The classic work on the evaluation of city form. What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion—imageability—and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The wide scope of this study leads to an original and vital method for the evaluation of city form. The architect, the planner, and certainly the city dweller will all want to read this book.
Over the concluding decades of the twentieth century, the historic preservation community increasingly turned its attention to modern buildings, including bungalows from the 1930s, gas stations and diners from the 1940s, and office buildings and architectural homes from the 1950s. Conservation efforts, however, were often hampered by a lack of technical information about the products used in these structures, and to fill this gap Twentieth-Century Building Materials was developed by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s National Park Service and first published in 1995. Now, this invaluable guide is being reissued—with a new preface by the book’s original editor. With more than 250 illustrations, including a full-color photographic essay, the volume remains an indispensable reference on the history and conservation of modern building materials. Thirty-seven essays written by leading experts offer insights into the history, manufacturing processes, and uses of a wide range of materials, including glass block, aluminum, plywood, linoleum, and gypsum board. Readers will also learn about how these materials perform over time and discover valuable conservation and repair techniques. Bibliographies and sources for further research complete the volume. The book is intended for a wide range of conservation professionals including architects, engineers, conservators, and material scientists engaged in the conservation of modern buildings, as well as scholars in related disciplines.
An illustrated history of Britain's railway workshops, covering the period from 1823 to 1986, this book deals with the history of the main railway workshops of Britain, a subject of wide-ranging mechanical and electrical engineering interest.
This riveting work of investigative reporting and history exposes classified government projects to build gravity-defying aircraft--which have an uncanny resemblance to flying saucers. The atomic bomb was not the only project to occupy government scientists in the 1940s. Antigravity technology, originally spearheaded by scientists in Nazi Germany, was another high priority, one that still may be in effect today. Now for the first time, a reporter with an unprecedented access to key sources in the intelligence and military communities reveals suppressed evidence that tells the story of a quest for a discovery that could prove as powerful as the A-bomb. The Hunt for Zero Point explores the scientific speculation that a "zero point" of gravity exists in the universe and can be replicated here on Earth. The pressure to be the first nation to harness gravity is immense, as it means having the ability to build military planes of unlimited speed and range, along with the most deadly weaponry the world has ever seen. The ideal shape for a gravity-defying vehicle happens to be a perfect disk, making antigravity tests a possible explanation for the numerous UFO sightings of the past 50 years. Chronicling the origins of antigravity research in the world's most advanced research facility, which was operated by the Third Reich during World War II, The Hunt for Zero Point traces U.S. involvement in the project, beginning with the recruitment of former Nazi scientists after the war. Drawn from interviews with those involved with the research and who visited labs in Europe and the United States, The Hunt for Zero Point journeys to the heart of the twentieth century's most puzzling unexplained phenomena.
After Evgeny Zamiatin emigrated from the USSR in 1931, he was systematically airbrushed out of Soviet literary history, despite the central role he had played in the cultural life of Russia’s northern capital for nearly twenty years. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, his writings have gradually been rediscovered in Russia, but with his archives scattered between Russia, France, and the USA, the project of reconstructing the story of his life has been a complex task. This book, the first full biography of Zamiatin in any language, draws upon his extensive correspondence and other documents in order to provide an account of his life which explores his intimate preoccupations, as well as uncovering the political and cultural background to many of his works. It reveals a man of strong will and high principles, who negotiated the political dilemmas of his day—including his relationship with Stalin—with great shrewdness.
