A Living Architecture

Founded by the author and other architects who studied and worked with Wright, Taliesin Architects has remained true to Wright's principles and philosophy of organic architecture principles explicated here and illustrated with 47 representative design projects executed between 1959 and 2000. The pro

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.

Elegantly written and filled with lush, full-color photos, this is the first in-depth portrait of H.H. Richardson, the greatest American architect of the 19th century and a man whose magnetic, colorful personality was equal to his genius. 150 photos, 100 in full color.

When architects venture from commercial commissions to home design, there is a freedom to take more risks, often resulting in their stylistic and philosophic visions to be most fully realized. Here, former House & Garden editor-in-chief Dominique Browning presents a stunning selection of America's most innovative and iconic houses of the 20th century, as crafted by these risk-takers and envelope-pushers. When forward-thinking art collectors John and Dominique de Menil needed a new home in the 1940s, they took a chance on a then-unknown architect named Philip Johnson. While initially a controversial structure for its minimalist, International Style, the home Johnson built for them near Houston has since become one of the country's most cherished cultural icons. In more than 130 illustrations, Browning highlights architecture's best in a range of styles and eras--from James Deering's Vizcaya, his 1916 Italian Renaissance-inspired villa in Miami, to postwar marvels by Bauhaus practitioners Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (Farnsworth House) and Marcel Breuer (Hooper House II), to more recent constructions, such as Marwan Al-Sayed's mirage-like House of Earth and Light in the Southwest desert. Featuring works that blur the lines between dwellings and art, Living Architecture is an excellent visual guide of cutting-edge architecture for both industry professionals and design lovers of all kinds. ILLUSTRATIONS 166 images

Extensively illustrated with photographs and drawings, Living Architecture highlights the most exciting green roof and living wall projects in Australia and New Zealand within an international context. Cities around the world are becoming denser, with greater built form resulting in more hard surfaces and less green space, leaving little room for vegetation or habitat. One way of creating more natural environments within cities is to incorporate green roofs and walls in new buildings or to retrofit them in existing structures. This practice has long been established in Europe and elsewhere, and now Australia and New Zealand have begun to embrace it. The installation of green roofs and walls has many benefits, including the management of stormwater and improved water quality by retaining and filtering rainwater through the plants’ soil and root uptake zone; reducing the ‘urban heat island effect’ in cities; increasing real estate values around green roofs and reducing energy consumption within the interior space by shading, insulation and reducing noise level from outside; and providing biodiversity opportunities via a vertical link between the roof and the ground. This book will appeal to a wide range of readers, from students and practitioners of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning and ecology, through to members of the community interested in how they can more effectively use the rooftops and walls of their homes or workplaces to increase green open space in the urban environment.

Rudolf Steiner has given us a "biography of architecture"-- architecture as a living being from its birth at the beginning of history until today, and with indications for the future. We see it with its own rhythms and patterns as with a human life. In Steiner's cosmology, architecture has reached (in terms of a human lifespan) the age and energy of the early thirties--so it is a biography in progress. Here is a concise, richly illustrated introduction to the architectural ideas of Rudolf Steiner. He was an early exponent of what has come to be called organic design in architecture, and this little volume clearly shows Steiner's influence on architects and designers around the world.

Blue Sky was born out of the ferment of the late 1960s and early 1970s, but it has proved to have much more talent, tenacity and imagination than most other idealistic initiatives from that time. Blue Sky