What Your Contractor Can't Tell You: The Essential Guide to Building and Renovating


Amy Johnston - 2008
    Chapters give detailed coverage of critical topics: design options, selecting and supervising the architect and contractor, cost estimates, budgets, plan specifications, contracts, dealing with town officials and keeping track of everything along the way. For each stage of the project there is detailed information on common pitfalls and how to avoid them, as well as insiders' tips which reveal what most contractors can't tell you. This book was previously published by Warner Books (2004) and titled What the "Experts" May Not Tell You About Building or Renovating Your Home.

Language of Post-Modern Architecture 6


Charles Jencks - 1977
    The buildings of Robert Venturi and Michael Graves, among others, are featured.

Constructing Architecture: Materials, Processes, Structures: A Handbook


Andrea Deplazes - 2004
    Since the first edition was published in 2005, it has been adopted as a textbook at many universities. Organized into chapters on "Raw Materials/Building Materials (Modules)," "Building Components (Elements)," "Building Methods (Structures)," and "Buildings (Examples)," the book now includes a new section on translucent materials and an article on the use of glass. The chapter on "Building Elements" now includes a discussion of facades, and the chapter on "Structures" has been expanded to cover "Principles of Space Creation." The examples section now includes extensive documentation of current projects whose systematic character is oriented around the production process.Experience with the preceding edition has shown that the book has become an indispensable handbook for reference and reading not only for students and teachers but also for architects.

Just My Type: A Book about Fonts


Simon Garfield - 2010
    Whether you’re enraged by Ikea’s Verdanagate, want to know what the Beach Boys have in common with easy Jet or why it’s okay to like Comic Sans, Just My Type will have the answer. Learn why using upper case got a New Zealand health worker sacked. Refer to Prince in the Tafkap years as a Dingbat (that works on many levels). Spot where movies get their time periods wrong and don’t be duped by fake posters on eBay. Simon Garfield meets the people behind the typefaces and along the way learns why some fonts – like men – are from Mars and some are from Venus. From type on the high street and album covers, to the print in our homes and offices, Garfield is the font of all types of knowledge.

Back Sense: A Revolutionary Approach to Halting the Cycle of Chronic Back Pain


Ronald D. Siegel - 2001
    Until recently both doctors and patients have misunderstood its true causes and have unwittingly fostered the pain cycle. Back Sense is the groundbreaking book that promises to change the way we approach the problem by proving that almost all chronic back pain is caused by stress and muscle tension, rather than by damage to the spine.On occasion nearly everyone experiences short term back pain--from sore or strained muscles. But for many who come to treat their back gingerly because they fear further "injury," a cycle of worry and inactivity results, which actually increases muscle tightness and leads them to think of themselves as having a "bad back." In reality, most backs are strong and resilient--built to support our bodies for a lifetime. Contrary to popular belief, truly "bad backs" are extremely rare. While seemingly abnormal disks and other parts of the back are, in fact, often present in those who suffer chronic back pain, they are also frequently found in those who have absolutely no pain whatsoever. Back Sense uses the latest scientific research to discredit the perfectly understandable, but counterproductive assumption that back pain is caused by these "abnormalities." Drawing on their work with patients and studies from major scientific journals and corporations such as Boeing, the authors have amassed conclusive evidence proving that stress and inactivity are actually to blame. Since conventional treatments of back problems encourage excessive caution, most sufferers get trapped in a vicious cycle in which concern about pain and physical limitations leads to heightened tension, more pain, and further distress. The authors of Back Sense--all three are former chronic back pain sufferers themselves--have developed a revolutionary self-treatment approach that works. It allows patients to avoid the restrictions and expense of most other treatments. After showing readers how to rule out the possibility that a rare medical condition is the source of their problem, Back Sense clearly and convincingly explains how chronic back pain results from other factors. Building on this idea, the book systematically leads readers toward recapturing a life free of back pain.From the Hardcover edition.

The Walls Around Us: The Thinking Person's Guide to How a House Works


David Owen - 1991
    Anyone who's ever quailed at the thought of buying a two-by-four or suspected that his (or her) dwelling is breaking down out of spite will be charmed, educated and entertained by this delightful history and how-to of the house.

Call of the White: Taking the World to the South Pole


Felicity Aston - 2011
    The team would not be experienced explorers but "ordinary" women who want to inspire others to follow their dreams. She received more than 800 applications and led a team from places as diverse as Jamaica, India, Singapore, and Cyprus—some of whom had never even seen snow or spent the night in a tent before joining the expedition—on one of the toughest journeys on the planet. Eighty-mile-an-hour winds ripped through base camp, frostbite and injuries were an everyday occurrence, and deadly crevasses cracked beneath their feet. This is their story of newfound strength, persistence, and friendships.

Charles Faudree's Country French Living


Charles Faudree - 2003
    Charles Faudree's Country French Living features his newest room designs. From the entryway to the dressing room to walls, dining rooms, and outdoor spaces, Charles teaches principles of design that make a house a Country French home:The importance of the bedroom and how to make it a soothing sanctuary, deserving as much attention to beauty and detail as the rest of the home.How to identify a pivotal fabric, a dominant color, or one magnificent antique that will dictate the style and design for a whole room.How books can create an inviting atmosphere and add a warmth all their own.How a valance is the ultimate decorating deceit, and how window treatments express the personality of a room and add a proper finish.How to use walls as they are meant--as a stage on which to display one's favorite collections.How to use symmetrical groupings that provide a sense if balance and order in a roomCharles Faudree's Country French Living also shows how to make the most of accessories like lamps, pillows, baskets, paintings, and more to finish a room and provide the charm and character so important in a well-designed French Country setting. Country French Living reveals that the true test of a beautiful room is in the details.Charles Faudree's clients are found throughout America as well as in Spain and Jamaica. Five individual homes designed by Charles, including his own, have been featured on HGTV. During his twenty-five-year career as an interior designer, his work has appeared in many design magazines and decorating books. Six of his own homes have been featured in Traditional Home magazine, where he was a Design Award Winner in 1995. He has also been featured in Better Homes & Gardens Special Interest Publications, Renovation Style, Veranda, Southern Accents, and House Beautiful. In 2002 he was named one of America's top 100 interior designers.

Bauhaus


Jeannine Fiedler - 2000
    As a school that strove to combine applied art with both the fine arts and technology, the Bauhaus movement has outlasted all other trends in architecture and design. This volume provides insight into the historical, cultural, philosophical, political and pedagogical background of the 1930s, when the Bauhaus was founded. It also portrays the famous Bauhaus directors and teachers and describes their signature pedagogical methods. Finally, the authors take readers inside Individual workshops, where they can discover for themselves the unique wealth of forms and ideas that remain the hallmark of Bauhaus products. Through its contributions to current discourse on the Bauhaus as a "fixed star of the avant-garde," its wealth of pictorial material (some of which has never before been published), as well as the rich variety of topics it addresses, this book offers a comprehensive look at one of the most significant institutions in the history of modern art and culture.

The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History


Kassia St. Clair - 2018
    Design journalist Kassia St. Clair guides us through the technological advancements and cultural customs that would redefine human civilization—from the fabric that allowed mankind to achieve extraordinary things (traverse the oceans and shatter athletic records) and survive in unlikely places (outer space and the South Pole). She peoples her story with a motley cast of characters, including Xiling, the ancient Chinese empress credited with inventing silk, to Richard the Lionhearted and Bing Crosby. Offering insights into the economic and social dimensions of clothmaking—and countering the enduring, often demeaning, association of textiles as “merely women’s work”—The Golden Thread offers an alternative guide to our past, present, and future.

Theory and Design in the First Machine Age


Reyner Banham - 1980
    It has influenced a generation of students and critics interested in the formation of attitudes, themes, and forms which were characteristic of artists and architects working primarily in Europe between 1900 and 1930 under the compulsion of new technological developments in the first machine age.

Rural Studio: Samuel Mockbee and an Architecture of Decency


Andrea Oppenheimer Dean - 2002
    Using salvaged lumber and bricks, discarded tires, hay and waste cardboard bales, concrete rubble, colored bottles, and old license plates, they create inexpensive buildings that bear the trademark of Mockbee's work, which he describes as "contemporary modernism grounded in Southern culture."In a time of unexampled prosperity, when architectural attention focuses on big, glossy urban projects, the Rural Studio provides an alternative of substance. In addition to being a social welfare venture, the Rural Studio--"Taliesin South" as Mockbee calls it--is also an educational experiment and a prod to the architectural profession to act on its best instincts. In giving students hands-on experience in designing and building something real, it extends their education beyond paper architecture. And in scavenging and reusing a variety of unusual materials, it is a model of sustainable architecture. The work of Rural Studio has struck such a chord-both architecturally and socially--that it has been featured on Oprah, Nightline, and CBS News, as well as in Time and People magazines.The Studio has completed more than a dozen projects, including the Bryant "Hay Bale" House, Harris "Butterfly" House, Yancey Chapel, Akron Chapel, Children's Center, H.E.R.O. Playground, Lewis House, Super Sheds and Pods, Spencer House addition, Farmer's Market, Mason's Bend Community Center, Goat House, and Shannon-Dutley House. These buildings, along with the incredible story of the Rural Studio, the people who live there, and Mockbee and his student architects, are detailed in this colorful book, the first on the subject."I tell my students, it's got to be warm, dry, and noble"--Samuel Mockbee

Electronics Fundamentals: Circuits, Devices and Applications (Floyd Electronics Fundamentals Series)


Thomas L. Floyd - 1983
    Written in a clear and accessible narrative, the 7th Edition focuses on fundamental principles and their applications to solving real circuit analysis problems, and devotes six chapters to examining electronic devices. With an eye-catching visual program and practical exercises, this book provides readers with the problem-solving experience they need in a style that makes complex material thoroughly understandable. For professionals with a career in electronics, engineering, technical sales, field service, industrial manufacturing, service shop repair, and/or technical writing.