "Ground Control" presents a better, happier future for our communities, and our society.

    With her beloved city as a backdrop, a sketchbook in hand, and a natural sense of curiosity, MacNaughton spent months getting to know people in their own neighborhoods, drawing them and recording their words. Her street-smart graphic journalism is as diverse and beautiful as San Francisco itself, ranging from the vendors at the farmers' market to people combing the shelves at the public library, from MUNI drivers to the bison of Golden Gate Park, and much more. Meanwhile in San Francisco offers both lifelong residents and those just blowing through with the fog an opportunity to see the city with new eyes.