Toward a Living Architecture?
Toward a Living Architecture?

Author: Christina Cogdell

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2019-01-01

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1452958076

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A bold and unprecedented look at a cutting-edge movement in architecture Toward a Living Architecture? is the first book-length critique of the emerging field of generative architecture and its nexus with computation, biology, and complexity. Starting from the assertion that we should take generative architects’ rhetoric of biology and sustainability seriously, Christina Cogdell examines their claims from the standpoints of the sciences they draw on—complex systems theory, evolutionary theory, genetics and epigenetics, and synthetic biology. She reveals significant disconnects while also pointing to approaches and projects with significant potential for further development. Arguing that architectural design today often only masquerades as sustainable, Cogdell demonstrates how the language of some cutting-edge practitioners and educators can mislead students and clients into thinking they are getting something biological when they are not. In a narrative that moves from the computational toward the biological and from current practice to visionary futures, Cogdell uses life-cycle analysis as a baseline for parsing the material, energetic, and pollution differences between different digital and biological design and construction approaches. Contrary to green-tech sustainability advocates, she questions whether quartzite-based silicon technologies and their reliance on rare earth metals as currently designed are sustainable for much longer, challenging common projections of a computationally designed and manufactured future. Moreover, in critiquing contemporary architecture and science from a historical vantage point, she reveals the similarities between eugenic design of the 1930s and the aims of some generative architects and engineering synthetic biologists today. Each chapter addresses a current architectural school or program while also exploring a distinct aspect of the corresponding scientific language, theory, or practice. No other book critiques generative architecture by evaluating its scientific rhetoric and disjunction from actual scientific theory and practice. Based on the author’s years of field research in architecture studios and biological labs, this rare, field-building book does no less than definitively, unsparingly explain the role of the natural sciences within contemporary architecture.

Toward an Architecture
Toward an Architecture

Author: Le Corbusier

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 9780892368990

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Published in 1923, Toward an Architecture had an immediate impact on architects throughout Europe and remains a foundational text for students and professionals. Le Corbusier urges readers to cease thinking of architecture as a matter of historical styles and instead open their eyes to the modern world. Simultaneously a historian, critic, and prophet, he provocatively juxtaposes views of classical Greece and Renaissance Rome with images of airplanes, cars, and ocean liners. Le Corbusier's slogans--such as "the house is a machine for living in"--and philosophy changed how his contemporaries saw the relationship between architecture, technology, and history. This edition includes a new translation of the original text, a scholarly introduction, and background notes that illuminate the text and illustrations.

Toward a Simpler Way of Life
Toward a Simpler Way of Life

Author: Robert Winter

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 9780520209169

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Anti-commercial and anti-modern, the California Arts and Crafts Movement drew upon the decorative schemes of English Tudor, Swiss chalet, Japanese temple, and Spanish mission, evoking an earlier time before modern industry and technology intruded. This book celebrates the Movement with chapters on architects such as Bernard Maybeck, Charles and Henry Greene, John Galen Howard, and Julia Morgan. 365 duotone photos.

Towards a New Architecture
Towards a New Architecture

Author: Le Corbusier

Publisher: Courier Corporation

Published: 2013-04-09

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0486315649

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Pioneering manifesto by founder of "International School." Technical and aesthetic theories, views of industry, economics, relation of form to function, "mass-production split," and much more. Profusely illustrated.

Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment
Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment

Author: Henri Lefebvre

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2014-05-01

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 145294198X

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Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment is the first publication in any language of the only book devoted to architecture by Henri Lefebvre. Written in 1973 but only recently discovered in a private archive, this work extends Lefebvre’s influential theory of urban space to the question of architecture. Taking the practices and perspective of habitation as his starting place, Lefebvre redefines architecture as a mode of imagination rather than a specialized process or a collection of monuments. He calls for an architecture of jouissance—of pleasure or enjoyment—centered on the body and its rhythms and based on the possibilities of the senses. Examining architectural examples from the Renaissance to the postwar period, Lefebvre investigates the bodily pleasures of moving in and around buildings and monuments, urban spaces, and gardens and landscapes. He argues that areas dedicated to enjoyment, sensuality, and desire are important sites for a society passing beyond industrial modernization. Lefebvre’s theories on space and urbanization fundamentally reshaped the way we understand cities. Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment promises a similar impact on how we think about, and live within, architecture.

Architecture from the Outside
Architecture from the Outside

Author: Elizabeth Grosz

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2001-06-22

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 9780262265362

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Essays at the intersection of philosophy and architecture explore how we understand and inhabit space. To be outside allows one a fresh perspective on the inside. In these essays, philosopher Elizabeth Grosz explores the ways in which two disciplines that are fundamentally outside each another—architecture and philosophy—can meet in a third space to interact free of their internal constraints. "Outside" also refers to those whose voices are not usually heard in architectural discourse but who inhabit its space—the destitute, the homeless, the sick, and the dying, as well as women and minorities. Grosz asks how we can understand space differently in order to structure and inhabit our living arrangements accordingly. Two themes run throughout the book: temporal flow and sexual specificity. Grosz argues that time, change, and emergence, traditionally viewed as outside the concerns of space, must become more integral to the processes of design and construction. She also argues against architecture's historical indifference to sexual specificity, asking what the existence of (at least) two sexes has to do with how we understand and experience space. Drawing on the work of such philosophers as Henri Bergson, Roger Caillois, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, and Jacques Lacan, Grosz raises abstract but nonformalistic questions about space, inhabitation, and building. All of the essays propose philosophical experiments to render space and building more mobile and dynamic.

Living and Working
Living and Working

Author: Dogma

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2022-05-24

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0262543516

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An argument against the ideology of domesticity that separates work from home; lavishly illustrated, with architectural proposals for alternate approaches to working and living. Despite the increasing numbers of people who now work from home, in the popular imagination the home is still understood as the sanctuary of privacy and intimacy. Living is conceptually and definitively separated from work. This book argues against such a separation, countering the prevailing ideology of domesticity with a series of architectural projects that illustrate alternative approaches. Less a monograph than a treatise, richly illustrated, the book combines historical research and design proposals to reenvision home as a cooperative structure in which it is possible to live and work and in which labor is socialized beyond the family—freeing inhabitants from the sense of property and the burden of domestic labor. The projects aim to move the house beyond the dichotomous logic of male/female, husband/wife, breadwinner/housewife, and private/public. They include the reinvention of single-room occupancy as a new model for affordable housing; the reimagining of the simple tower-and-plinth prototype as host to a multiplicity of work activities and enlivening street life; and a plan for a modular, adaptable structure meant to house a temporary dweller. All of these design projects conceive of the house not as a commodity, the form of which is determined by its exchange value, but as an infrastructure defined by its use value.

Henry Austin
Henry Austin

Author: James F. O’Gorman

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press

Published: 2012-01-01

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0819569690

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Winner of the Historic New England Book Prize (2009) Winner of the Henry-Russell Hitchcock Book Award (2010) Henry Austin's (1804–1891) works receive consideration in books on nineteenth-century architecture, yet no book has focused scholarly attention on his primary achievements in New Haven, Connecticut, in Portland, Maine, and elsewhere. Austin was most active during the antebellum era, designing exotic buildings that have captured the imaginations of many for decades. James F. O'Gorman deftly documents Austin's work during the 1840s and '50s, the time when Austin was most productive and creative, and for which a wealth of material exists. The book is organized according to various building types: domestic, ecclesiastic, public, and commercial. O'Gorman helps to clarify what buildings should be attributed to the architect and comments on the various styles that went into his eclectic designs. Henry Austin is lavishly illustrated with 132 illustrations, including 32 in full color. Three extensive appendices provide valuable information on Austin's books, drawings, and his office.

Living Over the Store
Living Over the Store

Author: Howard Davis

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-02-13

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 1136619100

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The shop/house – the building combining commercial/retail uses and dwellings – appears over many periods of history in most cities in the world. This book combines architectural history, cross-cultural understandings and accounts of contemporary policy and building practice to provide a comprehensive account of this common but overlooked building. The merchant's house in northern European cities, the Asian shophouse, the apartment building on New York avenues, typical apartment buildings in Rome and in Paris – this variety of shop/houses along with the commonality of attributes that form them, mean that the hybrid phenomenon is as much a social and economic one as it is an architectural one. Professionals, city officials and developers are taking a new look at buildings that allow for higher densities and mixed-use. Describing exemplary contemporary projects and issues pertaining to their implementation as well as the background, cultural variety and urban attributes, this book will benefit designers dealing with mixed-use buildings as well as academics and students.

Working Cities
Working Cities

Author: Howard Davis

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-12-12

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 0429827938

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Cities have historically supported production, commerce, and consumption, all central to urban life. But in the contemporary Western city, production has been hidden or removed, and commerce and consumption have dominated. This book is about the importance of production in the life of the city, and the relationships between production, architecture, and urban form. It answers the question: What will cities be like when they become, once again, places of production and not only of consumption? Through theoretical arguments, historical analysis, and descriptions of new initiatives, Working Cities: Architecture, Place and Production argues that contemporary cities can regain their historic role as places of material production—places where food is processed and things are made. The book looks toward a future that builds on this revival, providing architectural and urban examples and current strategies within the framework of a strong set of historically-based arguments. The book is illustrated in full colour with archival and contemporary photographs, maps, and diagrams especially developed for the book. The diagrams help illustrate the different variables of architectural space, urban location, and production in different historical eras and in different kinds of industries, providing a compelling visual understanding for the reader.