Architecture - Criticism

The objects of architecture are not simply inert assemblies of material--they are complex entities that unfold their potential agencies (whether political, social, or environmental) in equally complex ways. Exploring these forms of architectural agency has in recent years been a central aspect of the...

Abstract is the yearly publication of work and research from the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). Produced through the Office of the Dean Amale Andraos, the archive of student work contains documentation of exceptional projects, selected by faculty at...

"Empire shops" were first developed in London in the 1920s to teach the British to consume foodstuffs from the colonies and overseas territories. Although none of the stores ever opened, they were intended to make previously unfamiliar produce and products--sultanas from Australia, oranges from...

Expanding Architecture presents a new generation of creative design carried out in the service of the greater public and the greater good. Questioning how design can improve daily lives, editors Bryan Bell and Katie Wakeford map an emerging geography of architectural activism--or "public-interest architecture"--that...

"This book is not for you. It is not for architectural academic elites. It is not for those who have gentrified our neighborhoods, overly intellectualized the profession, and ignored all contemporary Black theory within the discipline. You have made architecture a symbol of exclusion,...

Part aphorism and part manifesto, this book by Canadian architect Reza Aliabadi (RZLBD) references his ideas and thoughts about space. He suggests 'the empty room' as the very essence of architecture, and 'the spatial experience' as its highest mandate. Reza revisits architecture - not...

Architectural Type and Character provides an alternative perspective to the current role given to history in architecture, reunifying architectural history and architectural design to reform architectural discourse and practice. Historians provide important material for appreciating buildings and guiding those who produce them. In current...

This Is Not A Wall is conceived as an epic of one architectural entity's lifespan, depicted through a unique collection of illustrated short stories. The entity in question is the temporary pavilion Party Wall, designed by CODA as the winning entry of the 2013...

Walter Benjamin is universally recognised as one of the key thinkers of modernity: his writings on politics, language, literature, media, theology and law have had an incalculable influence on contemporary thought. Yet the problem of architecture in and for Benjamin's work remains relatively underexamined....

Representation considers the cultural value, processes, and semiotics of architectural images. Beyond typical plans, sections, diagrams, and models, architectural representation carries historical and political weight. In the digital age, architectural representation has proliferated. Representation disrupts this exhaustive pace with thoughtful and rigorous investigations of...

Authorship critically examines emergent themes in contemporary architecture by revisiting the seemingly defunct notion of design authorship. As we revel in the death of the master architect, how do we come to terms with the shifting role of creativity in architecture's cultural production? In...

Food and Architecture is the first book to explore the relationship between these two fields of study and practice. Bringing together leading voices from both food studies and architecture, it provides a ground-breaking, cross-disciplinary analysis of two disciplines which both rely on a combination...

True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture was first published in 1841, when Pugin was 29 years old. Here he presents coherent arguments for the revival of the Gothic style, the case for which he had made pictorally in his sensational book Contrasts (1836)....

This collection explores built environments and visual narratives in Asia via cartography, icons and symbols in different historical settings. It grows out of a three-year project focusing on cultural exchange in the making of Asia's boundaries as well as its architectural styles and achievements....

Architecture and urbanism have contributed to one of the most sweeping transformations of our times. Over the past four decades, neoliberalism has been not only a dominant paradigm in politics but a process of bricks and mortar in everyday life. Rather than to ask...

Transporting readers from derelict homesteads to imperiled harbors, postindustrial ruins to Cold War test sites, Curated Decay presents an unparalleled provocation to conventional thinking on the conservation of cultural heritage. Caitlin DeSilvey proposes rethinking the care of certain vulnerable sites in terms of ecology...

Offering the first comprehensive training in the visual arts grounded in abstraction, the Bauhaus was the site of a dazzling range of influential experiments in painting, architecture, photography, industrial design, and even artistic education itself. Three-quarters of a century later, the "look" of the...

Countering the widespread misconception that slavery existed only on plantations, and that urban areas were immune from its impacts, Slavery in the City is the first volume to deal exclusively with the impact of North American slavery on urban design and city life during...

At the forefront of national and international change, Pittsburgh has long been portrayed as a place for innovative architecture. From its origins as a fort built in 1753 at the urging of a twenty-one-year-old George Washington, through its industrial boom, and into contemporary times,...

The successful realization of diversity, resilience, usefulness, profitability, or beauty in landscape design requires a firm understanding of the stakeholders' values. This collection, which incorporates a wide variety of geographic locations and cultural perspectives, reinforces the necessity for clear and articulate comprehension of the...

"A lucid, well-organized survey of the almost infinite variety of production spaces of western theatre.... Carlson's survey must be admired for its wealth of carefully researched and elegantly articulated information concerning the relation of urban planning, architecture, and interior and exterior theatre embellishment to...

In Structural Inequality Victoria Kaplan relates the stories of twenty black architects from around the United States to examine the sociological context of architectural practice. Through these experiences, research, and observation, she explores the role systemic racism plays in an occupation commonly referred to...

From 19th century trading post to one of the world's great financial, business, and entertainment districts, experience the growth and changes of the Windy City.Chicago's famed Loop is said to have gotten its name from the route of a cable car that looped the...

With the collapse of Modernism in the 1960s, architecture has fragmented and evolved in many different directions, each driven by its own ideologies and theories. This book sets out a clear and comprehensive guide to the prominent styles and movements, tracing the work of...

A landmark account of architectural theory and practice from acclaimed philosopher Roger Scruton Architecture is distinguished from other art forms by its sense of function, its localized quality, its technique, its public and nonpersonal character, and its continuity with the decorative arts. In this...

Harry Mallgrave's comprehensive survey of architectural theory, primarily in Europe and the United States, contextualizes architectural discourse within its social and political atmosphere over three centuries of development. He explores the philosophical and conceptual evolution of its ideas, the relation of theory to the...

Do survival instincts have anything to do with our architectural choices--our liking for a certain room, a special stairway, a plaza in a particular city? In this engaging study Grant Hildebrand discusses ways in which architectural forms emulate some archetypal settings that humans have...

Architecture matters. It matters to cities, the planet, and human lives. How architects design and what they build has an impact that usually lasts for generations. The more we understand architecture--the deeper we probe the decisions and designs that go into making a building--the...

Examines structural aspects of high rise buildings, particularly fundamental approaches to the analysis of the behaviour of different forms of building structures including frame, shear wall, tubular, core and outrigger-braced systems.Author: Bryan Stafford Smith, Alex CoullISBN-10: 0471512370ISBN-13: 9780471512370Publisher: Wiley-InterscienceLanguage: EnglishPublished: 09/03/1991Pages: 552Format: HardcoverWeight: 2.11lbsSize:...

Architecture and Armed Conflict is the first multi-authored scholarly book to address this theme from a comparative, interdisciplinary perspective. By bringing together specialists from a range of relevant fields, and with knowledge of case studies across time and space, it provides the first synthetic...

Each volume includes all the necessary materials for the comprehensive study of a work of art: An illustration section showing the complete work of art, details, preliminary studies, and iconographic sources; An introductory essay by the editor; Documents and literary sources; Critical essays from...

In this profoundly original book, Jennifer Bloomer addresses important philosophical questions concerning the relation between writing and architecture. Drawing together two cultural fantasies from different periods-one literary and one architectural-Bloomer uses the allegorical strategies she finds in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake to analyze three...

On Adam's House in Paradise "takes off backward through history hunting for Adam's house, the original image. En route, with wry wit and charm, Rykwert singes every generation of architectural theoreticians back to Vitruvius, but he manages to illuminate their efforts and their immolations."--Charles...

Entertaining, concise, and relentlessly probing, City of Bits is a comprehensive introduction to a new type of city, an increasingly important system of virtual spaces interconnected by the information superhighway. William Mitchell makes extensive use of practical examples and illustrations in a technically well-grounded...

Essays, interviews, and projects that consider the notion of medium and the possibilities for its productive use (and misuse) by architects.Since the arrival of radio and television in the twentieth century, understandings of space have become visibly intertwined with what is commonly referred to...

How architecture can move beyond the contemporary enthusiasms for the technically sustainable and the formally dazzling to enhance our human values and capacities.Architecture remains in crisis, its social relevance lost between the two poles of formal innovation and technical sustainability. In Attunement, Alberto P...

An investigation of different uses for the architectural model through history--as sign, souvenir, funerary object, didactic tool, medium for design, and architect's muse.For more than five hundred years, architects have employed three-dimensional models as tools to test, refine, and illustrate their ideas. But, as...

Reyner Banham was a pioneer in arguing that technology, human needs, and environmental concerns must be considered an integral part of architecture. No historian before him had so systematically explored the impact of environmental engineering on the design of buildings and on the minds...

"A winning book, a pleasure to read...a revelation about what architects actually do and how they go about doing it." -Los Angeles Times Witold Rybezynski takes us on an extraordinary odyssey as he tells the story of designing and building of his own house....

Differences brings together ten essays written over the past decade by the distinguished Spanish architect and theorist Ignasi de Solà-Morales. Differences brings together ten essays written over the past decade by the distinguished Spanish architect and theorist Ignasi de Sola-Morales. Many of the essays...

In the middle of the electromagnetic spectrum between the binary extremes of black and white it's not gray, as you might expect, but green. And within green's bandwidth there are more tonal variations than any other color can make. Maybe this is why--envy, naivete,...

In recent decades, the development of advanced weaponry systems and the instant flow of information have redefined the notion of urban warfare as a local phenomenon with global effects in an increasingly interconnected world. The annihilation of Aleppo and the broadcasted demolitions of Palmyra...

2023 Finalist, PROSE Award in Architecture and Urban Planning A guide to water-focused and climate-resilient architectural and urban design. Le Corbusier famously said, "A house is a machine for living in." We now confront the litany of environmental challenges associated with the legacy of...

This extensive text investigates how architects, planners, and other related experts responded to the contexts and discourses of "development" after World War II. Development theory did not manifest itself in tracts of economic and political theory alone. It manifested itself in every sphere of...

Istanbul's Hagia Sophia ('Holy Wisdom'), or Ayasofya, is one of the world's most visited buildings. Yet, few visitors have any idea of its long and complex story, or why it has always been a place where history, religion and politics collide. In July 2020,...

A stunning photographic compilation of Egypt's abandoned palaces and grand buildings Between 1860 and 1940, Cairo and other large cities in Egypt witnessed a major construction boom that gave birth to extraordinary palaces and lavish buildings. These incorporated a mix of architectural styles, such...

NESS is a printed publication about architecture, life, and urban culture. We are in continuous dialogue with provocative designers and thinkers to expand and diversify our conversations and to be open to new visions and ideas. It is divided into Browser, The Dossier, and...

Archimontage Design Fields Sophisticated: is a small atelier located in Nonthaburi, Bangkok. Founded in 2007 by Cherngchai Riawruangsangkul, it specializes in architectural design, interior design, and related fields for small and medium-sized residences in metropolitan areas.The practice is driven by discovering design alternatives and...

This book explores the notion of mapping in architectural discourse. First locating, positioning and theorizing mapping, it then makes explicit the relationship between research and design in architecture through cartography and spatial analysis. It proposes three distinct modalities: tool, operation and concept, showing how...

Over the last twenty years, Jeff Malpas' research has involved his engagement with architects and other academics around the issues of place, architecture and landscape and particularly the way these practitioners have used the work of Martin Heidegger. In Rethinking Dwelling, Malpas' primary focus...