Edward Ford's forty years of practicing and teaching architecture have focused on one area: the architectural detail. Yet, despite two hugely influential books (The Details of Modern Architecture, volumes 1 and 2), numerous articles, and lectures given from Vancouver to Vienna, there are two questions Ford has, remarkably, never answered: "What is a detail?" and more importantly, "What is a good detail?" Ford is an architect as well as a writer, so it is not surprising that rather than answering these questions in a third book, he spent six years on the design and construction of a house. Building it was not an exercise in the application of ideas about detail; it was, rather, a mechanism for answering those two simple questions.
Spaces of Tolerance addresses the topic of tolerance in architectural production. Through examining the boundaries of where discourses, practices and designs are considered publishable (suitable to be made public) or not, the book exposes criteria and cultures which censor architecture so as to offer ways that architecture can be more inclusive and diverse for society at large. The contributors to the book discuss: disciplinary tolerances and constraints related to architecture and its interdisciplinary exchanges and modes of working; physical, spatial, temporal and digital tolerance in material assemblages and production between drawing and building; and social, cultural and political tolerance and threats contingent on geography and history. This timely book aims to look at extremities, margins and marginality to explore acceptable levels – and their fluctuations – in deviation and divergence. Chapters in the book involve ungendering, unacculturating (in disciplinary terms) and diversifying the architectural practitioner, writer, editor, reviewer, and reader, and retooling the instruments and tactics of architectural practice and theory. They argue that tolerance in interdisciplinary research in architecture can cultivate more diverse and productive conversations. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Architecture and Culture.
The Architectural Detail is author Edward R. Ford's life's work, and this may be his most important book to date. Ford walks the reader through five widely accepted (and wildly different) definitions of detail, in an attempt to find, once and for all, the quintessential definition of detail in architecture.
A House and its Atmosphere is a meditative essay about the experience of designing and building a house of one¿s own. Told in seventy black and white photographs and a series of narrative excursions, architect Ben Jacks reflects on a lifetime of influences as he reveals the personal nature of inhabiting a place at the edge of a tidal cove on an island in Maine. In the book he quietly advocates for the simple logic and modest ease of direct experience and an observational perspective in architecture. In chapters about imagining, walking, and designing Ben Jacks reflects on the essence of architectural experience, describing what it is like to begin to make momentous decisions, arguing that aesthetic experience is the result of how one has learned to see. Memory, family, nature, relationships, and work inform design at every step. A House and its Atmosphere is a grounded story about designing and building a small work of architecture. With students of architecture and amateur builders in mind, Ben Jacks makes a case for design informed by theories of place-identification, detail, and craft. The book is a primary source and a chronicle of experience of radical empiricism. As such it offers a kind of conceptual tool kit for those interested in thinking about the processes of architecture, designing, and placemaking. The book is a fresh and valuable contribution to the shelter memoir genre, from a professional architect¿s perspective.
For all its emphasis on the direct experience of insight without reliance on the products of the intellect, the Zen tradition has created a huge body of writings. Of this cast literature, the writings associated with the so-called Five Houses of Zen are widely considered to be preeminent. These Five Houses—which arose in China during the ninth and tenth centuries, often referred to as the Golden Age of Zen—were not schools or sects but styles of Zen teaching represented by some of the most outstanding masters in Zen history. The writings of these great Zen teachers are presented here, many translated for the first time. These include: • The sayings of Pai-chang, famous for his Zen dictum "A day without work, a day without food" • Selections from Kuei-shan’s collection of Zen admonitions, considered essential reading by numerous Buddhist teachers • Sun-chi’s unique discussion of the inner meaning of the circular symbol in Zen teaching • Sayings of Huang-po from The Essential Method of Transmission of Mind • Excerpts from The Record of Lin-chi, a great classical text of Zen literature • Ts’ao-shan’s presentation of the famous teaching device known as the Five Ranks • Selections of poetry from the Cascade Collection by Hsueh-tou, renowned for his poetic commentaries on the classic Blue Cliff Record • Yung-ming’s teachings on how to balance the two basic aspects of meditation: concentration and insight
Over the last few decades, a rich and increasingly diverse practice has emerged in the art world that invites the public to touch, enter, and experience the work, whether it is in a gallery, on city streets, or in the landscape. Like architecture, many of these temporary artworks aspire to alter viewers' experience of the environment. An installation is usually the end product for an artist, but for architects it can also be a preliminary step in an ongoing design process. Like paper projects designed in the absence of "real" architecture, installations offer architects another way to engage in issues critical to their practice. Direct experimentation with architecture's material and social dimensions engages the public around issues in the built environment that concern them and expands the ways that architecture can participate in and impact people's everyday lives. The first survey of its kind, Installations by Architects features fifty of the most significant projects from the last twenty-five years by today's most exciting architects, including Anderson Anderson, Philip Beesley, Diller + Scofidio, John Hejduk, Dan Hoffman, and Kuth/Ranieri Architects. Projects are grouped in critical areas of discussion under the themes of tectonics, body, nature, memory, and public space. Each project is supplemented by interviews with the project architects and the discussions of critics and theorists situated within a larger intellectual context. There is no doubt that installations will continue to play a critical role in the practice of architecture. Installations by Architects aims to contribute to the role of installations in sharpening our understanding of the built environment.
Includes decisions of the Supreme Court and various intermediate and lower courts of record; May/Aug. 1888-Sept../Dec. 1895, Superior Court of New York City; Mar./Apr. 1926-Dec. 1937/Jan. 1938, Court of Appeals.
"Architect Tom Kundig is known worldwide for the originality of his work. This paperback edition of Tom Kundig: Houses, first published in 2006, collects five of his most prominent early residential projects, which remain touchstones for him today. In a new preface written for this edition, Kundig reflects on the influence that these designs continue to have on his current thinking. Each house, presented from conceptual sketches through meticulously realized details, is the product of a sustained and active collaborative process among designer, builder, and client. The work of the Seattle-based architect has been called both raw and refined--disparate characteristics that produce extraordinarily inventive designs inspired by both the industrial structures ubiquitous to his upbringing in the Pacific Northwest and the vibrant craft cultures that are fostered there." --
