Interaction of Color


Josef Albers - 1971
    Conceived as a handbook and teaching aid for artists, instructors, and students, this timeless book presents Albers’s unique ideas of color experimentation in a way that is valuable to specialists as well as to a larger audience.Originally published by Yale University Press in 1963 as a limited silkscreen edition with 150 color plates, Interaction of Color first appeared in paperback in 1971, featuring ten representative color studies chosen by Albers. The paperback has remained in print ever since and is one of the most influential resources on color for countless readers.This new paperback edition presents a significantly expanded selection of more than thirty color studies alongside Albers’s original unabridged text, demonstrating such principles as color relativity, intensity, and temperature; vibrating and vanishing boundaries; and the illusions of transparency and reversed grounds. Now available in a larger format and with enhanced production values, this expanded edition celebrates the unique authority of Albers’s contribution to color theory and brings the artist’s iconic study to an eager new generation of readers.

Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software


Steven Johnson - 2001
    Explaining why the whole is sometimes smarter than the sum of its parts, Johnson presents surprising examples of feedback, self-organization, and adaptive learning. How does a lively neighborhood evolve out of a disconnected group of shopkeepers, bartenders, and real estate developers? How does a media event take on a life of its own? How will new software programs create an intelligent World Wide Web? In the coming years, the power of self-organization -- coupled with the connective technology of the Internet -- will usher in a revolution every bit as significant as the introduction of electricity. Provocative and engaging, Emergence puts you on the front lines of this exciting upheaval in science and thought.

The Japanese House: Architecture and Interiors


Alexandra Black - 2000
    The grace and elegance of the Japanese sensibility is reflected in both modern and traditional Japanese homes, from their fluid floor plans to their use of natural materials. In The Japanese House, renowned Japanese photographer Noboru Murata has captured this Eastern spirit with hundreds of vivid color photographs of 15 Japanese homes. As we step behind the lens with Murata, we're witness to the unique Japanese aesthetic, to the simple proportions modeled after the square of the tatami mat; to refined, rustic decor; to earthy materials like wood, paper, straw, ceramics, and textiles. This is a glorious house-tour readers can return to again and again, for ideas, inspiration, or simply admiration.

Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State


Samuel Stein - 2019
    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.

Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays


Adolf Loos - 1997
    Most deal with questions of design in a wide range of areas, from architecture and furniture, to clothes and jewellery, pottery, plumbing, and printing; others are polemics on craft education and training, and on design in general. Loos, the great cultural reformer and moralist in the history of European architecture and design was always a 'revolutionary against the revolutionaries'. With his assault on Viennese arts and crafts and his conflict with bourgeois morality, he managed to offend the whole country. His 1908 essay 'Ornament and Crime', mocked by an age in love with its accessories, has come to be recognised as a seminal work in combating the aesthetic imperialism of the turn of the century. Today Loos is recognised as one of the great masters of modern architecture.

Against Architecture


Franco La Cecla - 2008
    More than a diatribe against the trade, La Cecla makes a call to rethink urban space and take the cities back from “casino capitalism” that has left a string of failed urban projects, such as the Sagrera of Barcelona and the expansion of Columbia University in New York City. Recounting his travels across the globe, La Cecla provides insights to aid in resisting the planners and to find the spirit of a place. These commentaries on the works of past and present masters of urban and landscape will take an important place in continued public discourse for years to come.

European Architecture 1750-1890


Barry Bergdoll - 2000
    Never before had the functional requirements and expressive capacities of architecture been tested so thoroughly and with such diversity of invention. Bergdoll traces this experimentation in a broad range of contexts, focusing in particular on the relation of architectural design to new theories of history, new categories of scientific inquiry, and the broadening audience for architecture in this period of transformation. Unlike traditional surveys with long lists of buildings and architects, the themes are elucidated by in-depth coverage of key buildings which in turn are situated in both their local and European context.

Walkable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better Places


Jeff Speck - 2018
    The goals are often clear, but the path is seldom easy. Jeff Speck’s follow-up to his bestselling Walkable City is the resource that cities and citizens need to usher in an era of renewed street life. Walkable City Rules is a doer’s guide to making change in cities, and making it now.   The 101 rules are practical yet engaging—worded for arguments at the planning commission, illustrated for clarity, and packed with specifications as well as data. For ease of use, the rules are grouped into 19 chapters that cover everything from selling walkability, to getting the parking right, escaping automobilism, making comfortable spaces and interesting places, and doing it now!  Walkable City was written to inspire; Walkable City Rules was written to enable. It is the most comprehensive tool available for bringing the latest and most effective city-planning practices to bear in your community. The content and presentation make it a force multiplier for place-makers and change-makers everywhere.

Art Of Japanese Joinery


Kiyosi Seike - 1977
    Presenting 48 joints, selected from among the several hundred known and used today, this visually exciting book will please anyone who has ever been moved by the sheer beauty of wood. With the clear isometric projections complementing the 64 pages of stunning photographs, even the weekend carpenter can duplicate these bequests from the traditional Japanese carpenter, which can be applied to projects as large as the buildings for which most of them were originally devised or to projects as small as a sewing box.

Arguably: Selected Essays


Christopher Hitchens - 2011
    Topics range from ruminations on why Charles Dickens was among the best of writers and the worst of men to the haunting science fiction of J.G. Ballard; from the enduring legacies of Thomas Jefferson and George Orwell to the persistent agonies of anti-Semitism and jihad. Hitchens even looks at the recent financial crisis and argues for the enduring relevance of Karl Marx. The book forms a bridge between the two parallel enterprises of culture and politics. It reveals how politics justifies itself by culture, and how the latter prompts the former. In this fashion, Arguably burnishes Christopher Hitchens' credentials as (to quote Christopher Buckley) our "greatest living essayist in the English language."

Cabin Porn: Inspiration for Your Quiet Place Somewhere


Zach Klein - 2015
    As the collection grew, the site attracted a following, which is now a huge and obsessive audience.The site features photos of the most remarkable handmade homes in the backcountry of America and all over the world. It has had over 10 million unique visitors, with 350,000 followers on Tumblr. Now Zach Klein, the creator of the site (and a co-founder of Vimeo) goes further into the most alluring images from the site and new getaways, including more interior photography and how-to advice for setting up a quiet place somewhere. With their idyllic settings, unique architecture and cozy interiors, the Cabin Porn photographs, are an invitation to slow down, take a deep breath, and feel the beauty and serenity that nature and simple construction can create.

House Thinking: A Room-by-Room Look at How We Live


Winifred Gallagher - 2006
    In each room, Gallagher explores many of our deep but often unarticulated intuitions about the power of place. Drawing on the latest research in behavioral science, an overview of cultural history, and interviews with leading architects and designers, she shows us how our homes not only reflect who we are, but also influence our thoughts, feelings, and actions.Using a variety of examples -- from famous historical homes to experimental rustic pods -- Gallagher examines why traditional dining rooms and living rooms have given way to "great rooms," how the oversize suburban garage threatens civility, how kids' rooms can affect their development, and why Americans increasingly think of their homes as "sanctuaries" and "refuges."House Thinking's unique perspective raises provocative questions: How does your entryway prime you for experiencing your home? Do you really need a mega-kitchen, or just a microwave? What makes a bedroom a sensual oasis? How can your bathroom exacerbate your worst fears?It's simply not enough to think of our domestic spaces as design statements or as dumping grounds for our stuff. We need to approach our homes in a new way: as environments that actively affect us and our quality of life. Stressing the home's substance over its style, House Thinking is a surprising look at how we live -- and how we could.

The Endless City


Ricky Burdett - 2008
    It includes a wealth of material that has emerged from a sequence of six conferences held by influential figures in the field of urban development and its related disciplines, and examines the requisite tools for creating a thriving modern city. The book has been edited by Ricky Burdett and Deyan Sudjic in collaboration with one of the most important educational institutions in this field, the London School of Economics, which assures that the information and data provided is reliable, accurate and informed. Taking 6 key cities as its focal point: New York, Shanghai, London, Mexico City, Johannesburg and Berlin, The Endless City discusses in depth not only the infrastructure and architectural expansion necessary for continuous urban growth, but also the social and economic factors that are critical to urban development in the 21st century. Clearly organised into separate sections for each city, the book will have a strong visual impact and make detailed scholarly research straightforward and manageable. Images of each city will complement the discussions and enrich the discussion presented in the text.With contributions by experts in urban development, this book will appeal to architects, city planners, economists, students, politicians and anyone with an interest in the future of our cities.

Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud


Peter Watson - 2005
    Peter Watson's hugely ambitious and stimulating history of ideas from deep antiquity to the present day—from the invention of writing, mathematics, science, and philosophy to the rise of such concepts as the law, sacrifice, democracy, and the soul—offers an illuminated path to a greater understanding of our world and ourselves.

Bauhaus 1919-1933


Magdalena Droste - 1990
    Documents, workshop products from all areas of design, studies, sketches in the classroom, and architectural plans and models are all part of its comprehensive inventory. The Bauhaus Archiv is dedicated to the study and presentation of the history of the Bauhaus, including the new Bauhaus in Chicago and the Hochschule f