The Meaning of the Built Environment is a lively illustrated study of the meanings of everyday buildings for their users. Professor Rapoport uses examples and vignettes, drawn from many cultures and historical eras as well as contemporary America, to explicate a new framework for understanding how the built environment comes to have meaning, both for individual people and whole societies.
This volume analyses the interpretation of the built environment by connecting analytical frames developed in the fields of semiotics and geography. It focuses on specific components of the built environment: monuments and memorials, as it is easily recognisable that they are erected to promote specific meanings in the public space. The volume concentrates on monuments and memorials in post-Soviet countries in Eastern Europe, with a focus on Estonia. Elites in post-Soviet countries have often used monuments to shape meanings reflecting the needs of post-Soviet culture and society. However, individuals can interpret monuments in ways that are different from those envisioned by their designers. In Estonia, the relocation and removal of Soviet monuments and the erection of new ones has often created political divisions and resulted in civil disorder. This book examines the potential gap between the designers’ expectations and the users’ interpretations of monuments and memorials. The main argument is that connecting semiotics and geography can provide an innovative framework to understand how monuments convey meanings and how these are variously interpreted at societal levels.
Cognition and the Built Environment argues that interacting with our built environment, as users and as architects, is a cognitive process. It claims that architecture, in its form and meaning, is a basic, embodied level of human cognition. The assumption is that we and our built environment together form an intelligent system, a cognitive feedback loop between us and the world of which we are part. With this as a vantage point, the book discusses the meaning and intelligence of concrete architectural environments as well as the agency of the architect, of his client and of the user. The inquiry oscillates between abstract thought, topological models and cognitive semiotics, between pragmatist philosophy and the professional practice of planning cities, developing projects and using objects. Architecture serves more complex purposes than our caves, paths and landmarks did. Written for students and academics of urban design, urban planning and architectural theory, Cognition and the Built Environment argues that human cognition feeds on the interaction between thought, agency and built environment, and that architecture is the spatial form of this interaction.
A breath-taking collection that moves between local and distant, urban and rural, past and present. This is poetry of emotional density with a lightness of touch, structural but organic, detailed but lively, thoughtful but playful. A rare combination of exactitude and wonder leading the reader in and keeping them there.
With more than 20,000 words and terms individually defined, the Dictionary offers huge coverage for anyone studying or working in architecture, construction or any of the built environment fields. The innovative and detailed cross-referencing system allows readers to track down elusive definitions from general subject headings. Starting from only the vaguest idea of the word required, a reader can quickly track down precisely the term they are looking for. The book is illustrated with stunning drawings that provide a visual as well as a textual definition of both key concepts and subtle differences in meaning. Davies and Jokiniemi's work sets a new standard for reference books for all those interested in the buildings that surround us. To browse the book and to see how this title is an invaluable resource for both students and professionals alike, visit www.architectsdictionary.com.
Each day new articles, books, and reports present new methods, standards, and technologies for achieving sustainability in architecture. Additionally, new materials, technological gadgets, and data are increasingly considered the staples of architecture’s future. As we increasingly embrace this techno-advancement, we must be equally aware that we may be pushing architecture into a managerial science and away from its core concerns such as expression, contextuality, functionality and aesthetics. Sustainable architecture that is focused on the abstract measurements of consumption, energy, and emissions loses sight of the vital role that architecture holds in our world: it is the field that creates our public spaces and our places of dwelling, of business, of production, of leisure, and creation. Additionally, it fails to comprehend the human dimension of buildings, as elements that are deeply connected to their sites’ historic contexts and that play a key role in defining our social relations and our connection to the spaces we occupy and utilize. “Sustainable Architecture – Between Measurement and Meaning” takes a step back to reflect on how sustainability in the built environment can be theorized and practiced critically. This book exposes that architecture remains a human and social science that lies at the intersection of measurements and meanings. It reveals that sustainable architecture can still operate in a dialectic space of expression, rather than serving as a manifesto for either the technical or socio-cultural extremes. It purports that the human intuition, senses, and skills still holds the key to unravelling alternative futures of sustainable built spaces. And that most importantly, humans still have a place in sustainable architecture. This book will be of interest to students, early career scholars, established researchers and practitioners studying sustainability in the built environment. It can be used as a referencee to those in the fields of design, architecture, landscape and urban design, urban studies, geography, social sciences, and engineering.
Much has been written in recent years on environmental ethics relating to the more general 'natural' environment but little specifically written about ethics of the built environment. Ethics and the Built Environment responds to this need and offers a debate on the ethical dimension of building in all its forms from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and approaches. This book should be of interest to architects, students of building and building design, environmentalists, politicians and general readers with an interest in ethics.
