Architecture - Criticism

New development can be legal, financed, approved, and newly built-and still feel sterile, confusing, hostile, or disconnected from the people who use it.Why So Much New Development Feels Bad explains how that happens. Looking beyond simple arguments about whether a building is attractive or...

Thirty-six materials that do not yet exist, computed from first principles and induced into building types. For two centuries architecture has read its materials through two lenses - the honesty of construction and the image of culture - and both bracket the one thing...

The notion of territory has long exceeded its strictly geographic definition. In contemporary urban and cultural research, territory is increasingly understood as a layered construct-simultaneously material and symbolic, regulated and contested, lived and represented. The 2025 edition of Urban Creativity, whose overarching theme was...

Reexamining Japanese postwar art and architecture through the prism of two groups, foregrounding material politics and evolving notions of environment and systemsIn Concrete and Code, two protagonists from postwar Japan era enter into the same frame: The Gutai Art Association, who developed a form...

...Time takes its time... Just like in a musical score, each step counts, resulting in a beautiful melody, as seen in the cities, the imprint of each era.Author: Noemí Montserrat González LópezISBN-13: 9798275342512Publisher: Independently PublishedLanguage: EnglishPublished: 11/20/2025Pages: 78Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.35lbsSize: 9.00h x 6.00w x...

Traces the pursuit of equity in architecture and design education. Junior Architects traces the pursuit of equity in architecture and design education through historical analysis, critical theory, and comparative case studies from across contemporary American contexts. At a moment when architecture schools are grappling...

This volume of The Information Technology Revolution in Architecture is dedicated to the work of the Croatian architects Penezic + Rogina, one of the most dynamic and original architectural studios on the international scene. Deeply engaged with the field of Information Technology - not...

The Ultimate ArchitectureAnd the Uncertainty Facing the Architects of the FutureBy Fernando Freire ForgaWhat if the last masterpiece of architecture has already been built?In a time when artificial intelligence reshapes every discipline and disrupts all professions, The Ultimate Architecture dares to ask the most...

This book introduces international readers to an architect of remarkable influence-both in his own time and, astonishingly, in ours. Takis Zenetos, born in Greece in 1926 and who died by suicide in Athens in 1977, was a visionary figure whose legacy remains largely unrecognized....

Design Shifts, A Poetic Journey Through Post-Normal Times offers a unique exploration of architecture and design's evolving role in an era of unprecedented planetary change. Through fifty evocative illustrated poems written over a decade, poet-architect-futurist Phillip Daffara examines how the principles, processes, and purposes...

What Architecture Means introduces you to architecture and allows you to explore the connections between design ideas and values across time, space, and culture. It equips you to play an active and informed role in architecture either as a professional or as a consumer,...

A symbolic locus embodying myriad meanings, the political center of the eastern Mediterranean, and one of the old world's largest urban centers, Constantinople was the site of large-scale urban and architectural interventions. Changing visions--the changing political, cultural, and religious orientations of those who lived...

When we draw basic geometric forms -- lines, circles, points -- to describe the possible future shape of our buildings and our cities, do we consider what predetermined social interactions are embedded in those forms?Though simple, this question is often overlooked. As generative and...

Massive modern skyscrapers, obelisks, towers--all are structures that, thanks to their phallic shape, are often associated with sex. But other buildings are more subtly connected, as they provide the frameworks for our sexual lives and act as reminders of our sexual memories. This relationship...

Despite an uncertain economy, the market for green building is exploding. The US green building market has expanded dramatically since 2008 and is projected to double in size by 2015 (from $42 billion in construction starts to $135 billion). But green-building pioneer Sim Van...

In 1981 Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Alison Lurie published The Language of Clothes, a meditation on costume and fashion as an expression of history, social status and individual psychology. Amusing, enlightening and full of literary allusion, the book was highly praised and widely anthologized. Now...

Poems and essays by the late revolutionary geographer. Leijia Hanrahan (1987-2022) was a revolutionary, geographer, essayist and poet. This collection of poems and essays, a sequence of places lived and traversed, of avenues and cartographies, traces the human geography of lives enabled, contorted, limited...

For 25 years, the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia--a center for education, research, and innovation based in Barcelona--has explored the potential of architecture to anticipate and prototype futures. This book brings together research and projects that articulate the relationships between technology, ecology, and...

Reassessing Morphosis' first built project--a modernist vision of housing that both collaborated and clashed with the complexities of Mexico's northern borderThe first in a new Arquine series titled Transborder Living, Villa Floresta revisits the history of a group of five houses designed in Tijuana...

Proposing an ethical, relational approach to form in architecture through case studies of community-led housingIn this long-form essay, author and professor Ioana Petkova rethinks architectural form through the lens of the commons, considering how architecture can act as a material framework for participatory citizenship...

As architects devise ever more radical gestures with which to wow an increasingly architecture-literate public, the discipline itself has had to engage conceptions of "popular culture." This volume traces the discussions of a group of students, teachers and invited guests from the fields of...

In the 1920s, London was a city on the cusp of change. Just as dance halls and jazz-age decadence displaced wartime austerity, a new generation of artists and designers sought to enliven the city's architecture, erecting dazzling buildings in the emerging art deco style....

Owning a home is the pinnacle of the American Dream, the ultimate status symbol of the middle class. But is the dream in crisis? As the suburban single-family home has been endlessly multiplied and mass-marketed, it has become entwined with environmental catastrophe and economic...

A collection of evocative black-and-white pictures of ruined buildings in France. These ruins include churches, town houses, industrial buildings, former civic structures and castles. The text explores their history, the factors behind their ruined state and the relationship between humans and ruins.Author: Simon O'CorraISBN-10:...

Architecture and Fire develops a conceptual reassessment of architectural conservation through the study of the intimate relationship between architecture and fire. Author: Stamatis ZografosISBN-10: 1787353710ISBN-13: 9781787353718Publisher: UCL PressLanguage: EnglishPublished: 06/12/2019Pages: 208Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.90lbsSize: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.70d

The field of architecture has gradually evolved from being a mere profession to becoming a representation of the society in which we live. Architects form the voice of this profession, and an in-depth discussion with them allows a greater understanding of their theories, visions...

Buddhism, often described as an austere religion that condemns desire, promotes denial, and idealizes the contemplative life, actually has a thriving leisure culture in Asia. Creative religious improvisations designed by Buddhists have been produced both within and outside of monasteries across the region--in Nepal,...

How does architecture make its appearance in civil society? Constitutional Modernism pursues this challenging question by exploring architecture, planning, and law as cultural forces. Analyzing the complex entanglements between these disciplines in the Cuban Republic, Timothy Hyde reveals how architects joined with other professionals...

Architecture is at a crossroads - to survive as a vehicle of contemporary human culture it must extend beyond conventional aesthetic and technological reductions but this requires determining how to affirm its relevancy within a globalized and technological culture. In a world where the...

Author: Reinier De GraafISBN-10: 1804299049ISBN-13: 9781804299043Publisher: VersoLanguage: EnglishPublished: 02/16/2027Pages: 272Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.81lbs

A collection of essays published from the 1970s to the present on architectural theory and architectural history.Author: Stuart CohenISBN-10: 1966515693ISBN-13: 9781966515692Publisher: Oro EditionsLanguage: EnglishPublished: 10/01/2026Pages: 240Format: Paperback

Design Book Review, published between 1983 and 2001, was a wide-ranging journal of architectural ideas founded and edited in offices in Berkeley, California. Taking the book review as its primary format, the journal connected its community of readers with emerging ideas in architecture, design,...

Architectural history has over the past half-century been delineated in fine detail. Today it is challenging to find a creative spirit involved with the design fields who has not been examined in depth; nearly every building of historical importance has been chronicled; timelines have...

The first ever issue of the interdisciplinary, urban landscape-focused magazineThe Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies, ETH Zürich, has launched an interdisciplinary, annual publication, DELUS. This pilot issue focuses on the complex relations among humans, nonhumans and their environment across space and time, enlisting...

From street-markets and pop-up shops to art installations and Olympic parks, the temporary use of urban space is a growing international trend in architecture and urban design. Partly a response to economic and ecological crisis, it also claims to offer a critique of the...

This document presents a proposal for professional services related to the reconstruction of Pier 3 at the Charlestown Navy Yard. Prepared by Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Quade & Douglas, this proposal outlines a comprehensive approach to the engineering and design challenges involved in restoring and revitalizing...

Building Modern Turkey offers a critical account of how the built environment mediated Turkey's transition from a pluralistic (multiethnic and multireligious) empire into a modern, homogenized nation-state following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. Zeynep Kezer argues...

One hundred years ago, architects found in the medium of photography--so good at representing a building's lines and planes--a necessary way to promote their practices. It soon became apparent, however, that photography did more than reproduce what it depicted. It altered both subject and...

Author: Miquel Adrià,Andrea GriborioISBN-10: 6079489104ISBN-13: 9786079489106Publisher: ArquineLanguage: EnglishPublished: 11/21/2017Pages: 320Format: HardcoverWeight: 2.55lbsSize: 11.80h x 8.60w x 1.40d

A foundation for the qualitative assessment of architecture.The essays collected in this unique anthology cover a spectrum of issues that determine the quality of architecture. For example, what exactly is architectural quality? Is it based on physical facts? Is it a matter of cultural...

For fifty years, Ada Louise Huxtable (1921-2013) was the preeminent writer on architecture in America and a passionate voice in defense of civic beauty and the public good. The nation's first full-time architecture critic, she won a MacArthur "genius" grant and the first Pulitzer...

Frank opinions, inspiring insights, and hard-earned advice from the world's most celebrated architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Zaha Hadid, Le Corbusier, and Shigeru Ban Architects see the built world not only for what it is, but for what it could be. This jam-packed tome...

Culturally diverse, community-led approaches to circular resource stewardship around the worldBuilding on the first edition of Circular Communities (2022), urban designer Els Leclercq and architect Mo Smit expand on their Circular Value Flower, a value-based model designed to initiate and guide circular and regenerative...

Social justice and climate activism combine in this brief history of Paris' Institut de l'EnvironnementFounded in the heated atmosphere generated by worldwide protests and a growing awareness of climate change, Paris' Institut de l'Environnement (1969-71) sought to redefine architecture and design pedagogy. The focus...

Inquiries into alternative learning environments in the fields of art, architecture and designThe third issue of the Bauhaus Journal examines the effect of pedagogical reform attempts on historical learning communities and architectural projects, through case studies such as Sim Van der Ryn and the...

A home is dismantled to make another home habitable. This is where Homeplaces begins. Spanning continents, this landmark volume brings together leading anthropologists to chart "house-ing," the unrelenting, reciprocal process of people making houses and houses making people amid ongoing calamity. Their oikographies--vivid, writerly...

From Limerick to Delft: applying a literary lens to the study of urban culture and planning in European citiesThis special issue of Writingplace brings together the work of the EU COST Writing Urban Places network. Using narrative approaches to analysis and design, the network...

Standing on the banks of the Black River, Mansfield Plantation is a living testament to antebellum rice plantations. In 1718, it started as a five-hundred-acre land grant near the upstart village of Georgetown. The main house was built around 1800, and the plantation soon...

Set against the background of a 'general crisis' that is environmental, political and social, this book examines a series of specific intersections between architecture and feminisms, understood in the plural. The collected essays and projects that make up the book follow transversal trajectories that...

The Great Festival presents and analyzes two historical festivals - the ancient Dionysus Festival and the present Roskilde Festival. The purpose is to set up two comparable structures or 'codes' to explain the universal artistic effects, structures and fascination of the festival.Olav Harsl f...