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Did Someone Say Participate?: An Atlas of Spatial Practice
by (The MIT Press)
Did someone say we need yet another anthology of essays? According to the editors of Did Someone Say Participate?, the answer is an emphatic—or hysterical—"YES!" In fact, they'd go further and argue that the shifts that have taken place in the practice and pedagogy of architecture have been mirrored in other fields, and that this has happened to such an extent that an emerging generation of artists, activists, economists, curators, policy makers, photographers, editors (and, of course, architects) is reshaping … (continue reading)Get this book$ 2052 -
Thinking Architecture
by Peter Zumthor (Birkhäuser Architecture)
In order to design a building with a sensuous connection to life, one must think in a way that goes far beyond form and construction. In these essays Peter Zumthor expresses his motivation in designing buildings, which speak to our emotions and understanding in so many ways, and possess a powerful and unmistakable presence and personality. This book, whose first edition has been out of print for years, has been expanded to include three new essays: "Does Beauty Have a … (continue reading) -
Learning from Las Vegas - Revised Edition: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form
by Robert Venturi (The MIT Press)
"Their insight and analysis, reasoned back through the history of style and symbolism and forward to the recognition of a new kind of building that responds directly to speed, mobility, the superhighway and changing life styles, is the kind of art history and theory that is rarely produced. The rapid evolution of modern architecture from Le Corbusier to Brazil to Miami to the roadside motel in a brief 40-year span, with all the behavioral esthetics involved, is something neither architect … (continue reading) -
The Fall of Public Man
by Richard Sennett (W. W. Norton & Company)
"Sennett presses social theory and historical experience to his service in developing a provocative thesis: that the public world stage has been usurped by the private psychic scene to the detriment of both individual and society."—Carl Schorske, Princeton University. "Stimulating and challenging."—Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times.
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Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media
by Beatriz Colomina (The MIT Press)
"An absorbing and quiet book. Absorbing in that it does not follow a single line of thought to its logical conclusion, but instead presents a series of meditations on diverse yet richly interconnected materials. And quiet in that the position of neither Le Corbusier nor Loos is ever actively argued against. They are, rather, studies in their respective habitats, and what we in turn observe is the construction of the look that sees them." - Michael Archer, Art Monthly. Through … (continue reading) -
A Critic Writes: Selected Essays by Reyner Banham
by Reyner Banham (University of California Press)
Few twentieth-century writers on architecture and design have enjoyed the renown of Reyner Banham. Born and trained in England and a U.S. resident starting in 1976, Banham wrote incisively about American and European buildings and culture. Now readers can enjoy a chronological cross-section of essays, polemics, and reviews drawn from more than three decades of Banham's writings. The volume, which includes discussions of Italian Futurism, Adolf Loos, Paul Scheerbart, and the Bauhaus as well as explorations of contemporary architecture by … (continue reading) -
Vitruvius: Ten Books on Architecture
by Vitruvius (Cambridge University Press)
For the first time in more than half a century, Vitruvius' Ten Books on Architecture is being published in English. The only full treatise on architecture and its related arts to survive from classical antiquity, the Architecture libri decem (Ten Books on Architecture) is the single most important work of architectural history in the Western world, having shaped architecture and the image of the architect from the Renaissance to the present. Demonstrating the range of Vitruvius' style, this new edition … (continue reading) -
The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War
by Robert Bevan (Reaktion Books)
A decimated Shiite shrine in Iraq. The smoking World Trade Center site. The scorched cityscape of 1945 Dresden. Among the most indelible scars left by war is the destroyed landscapes, and such architectural devastation damages far more than mere buildings. Robert Bevan argues here that shattered buildings are not merely “collateral damage,” but rather calculated acts of cultural annihilation. From Hitler’s Kristallnacht to the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in the Iraq War, Bevan deftly sifts through military campaigns and … (continue reading) -
Planet of Slums
by Mike Davis (Verso)
A celebrated urban historian’s bestselling account of the global explosion of slums. According to the united nations, more than one billion people now live in the slums of the cities of the South. In this brilliant and ambitious book, Mike Davis explores the future of a radically unequal and explosively unstable urban world. From the sprawling barricadas of Lima to the garbage hills of Manila, urbanization has been disconnected from industrialization, and even from economic growth. Davis portrays a vast … (continue reading)
