Stealing from the Saracens

Stealing from the Saracens

Author: Diana Darke

Publisher: Hurst & Company

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 1787383059

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Europeans are in denial. Against a backdrop of Islamophobia, they are increasingly distancing themselves from their cultural debt to the Muslim world. But while the legacy of Islam and the Middle East is in danger of being airbrushed out of Western history, its traces can still be detected in some of Europe's most recognisable monuments, from Notre-Dame to St Paul's Cathedral. In this comprehensively illustrated book, Diana Darke sets out to redress the balance, revealing the Arab and Islamic roots of Europe's architectural heritage. She tracks the transmission of key innovations from the great capitals of Islam's early empires, Damascus and Baghdad, via Muslim Spain and Sicily into Europe. Medieval crusaders, pilgrims and merchants from Europe later encountered Arab Muslim culture in journeys to the Holy Land. In more recent centuries, that same route through modern-day Turkey connected Ottoman culture with the West, leading Sir Christopher Wren himself to believe that Gothic architecture should more rightly be called 'the Saracen style', because of its Islamic origins. Recovering this overlooked story within the West's long history of borrowing from the Islamic world, Darke sheds new light on Europe's buildings and offers rich insights into the possibilities of cultural exchange.


The Year 1300 and the Creation of a New European Architecture

The Year 1300 and the Creation of a New European Architecture

Author: Alexandra Gajewski

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13:

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The theme of the book is the origin of Late Gothic architecture in Europe around the year 1300. It was then that Gothic ecclesiastical architecture graduated from a largely French into a wholly European phenomenon with new centres of art production (Cologne, Florence, York, Prague, Krakow) and newly-empowered institutions: kings, the higher nobility, towns and friars. Profound changes in spiritual and devotional life had a lasting effect on the relationship between architecture and liturgy. In short, architecture around 1300 became at once more cosmopolitan and more heterogeneous. The book addresses these radical changes on their own terms- as an international phenomenon. By bringing together specialists in art, architecture and liturgy from many parts of Europe and from the USA it aims to employ their separate expertise, and to integrate each into a broader European perspective. Dr. Zoe Opacic is lecturer in the history and theory of architecture at Birkbeck College, University of London. She specialises in the field of late medieval architecture and art, particularly in Central Europe.Dr. Alexandra Gajewski, FSA is visiting assistant professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She works on Burgundian Gothic architecture and on Cistercian art in medieval France and the Empire.


Collective Processes

Collective Processes

Author: Natalie Donat-Cattin

Publisher: Birkhauser

Published: 2021-12-06

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 9783035624700

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What does a collective process in architecture entail and how does it influence the planning of our built environment? Although the hierarchically organized office with its claim to individual authorship is still the dominant form of architecture firm, more and more horizontally organized collectives with alternative approaches to architectural planning are emerging. In this insightful survey of renowned European collectives, Natalie Donat-Cattin offers an overview of their working methods, organizational forms, goals, and projects. The book includes statements and projects by: A-A Collective, (ab)Normal, Assemble, baukuh, CNCRT, Colectivo Warehouse, Collectif Etc, constructLab, false mirror office, Fosbury Architecture, la-clique, Lacol, n'UNDO, orizzontale, raumlabor, X=(T=E=N), and Zuloark.


1000 X European Architecture

1000 X European Architecture

Author: Chris van Uffelen

Publisher: Braun Publish,Csi

Published: 2011-10-01

Total Pages: 1017

ISBN-13: 9783037680872

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Since the release of the first edition of 1000 x European Architecture in 2006, the world of architecture has gone through some major changes: in the midst of an seemingly unstoppable building boom the banking crisis descended on the world economy in 2008, but since 2010 a spirit of optimism has taken hold again. A completely new impact for the world of architecture, which is gaining in significance, is the Web 2.0 and the rapidly increasing influence of social media.The vehement debates about style at the end of the 20th century have faded away, instead the questions of quality in execution, valence of the material and especially ecological sustainability have moved to the foreground of the discussions. The new edition of the bestseller 1000 x European Architecture presents the European building culture during this tumultuous time with 1000 projects from the last five years.


Architecture and Language

Architecture and Language

Author: Georgia Clarke

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2000-06-19

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 9780521650786

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Architecture and Language examines one of the central themes in the history and theory of Western architecture. Seeking to understand how language provides a model for understanding architecture, the essays in this volume both celebrate the diversity of the language-architecture analogy and assess its theoretical implications in the light of the diverse historical circumstances that produced it. The chapters examine the connections between style and nationality, vernacular and "official" languages, the importance of Latin in giving the architectural profession a literate and cultured status, and the influence of architectural description on perception and design.


On Site

On Site

Author: Lisa Diedrich

Publisher: Birkhaüser

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9783764389505

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'On Site' presents projects and strategies in landscape architecture from Berlin to Bordeaux. The projects are supplemented by essays on European cartography, the cultural landscape, the history of ideas in landscape architecture, the role of ideal landscapes, urban policies, and the pioneers from Portugal.


Visions of Heaven

Visions of Heaven

Author: David Stephenson

Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press

Published: 2005-10-06

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 9781568985497

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There's an ethereal magic to standing beneath a dome, neck craned, looking up at a vision of the heavens created by some long-ago figure of genius. From the Pantheon to the Hagia Sophia, the power of the dome seems transcendent. Photographer David Stephenson's magnificently kaleidoscopic images of dome interiors capture this evanescent drama, and make Visions of Heaven one of the most spectacularly beautiful books we've ever produced. Traveling from Italy to Spain, Turkey, England, Germany, and Russia, among other countries, and photographing churches, palaces, mosques, and synagogues from the second to the early twentieth century, Stephenson's work amounts to a veritable typology of the cupola. His images present complex geometrical structures, rich stucco decorations, and elaborate paintings as they have never been seen before. Brilliantly calibrated exposures reveal details and colors that would otherwise remain hidden in these dimly lit spaces. Visions of Heaven shows more than 120 images, including the Roman Pantheon, the Byzantine churches of Turkey, the great domes of the Renaissance, the decorative cupolas of the Baroque and the Rococo ages, and a nineteenth-century synagogue in Hungary.


Occidentalist Perceptions of European Architecture in Nineteenth-Century Persian Travel Diaries

Occidentalist Perceptions of European Architecture in Nineteenth-Century Persian Travel Diaries

Author: Vahid Vahdat

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-03-31

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 113475938X

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In the midst of Europe’s nineteenth-century industrial revolution, four men embarked on separate journeys to the wondrous Farangestan – a land of fascinating objects, mysterious technologies, heavenly women, and magical spaces. Determined to learn the secret of Farangestan’s advancements, the travelers kept detailed records of their observations. These diaries mapped an aspirational path to progress for curious Iranian audiences who were eager to change the course of history. Two hundred years later, Travels in Farangi Space unpacks these writings to reveal a challenging new interpretation of Iran’s experience of modernity. This book opens the Persian travelers’ long-forgotten suitcases, and analyzes the descriptions contained within to gain insight into Occidentalist perspectives on modern Europe. By carefully tracing the physical and mental journeys of these travelers, the book paints a picture of European architecture that is nothing like what one would expect.


Architectural Space in Eighteenth-Century Europe

Architectural Space in Eighteenth-Century Europe

Author: Meredith Martin

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 1351576062

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Architectural Space in Eighteenth-Century Europe: Constructing Identities and Interiors explores how a diverse, pan-European group of eighteenth-century patrons - among them bankers, bishops, bluestockings, and courtesans - used architectural space and décor to shape and express identity. Eighteenth-century European architects understood the client's instrumental role in giving form and meaning to architectural space. In a treatise published in 1745, the French architect Germain Boffrand determined that a visitor could "judge the character of the master for whom the house was built by the way in which it is planned, decorated and distributed." This interdisciplinary volume addresses two key interests of contemporary historians working in a range of disciplines: one, the broad question of identity formation, most notably as it relates to ideas of gender, class, and ethnicity; and two, the role played by different spatial environments in the production - not merely the reflection - of identity at defining historical and cultural moments. By combining contemporary critical analysis with a historically specific approach, the book's contributors situate ideas of space and the self within the visual and material remains of interiors in eighteenth-century Europe. In doing so, they offer compelling new insight not only into this historical period, but also into our own.