Mechanics and Meaning in Architecture

Mechanics and Meaning in Architecture

Author: Lance LaVine

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 9780816634774

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In Mechanics and Meaning in Architecture, Lance LaVine shows that in architecture, as practiced and taught today, the technological aspect of the profession -- how weight is distributed, how heat flow is regulated, and how light is permitted to enter -- has been ceded to engineers and other technical specialists. And in doing so, he argues, architects have lost sight of one of architecture's most important purposes, that of providing a literal and figurative window onto the world. As a technology of habitation, architecture should give people both a practical and a metaphorical understanding of their relationship with nature. For LaVine, this knowledge emanates from a sensual understanding of the natural world as a "felt force". At its most basic level, architecture demands an understanding of and response to the natural forces of gravity, climate, and sunlight. At the center of Mechanics and Meaning in Architecture are case studies of four very different houses: a Finnish log farmhouse from the nineteenth century; Charles Moore's house in Orinda, California; Tadao Ando's Wall House in Japan; and Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye near Paris. Through his imaginative readings of structures, LaVine highlights how the architects involved have used the oldest and most fundamental architectural technologies -- walls, floors, ceilings, columns, beams, and windows -- in ways that offer creative responses to the natural world and humanity's place in it. Clearly, architects are comfortable with the practical and aesthetic components of their profession. With this book, Lance LaVine encourages them also to understand what makes their use of technology unique and essential, and to reclaim the naturalworld for meaningful interpretation in their design of buildings.


Mechanics and Meaning in Architecture

Mechanics and Meaning in Architecture

Author: Lance LaVine

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 9780816634767

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In Mechanics and Meaning in Architecture, Lance LaVine shows that in architecture, as practiced and taught today, the technological aspect of the profession -- how weight is distributed, how heat flow is regulated, and how light is permitted to enter -- has been ceded to engineers and other technical specialists. And in doing so, he argues, architects have lost sight of one of architecture's most important purposes, that of providing a literal and figurative window onto the world. As a technology of habitation, architecture should give people both a practical and a metaphorical understanding of their relationship with nature. For LaVine, this knowledge emanates from a sensual understanding of the natural world as a "felt force". At its most basic level, architecture demands an understanding of and response to the natural forces of gravity, climate, and sunlight. At the center of Mechanics and Meaning in Architecture are case studies of four very different houses: a Finnish log farmhouse from the nineteenth century; Charles Moore's house in Orinda, California; Tadao Ando's Wall House in Japan; and Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye near Paris. Through his imaginative readings of structures, LaVine highlights how the architects involved have used the oldest and most fundamental architectural technologies -- walls, floors, ceilings, columns, beams, and windows -- in ways that offer creative responses to the natural world and humanity's place in it. Clearly, architects are comfortable with the practical and aesthetic components of their profession. With this book, Lance LaVine encourages them also to understand what makes their use of technology unique and essential, and to reclaim the naturalworld for meaningful interpretation in their design of buildings.


Time, Space, and Material

Time, Space, and Material

Author: Anne-Catrin Schultz

Publisher: Axel Menges

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9783936681888

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This book examines the application of the principle of layering in architecture, its mechanics, possible application and meaning. Layering is widely used in the discussions of the 20th and 21st centuries architecture but rarely defined or examined. Layering bridges the tectonics of structure and skin, offers a system for the creation of different architectural spaces over time and functions as a design principle without hierarchy. Three types of layering are identified: a chronological sedimentation of planes materializing changes over time (temporal layering), the additive sequence of spaces (spatial layering), and the stratification of individual planes (material layering).


Building Evolutionary Architectures

Building Evolutionary Architectures

Author: Neal Ford

Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."

Published: 2017-09-18

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1491986328

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The software development ecosystem is constantly changing, providing a constant stream of new tools, frameworks, techniques, and paradigms. Over the past few years, incremental developments in core engineering practices for software development have created the foundations for rethinking how architecture changes over time, along with ways to protect important architectural characteristics as it evolves. This practical guide ties those parts together with a new way to think about architecture and time.


Architecture

Architecture

Author: Francis D. K. Ching

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2012-07-16

Total Pages: 1784

ISBN-13: 1118004825

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A superb visual reference to the principles of architecture Now including interactive CD-ROM! For more than thirty years, the beautifully illustrated Architecture: Form, Space, and Order has been the classic introduction to the basic vocabulary of architectural design. The updated Third Edition features expanded sections on circulation, light, views, and site context, along with new considerations of environmental factors, building codes, and contemporary examples of form, space, and order. This classic visual reference helps both students and practicing architects understand the basic vocabulary of architectural design by examining how form and space are ordered in the built environment.? Using his trademark meticulous drawing, Professor Ching shows the relationship between fundamental elements of architecture through the ages and across cultural boundaries. By looking at these seminal ideas, Architecture: Form, Space, and Order encourages the reader to look critically at the built environment and promotes a more evocative understanding of architecture. In addition to updates to content and many of the illustrations, this new edition includes a companion CD-ROM that brings the book's architectural concepts to life through three-dimensional models and animations created by Professor Ching.


Fundamental Concepts of Architecture

Fundamental Concepts of Architecture

Author: Alban Janson

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2014-02-28

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 3034608926

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Architecture is an experience – with the intellect and with all our senses, in motion, and in use. But in order to actually discuss and assess it with relevance, a clarification of terms is essential in order to avoid the vagueness that often prevails when talking about architecture. This dictionary provides a vocabulary that allows the architecture discourse to go beyond the declaration of constructive relationships or the description of architectonic forms in familiar terms like “roof,” “base,” “wall,” and “axis” or “proportion”. The point is to describe the experience of architecture: how exactly does it contribute to the experience of a situation? For instance, the staging of an entrance situation, or the layout and visitor routes through a museum. From “context,” through “guidance,” “readability,” “patina,” “spatial structure,” “symmetry” and “tectonics,” to “width” (and “narrowness”) or “window,” the most important terms in architectural language are explained precisely and in detail.


A Visual Dictionary of Architecture

A Visual Dictionary of Architecture

Author: Francis D. K. Ching

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2011-09-06

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 0470648856

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The classic, bestselling reference on architecture now revised and expanded! An essential one-volume reference of architectural topics using Francis D.K. Ching's signature presentation. It is the only dictionary that provides concise, accurate definitions illustrated with finely detailed, hand-rendered drawings. From Arch to Wood, every concept, technology, material and detail important to architects and designers are presented in Ching's unique style. Combining text and drawing, each term is given a minimum double-page spread on large format trim size, so that the term can be comprehensively explored, graphically showing relations between concepts and sub-terms A comprehensive index permits the reader to locate any important word in the text. This long-awaited revision brings the latest concepts and technology of 21st century architecture, design and construction to this classic reference work It is sure to be by the side of and used by any serious architect or designer, students of architecture, interior designers, and those in construction.


The Architecture of Science

The Architecture of Science

Author: Peter Galison

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0262071908

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Table of Contents The Architecture of Science by Galison, Peter L. (Editor); Edelman, Shimon (Editor); Thompson, Emily (Editor) Terms of Use Acknowledgments Notes on Contributors 1 Buildings and the Subject of Science Peter Galison 1 Of Secrecy and Openness: Science and Architecture in Early Modern Europe 2 Masculine Prerogatives: Gender, Space, and Knowledge in the Early Modern Museum Paula Findlen 3 Alchemical Symbolism and Concealment: The Chemical House of Libavius William R. Newman 4 Openness and Empiricism: Values and Meaning in Early Architectural Writings and in Seventeenth-Century Experimental Philosophy Pamela O. Long II Displaying and Concealing Technics in the Nineteenth Century 5 Architecture for Steam M. Norton Wise 6 Illuminating the Opacity of Achromatic Lens Production: Joseph von Fraunhofer's Use of Monastic Architecture and Space as a Laboratory Myles W. Jackson 7 The Spaces of Cultural Representation, circa 1887 and 1969: Reflections on Museum Arrangement and Anthropological Theory in the Boasian and Evolutionary Traditions George W. Stocking Jr. 8 Bricks and Bones: Architecture and Science in Victorian Britian Sophie Forgan III Modern Space 9 "Spatial Mechanics": Scientific Metaphors in Architecture Adrian Forty 10 Diagramming the New World, or Hannes Meyer's "Scientization" of Architecture K. Michael Hays 11 Listening to/for Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Development of Modern Spaces in America Emily Thompson 12 Of Beds and Benches: Building the Modern American Hospital Allan M. Brandt and David C. Sloane IV Is Architecture Science? 13 Architecture, Science, and Technology Antoine Picon 14 Architecture as Science: Analogy or Disjunction? Alberto Perez-Gomez 15 The Mutual Limits of Architecture and Science Kenneth Frampton 16 The Hounding of the Snark Denise Scott Brown V Princeton After Modernism: the Lewis Thomas Laboratory for Molecular Biology 17 Thoughts on the Architecture of the Scientific Workplace: Community, Change, and Continuity Robert Venturi 18 The Design Process for the Human Workplace James Collins Jr. 19 Life in the Lewis Thomas Laboratory Arnold J. Levine 20 Two Faces on Science: Building Identities for Molecular Biology and Biotechnology Thomas F. Gieryn VI Centers, Cities, and Colliders 21 Architecture at Fermilab Robert R. Wilson 22 The Architecture of Science: From D'Arcy Thompson to the SSC Moshe Safdie 23 Factory, Laboratory, Studio: Dispersing Sites of Production Peter Galison and Caroline A. Jones Index Descriptive content provided by Syndetics"! a Bowker service


Experiencing Architecture, second edition

Experiencing Architecture, second edition

Author: Steen Eiler Rasmussen

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1964-03-15

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780262680028

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A classic examination of superb design through the centuries. Widely regarded as a classic in the field, Experiencing Architecture explores the history and promise of good design. Generously illustrated with historical examples of designing excellence—ranging from teacups, riding boots, and golf balls to the villas of Palladio and the fish-feeding pavilion of Beijing's Winter Palace—Rasmussen's accessible guide invites us to appreciate architecture not only as a profession, but as an art that shapes everyday experience. In the past, Rasmussen argues, architecture was not just an individual pursuit, but a community undertaking. Dwellings were built with a natural feeling for place, materials and use, resulting in “a remarkably suitable comeliness.” While we cannot return to a former age, Rasmussen notes, we can still design spaces that are beautiful and useful by seeking to understand architecture as an art form that must be experienced. An understanding of good design comes not only from one's professional experience of architecture as an abstract, individual pursuit, but also from one's shared, everyday experience of architecture in real time—its particular use of light, color, shape, scale, texture, rhythm and sound. Experiencing Architecture reminds us of what good architectural design has accomplished over time, what it can accomplish still, and why it is worth pursuing. Wide-ranging and approachable, it is for anyone who has ever wondered “what instrument the architect plays on.”


What We Talk about When We Talk about Architecture

What We Talk about When We Talk about Architecture

Author: BEATRIZ & WILSON RURAL URBAN FRAMEWORK (ED) & COLOMINA (PETER ET AL.)

Publisher:

Published: 2021-08

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 9780648685890

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What We Talk About When We Talk About Architecture documents a series of conversations with some of contemporary architecture's most accomplished thinkers and practitioners. The conversations took place in 2018 and 2019 at the Melbourne School of Design (MSD), The University of Melbourne, with the hope of complementing lectures by visitors to the school. Where lectures gave insight into projects, these conversations dive deeper into the ideas and processes behind the buildings - the players, places, forces, cultural imperatives and ideologies that buttress every work of architecture, but that are often obscured by the glamour of the finished output. A set of essays commissioned from writers both inside and outside the discipline of architecture offer fresh insights into the themes uncovered, rounding out this thought-provoking book.