The fantastic works of Antoni Gaudí and the Amsterdam School still appeal to the imagination. And although the architects never met each other, they were children of the same period. They looked for beauty and individuality in a world which was becoming increasingly functional and impersonal. At the heart of their designs are nature and its organic forms, craftsmanship and traditional materials. At the same time, though, they did not turn their backs on modernity, embracing new techniques and production processes. This publication gives insight to the similarities and differences between the work and philosophy of Gaudí and the Amsterdam School architects. Special contributions from Spanish and Dutch scientists are collected in this book.
The Netherlands has been one of the world's most distinctive and sophisticated football cultures. From the birth of Total Football in the sixties, through two decades of World Cup near misses to the exiles who remade clubs like AC Milan, Barcelona, Arsenal and Chelsea in their own image, the Dutch have often been dazzlingly original and influential. The elements of their style (exquisite skills, adventurous attacking tactics, a unique blend of individual creativity and teamwork, weird patterns of self-destruction) reflect and embody the country's culture and history. This book lays bare the elegant, fractured soul of the Dutch Masters and the culture that spawned them by exploring and analysing its key ideas, institutions, personalities and history in the context of wider Dutch society.
Derived from industry-training classes that the author teaches at the Embedded Systems Institute at Eindhoven, the Netherlands and at Buskerud University College at Kongsberg in Norway, Systems Architecting: A Business Perspective places the processes of systems architecting in a broader context by juxtaposing the relationship of the systems archit
Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture revolutionized the understanding of modernism in architecture, pushing back the sense of its origin from the early twentieth century to the 1750s and thus placing architectural thought within the a broader context of
“How do alien, faraway worlds reveal their existence to Earthlings? Let Donald Goldsmith count the ways. As an experienced astronomer and a gifted storyteller, he is the perfect person to chronicle the ongoing hunt for planets of other stars.” —Dava Sobel Astronomers have recently discovered thousands of planets that orbit stars throughout our Milky Way galaxy. With his characteristic wit and style, Donald Goldsmith presents the science of exoplanets and the search for extraterrestrial life in a way that Earthlings with little background in astronomy or astrophysics can understand and enjoy. Much of what has captured the imagination of planetary scientists and the public is the unexpected strangeness of these distant worlds, which bear little resemblance to the planets in our solar system. The sizes, masses, and orbits of exoplanets detected so far raise new questions about how planets form and evolve. Still more tantalizing are the efforts to determine which exoplanets might support life. Astronomers are steadily improving their means of examining these planets’ atmospheres and surfaces, with the help of advanced spacecraft sent into orbits a million miles from Earth. These instruments will provide better observations of planetary systems in orbit around the dim red stars that throng the Milky Way. Previously spurned as too faint to support life, these cool stars turn out to possess myriad planets nestled close enough to maintain Earthlike temperatures. The quest to find other worlds brims with possibility. Exoplanets shows how astronomers have broadened our planetary horizons, and suggests what may come next, including the ultimate discovery: life beyond our home planet.
