Blier illuminates the extraordinary architecture of the Batammaliba people of Western Africa, revealing these buildings as texts through which we can read the beliefs, psychology, traditions, and social concerns of their inhabitants. In doing so, she explores the role of vernacular architecture as an expression of culture. "A splendid analysis of the centrality of architecture in the daily lives of the Batammaliba and its integral role in articulating social values....The story is beautifully told in the best of anthropological traditions."—Judith R. Blau, Contemporary Society "A remarkable study....Blier's volume carries the study of African architecture to a qualitatively new level of scholarship. It introduces a new dimension whereby the architectural medium can be used to illuminate much of the entire belief system of any culture."—Labelle Prussin, African Arts "In this excellent book Blier provides a richly detailed and searching account of what architecture means to the Batammaliba of northern Togo and Benin....The finest account I have yet read of the relations between systems of beliefs, ritual practices, and African aesthetics and plastic arts....The ethnography and basic insight should be the envy of any social anthropologist."—T.O. Beidelman, Man
Examines the great architectural styles, the background to their evolutions, and the means by which the buildings within them were achieved. The many superb pieces of specially commissioned cut-away artwork, researched with the aid of computer techniques, provide an intriguing and informative study of the world's greatest structures from the Great Pyramid of Cheops to examples of modern architectural styles, and, together with the clear and informative text, make this a fascinating book for both expert and layman.--From publisher description.
This ultimate renovation guide identifies hundreds of parts of a house to help home owners understand the elements of construction, decorative detail and convey ideas to suppliers, contractors, or designers. B & W illustrations throughout.
Taking inspiration from Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists and Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence, this book elucidates the theory and practice of a selected group of key Japanese architects by situating them within a wider cultural context of art, technology, literature, and politics. Illustrated with rarely seen images and interspersed with previously untranslated texts, the book uses biographical profiles and comparative analyses to trace the evolution of spatial, aesthetic, and behavioral concepts in Japanese architecture over the postwar decades. In particular, the political activism of architects in the 1960s and the social criticism of architects in the 1970s provide a vital source of inspiration for the protean creativity of the Japanese architectural world today.
This book aims to understand human cognition and psychology through a comprehensive computational theory of the human mind, namely, a computational "cognitive architecture" (or more specifically, the Clarion cognitive architecture). The goal of this work is to develop a unified framework for understanding the human mind, and within the unified framework, to develop process-based, mechanistic explanations of a large variety of psychological phenomena. Specifically, the book first describes the essential Clarion framework and its cognitive-psychological justifications, then its computational instantiations, and finally its applications to capturing, simulating, and explaining various psychological phenomena and empirical data. The book shows how the models and simulations shed light on psychological mechanisms and processes through the lens of a unified framework. In fields ranging from cognitive science, to psychology, to artificial intelligence, and even to philosophy, researchers, graduate and undergraduate students, and practitioners of various kinds may have interest in topics covered by this book. The book may also be suitable for seminars or courses, at graduate or undergraduate levels, on cognitive architectures or cognitive modeling (i.e. computational psychology).
The Royal College of Physicians celebrates its 500th anniversary in 2018, and to observe this landmark is publishing this series of ten books. Each of the books focuses on fifty themed elements that have contributed to making the RCP what it is today, together adding up to 500 reflections on 500 years. Some of the people, ideas, objects and manuscripts featured are directly connected to the College, while others have had an influence that can still be felt in its work. Written exactly fifty years after the opening of the building in 1964, this first book in the series, Anatomy of a Building, is a meditation on the architecture of the college, focusing particularly on its current home, a Grade 1 listed building, designed by Denys Lasdun.
Sabkhas (salt flats) are natural phenomena—a unique result of converging climates, winds, and river flow—with the potential to rehabilitate the natural global order. The ancient term sabkha originates in the Arab world. Today, it has become well-established in the global lexicon of geological and ecological discussions around sustainability: These overlooked ecological networks of wetland plants can sequester more carbon per square meter than rainforests. The Anatomy of Sabkhas investigates how these precious resources form, how they have aided the development of human civilization throughout history, and how they have subsequently infiltrated our traditions, rituals, festivals, smartphones, and cities today. Written and edited by urbanists and architects, the book examines the ways that sabkhas might actively contribute to more sustainable built environments and how, in tandem, sabkhas can not only support our natural environment but also heal it.