The Architect as Magician
The Architect as Magician

Author: Albert C. Smith

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-05-07

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 0429831455

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The Architect as Magician explores the connection between magic and architecture. There is a belief that a greater understanding of the meaning of magic provides insights about architecture and architects’ design processes. Architects influence the effects of nature through the making of their buildings. In an analogous condition, magicians perform rituals in an attempt to influence the forces of nature. This book argues that architects could gain much by incorporating ideas from magic into their design process. The book demonstrates through historical and current examples the important influence magic has had on the practice of architecture. The authors explain how magic helps us to understand the way we infuse architecture with meaning and how magic affects and inspires architectural creation. Aimed at architects, students, scholars and researchers, The Architect as Magician helps readers discover the ambiguous and spiritual elements in their design process.

Building on Nature
Building on Nature

Author: Rachel Rodríguez

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2009-09

Total Pages: 45

ISBN-13: 0805087451

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Inspired by the natural beauty of his homeland of Catalonia, Antoni Gaudi became a celebrated and innovative architect through the unique structures he designed in Barcelona, having a significant impact on architecture as it was known.

The Nature of Home
The Nature of Home

Author: Jeff Dungan

Publisher: Rizzoli Publications

Published: 2018-09-04

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0847863069

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Light-filled houses built with an emphasis on natural materials by award-winning Southern architect Jeffrey Dungan. Following in the tradition of populist architects Gil Schafer and Bobby McAlpine, Dungan designs new traditional houses for today—houses with clean lines, made with stone and wood, that carry an air of lasting beauty and that are made to be handed on to future generations. In his first book, Dungan shares his advice and insight for creating these “forever” houses and explores eight houses in full, from a beach house on the Gulf Coast to a farmhouse in the Southern countryside to a family home in the Blue Ridge Mountains. All speak of authenticity, timelessness, and lived history that reveals itself through the rich patinas and natural textures that come with age. Layered in between are thematic essays and imagery celebrating the importance of elements such as light, stone, and rooflines in creating a home.

Subnature
Subnature

Author: David Gissen

Publisher: Chronicle Books

Published: 2012-03-20

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1568989512

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We are conditioned over time to regard environmental forces such as dust, mud, gas, smoke, debris, weeds, and insects as inimical to architecture. Much of today's discussion about sustainable and green design revolves around efforts to clean or filter out these primitive elements. While mostly the direct result of human habitation, these 'subnatural forces' are nothing new. In fact, our ability to manage these forces has long defined the limits of civilized life. From its origins, architecture has been engaged in both fighting and embracing these so-called destructive forces. In Subnature, David Gissen, author of our critically acclaimed Big and Green, examines experimental work by today's leading designers, scholars, philosophers, and biologists that rejects the idea that humans can somehow recreate a purely natural world, free of the untidy elements that actually constitute nature. Each chapter provides an examination of a particular form of subnature and its actualization in contemporary design practice. The exhilarating and at times unsettling work featured in Subnature suggests an alternative view of natural processes and ecosystems and their relationships to human society and architecture. R&Sie(n)'s Mosquito Bottleneck house in Trinidad uses a skin that actually attracts mosquitoes and moves them through the building, while keeping them separate from the occupants. In his building designs the architect Philippe Rahm draws the dank air from the earth and the gasses and moisture from our breath to define new forms of spatial experience. In his Underground House, Mollier House, and Omnisport Hall, Rahm forces us to consider the odor of soil and the emissions from our body as the natural context of a future architecture. [Cero 9]'s design for the Magic Mountain captures excess heat emitted from a power generator in Ames, Iowa, to fuel a rose garden that embellishes the industrial site and creates a natural mountain rising above the city's skyline. Subnature looks beyond LEED ratings, green roofs, and solar panels toward a progressive architecture based on a radical new conception of nature.

Love, Nature, Magic
Love, Nature, Magic

Author: Maria Rodale

Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing

Published: 2023-02-23

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1645021718

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Join bestselling author, activist, and garden expert Maria Rodale on her shamanic journeys as she reflects on her surprising conversations with the spirits of the familiar plants and animals around us—and the knowledge they share with us. In Love, Nature, Magic, organic advocate and former CEO of a global health and wellness company Maria Rodale combines her love of nature and gardening with her experience in shamanic journeying, embarking on an epic adventure to learn from plants, animals, and insects—including some of the most misunderstood beings in nature. Maria asks them their purpose and listens as they show and declare what they want us humans to know. From Thistles to Snakes, Poison Ivy to Mosquitoes, these nature beings convey messages that are relevant to every human, showing us how to live in balance and harmony on this Earth. Through journeys filled with surprises, humor, and foibles, follow Maria’s evolution from being annoyed with to accepting—and even falling in love with—our most difficult neighbors (including human ones). Along the way, she tells her own story of how she learned about shamanic journeying and its near-universal manifestation in traditional cultures worldwide. She describes what her experiences of shamanic journeying are like—simply, honestly, and with a touch of irreverence. Maria’s journeys include conversations with: Mugwort • Vulture • Bat • Rabbit • Lanternfly • Lightning Bug • Osage Orange • Deer • Paper Wasp • Dandelion • Tick • Groundhog • Milkweed • And more! Throughout, Rodale shares an essential truth that resonates across her shamanic explorations: We first must heal our own hearts, for only then can we truly love others and begin to heal planet Earth.

Superhumanity
Superhumanity

Author: Nick Axel

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2018-01-01

Total Pages: 650

ISBN-13: 1452957886

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A wide-ranging and challenging exploration of design and how it engages with the self The field of design has radically expanded. As a practice, design is no longer limited to the world of material objects but rather extends from carefully crafted individual styles and online identities to the surrounding galaxies of personal devices, new materials, interfaces, networks, systems, infrastructures, data, chemicals, organisms, and genetic codes. Superhumanity seeks to explore and challenge our understanding of “design” by engaging with and departing from the concept of the “self.” This volume brings together more than fifty essays by leading scientists, artists, architects, designers, philosophers, historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists, originally disseminated online via e-flux Architecture between September 2016 and February 2017 on the invitation of the Third Istanbul Design Biennial. Probing the idea that we are and always have been continuously reshaped by the artifacts we shape, this book asks: Who designed the lives we live today? What are the forms of life we inhabit, and what new forms are currently being designed? Where are the sites, and what are the techniques, to design others? This vital and far-reaching collection of essays and images seeks to explore and reflect on the ways in which both the concept and practice of design are operative well beyond tangible objects, expanding into the depths of self and forms of life. Contributors: Zeynep Çelik Alexander, Lucia Allais, Shumon Basar, Ruha Benjamin, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Daniel Birnbaum, Ina Blom, Benjamin H. Bratton, Giuliana Bruno, Tony Chakar, Mark Cousins, Simon Denny, Keller Easterling, Hu Fang, Rubén Gallo, Liam Gillick, Boris Groys, Rupali Gupte, Andrew Herscher, Tom Holert, Brooke Holmes, Francesca Hughes, Andrés Jaque, Lydia Kallipoliti, Thomas Keenan, Sylvia Lavin, Yongwoo Lee, Lesley Lokko, MAP Office, Chus Martínez, Ingo Niermann, Ahmet Ögüt, Trevor Paglen, Spyros Papapetros, Raqs Media Collective, Juliane Rebentisch, Sophia Roosth, Felicity D. Scott, Jack Self, Prasad Shetty, Hito Steyerl, Kali Stull, Pelin Tan, Alexander Tarakhovsky, Paulo Tavares, Stephan Trüby, Etienne Turpin, Sven-Olov Wallenstein, Eyal Weizman, Mabel O. Wilson, Brian Kuan Wood, Liam Young, and Arseny Zhilyaev.

Unicorn Academy Nature Magic #2: Phoebe and Shimmer
Unicorn Academy Nature Magic #2: Phoebe and Shimmer

Author: Julie Sykes

Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers

Published: 2021-05-04

Total Pages: 130

ISBN-13: 059342672X

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What if you could save Unicorn Island? Unicorn Academy is back in this brand-new magical subseries about the environment, where everyone is paired with their very own unicorn! Readers will love the eco-friendly themes in this spin-off of the wildly popular Unicorn Academy series! Phoebe and her unicorn, Shimmer, are always looking for excitement and adventure! But when an inspector visits Unicorn Academy, everything at school must seem as calm as possible. Then, on a field trip to the beach, some surprise weather puts the whole class in danger. Can Phoebe and Shimmer save everyone on the beach and keep the inspector happy? Don't miss any books in this magical series! #1: Lily and Feather #2: Phoebe and Shimmer #3: Zara and Moonbeam