Seven Floors High is based around a true story of life inside iaxis, a London based telecoms start-up company valued at US$1 Billion during the “Dot.Com” boom. Written with style, insight and often hilarious humour, Goddard’s story is an exhilarating account of greed, hubris and corporate extravagance in the iaxis quest for a stock market floatation. Set as a background to the iaxis story, Seven Floors High also contains a very powerful Non-Fiction sub-theme which lifts the lid on the secret world of NSA telecommunications spying and covert CIA operations in the Middle East.
Seven Floors High is based around a true story of life inside iaxis, a London based telco start-up during the NASDAQ boom of 2000. Written with style and humour, the story is a personal account of one individual who saw the "paper tiger" from the inside. Set against this backdrop, the book also contains a very powerful Non-Fiction sub-theme describing in great detail, with insight and analysis, several covert intelligence operations carried out by America's National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency. This intelligence sub-theme pays very close attention to the build up of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and also details several other covert operations from recent history.
An examination of the secret psychology of the city and how it affects our daily happiness. More and more of us are choosing to live in the man-made environment of the city. The mismatch between this artificial world and our nature-starved souls can contribute to the stresses of city living in a way that is barely noticed—but is crucially important. What does the science of architectural psychology tell us about how the world of brick and concrete affects how we think, feel and behave? In an increasingly crowded urban world, how does good urban design inspire, restore and bring us together? Conversely, how does bad architecture cause anxiety, alienation and depression? Starting with the home and reaching out to the street, neighbourhood and wider city landscape, Headspace teaches us how to see our cities differently, and how we can best adapt to our rapidly changing urban world. Praise for Headspace “Full of interesting nuggets. Presents the results of scores of scientific studies into the physical environment and does so in a pleasant, discursive way.” —Will Wiles, RIBA Journal “A properly glorious book. Amazing.” —Monocle Radio “Links what we build with what we do. It’s an important question—an architectural holy grail, in a way.” —Evening Standard
Every age and every culture has relied on the incorporation of mathematics in their works of architecture to imbue the built environment with meaning and order. Mathematics is also central to the production of architecture, to its methods of measurement, fabrication and analysis. This two-volume edited collection presents a detailed portrait of the ways in which two seemingly different disciplines are interconnected. Over almost 100 chapters it illustrates and examines the relationship between architecture and mathematics. Contributors of these chapters come from a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds: architects, mathematicians, historians, theoreticians, scientists and educators. Through this work, architecture may be seen and understood in a new light, by professionals as well as non-professionals. Volume II covers architecture from the Late Renaissance era, through Baroque, Ottoman, Enlightenment, Modern and contemporary styles and approaches. Key figures covered in this volume include Palladio, Michelangelo, Borromini, Sinan, Wren, Wright, Le Corbusier, Breuer, Niemeyer and Kahn. Mathematical themes which are considered include linear algebra, tiling and fractals and the geographic span of the volume’s content includes works in the United States of America and Australia, in addition to those in Europe and Asia.
