This history of Harvard's architecture examines the Federal architecture of Charles Bulfinch, H.H. Richardson's Romanesque buildings, the Imperial manner reflected in Widener Library, and the work of other architects such as Charles McKim, Gropius and Le Corbusier.
This firm was founded in 1979 with the understanding that the pursuit of excellence in architecture and urban design could best serve its clients' needs while meeting its own professional goals.
Picking up where his runaway bestseller "Back Bay" left off, William Martin returns to Boston, this time bringing the history of Harvard University vibrantly to life.
Josep Lluís Sert (1902–1983) was the last president of CIAM (International Congresses of Modern Architecture) and dean of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design from 1953 to 1969, where he founded the discipline of urban design. His writings offer a new view of his activities in architecture and urban planning, and provide the intellectual context for his own work as an architect, much of which is still controversial and often poorly understood. This book includes 16 essays dating from 1951 to 1977, ten of which are previously unpublished. The Writings of Josep Lluís Sert illuminates Sert’s contributions to 20th-century architecture, urban design, and design pedagogy, and makes clear the similarities and differences between his ideas and those of his mentor, Le Corbusier. The essays reveal Sert’s advocacy both for pedestrian urbanism and for planning in relation to the natural environment, ideas that have become important issues in contemporary urban design. Each text is introduced by the editor, Eric Mumford, a scholar of CIAM, Sert, and modern urbanism.
While there are times when the mix of old and new buildings and the chaotic activities of thousands of students can give a haphazard appearance to the university, campus planning has in fact become a highly refined form of architecture. This is demonstrated in a convincing fashion by this immensely informative and entertaining history of the evolution of the campuses of the University of Michigan by Fred Mayer, who served for more than three decades as the campus planner for the university during an important period of its growth during the late twentieth century. By tracing the development of the Michigan campus from its early days to the present, within the context of the evolution of higher education in America, Mayer provides a strong argument for the importance of rigorous and enlightened campus planning as a critical element of the learning environment of the university. His comprehensive history of campus planning, illustrated with photos, maps, and diagrams from Michigan’s history, is an outstanding contribution to the university’s history as it approaches its bicentennial in 2017. Perhaps more important, Mayer’s book provides a valuable treatise on the evolution of campus planning as an architectural discipline.
Paula Deitz has delighted readers for more than thirty years with her vivid descriptions of both famous and hidden landscapes. Her writings allow readers to share in the experience of her extensive travels, from the waterways of Britain's Castle Howard to the Japanese gardens of Kyoto, and home again to New York City's Central Park. Collected for the first time, the essays in Of Gardens record her great adventure of continual discovery, not only of the artful beauty of individual gardens but also of the intellectual and historical threads that weave them into patterns of civilization, from the modest garden for family subsistence to major urban developments. Deitz's essays describe how people, over many centuries and in many lands, have expressed their originality by devoting themselves to cultivation and conservation. During a visit to the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden in Seal Harbor, Maine, Deitz first came to appreciate the notion that landscape architecture can be as intricately conceived as any major structure and is, indeed, the means by which we redeem the natural environment through design. Years later, as she wandered through the gardens of Versailles, she realized that because gardens give structure without confinement, they encourage a liberation of movement and thought. In Of Gardens, we follow Deitz down paths of revelation, viewing "A Bouquet of British Parks: Liverpool, Edinburgh, and London"; the parks and promenades of Jerusalem; the Moonlight Garden of the Taj Mahal; a Tuscan-style villa in southern California; and the rooftop garden at Tokyo's Mori Center, among many other sites. Deitz covers individual landscape architects and designers, including André Le Nôtre, Frederick Law Olmsted, Beatrix Farrand, Russell Page, and Michael Van Valkenburgh. She then features an array of parks, public places, and gardens before turning her attention to the burgeoning business of flower shows. The volume concludes with a memorable poetic epilogue entitled "A Winter Garden of Yellow."
The environment of a university – what we term a campus – is a place with special resonance. They have long been the setting for some of history’s most exciting experiments in the design of the built environment. Christopher Wren at Cambridge, Le Corbusier at Harvard, and Norman Foster at the Free University Berlin: the calibre of practitioners who have shaped the physical realm of academia is superlative. Pioneering architecture and innovative planning make for vivid assertions of academic excellence, while the physical estate of a university can shape the learning experiences and lasting outlook of its community of students, faculty and staff. However, the mounting list of pressures – economic, social, pedagogical, technological – currently facing higher education institutions is rendering it increasingly challenging to perpetuate the rich legacy of campus design. In this strained context, it is more important than ever that effective use is made of these environments and that future development is guided in a manner that will answer to posterity. This book is the definitive compendium of the prestigious sphere of campus design, envisaged as a tool to help institutional leaders and designers to engage their campus’s full potential by revealing the narratives of the world’s most successful, time-honoured and memorable university estates. It charts the worldwide evolution of university design from the Middle Ages to the present day, uncovering the key episodes and themes that have conditioned the field, and through a series of case studies profiles universally-acclaimed campuses that, through their planning, architecture and landscaping, have made original, influential and striking contributions to the field. By understanding this history, present and future generations can distil important lessons for the future. The second edition includes revised text, many new images, and new case studies of the Central University of Venezuela and Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad.