Figures Of Architecture And Thought

In four previously published (in Italian) essays, thematically interwoven, Dal Co (architecture, U. di Architettura in Venice) interprets a cultural milieu that gave birth to the modern movement in Germany and Europe. Includes a great variety of bandw illustrations, and an anthology of primary documents. Translated from the Italian. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

More than 1,000 representations of the human figure in architectural drawings by architects ranging from Aalto to Zumthor, removed from their architectural context. Michael Meredith, Hilary Sample, and MOS present their rich findings on the human presence in architectural drawings not in any chronological or other linear order, but based on the convention of the encyclopedia, thus presenting (and perhaps deliberately condoning) surprise encounters made possible by the contingency created by alphabetical order.…. From the contemporary perspective of a pluralistic world, the form of the encyclopedia may be particularly apt to represent such a vast body of material as is presented here: defying any linear historical account or master narrative, it invites the reader to construct his or her own readings of the material by establishing relationships between individual drawings. —From the foreword by Martino Stierli Throughout history, across radically different movements in Western culture, the human figure appears and reappears, in multiple guises, to remind us, the observers, of architectural purpose and of our mutual position in the world.…This encyclopedia has enlarged or reduced all figures to the same approximate scale. Meredith, Sample, and MOS have gathered them here in an unprecedented, intoxicating way, like being at a fabulous party. —From the afterword by Raymund Ryan Architects draw buildings, and the buildings they draw are usually populated by representations of the human figure—drawn, copied, collaged, or inserted—most often to suggest scale. It is impossible to represent architecture without representing the human form. This book collects more than 1,000 scale figures by 250 architects but presents them in a completely unexpected way: it removes them from their architectural context, displaying them on the page, buildingless, giving them lives of their own. They are presented not thematically or chronologically but encyclopedically, alphabetically by architect (Aalto to Zumthor). In serendipitous juxtapositions, the autonomous human figures appear and reappear, displaying endless variations of architecturally rendered human forms. Some architects' figures are casually scrawled; others are drawn carefully by hand or manipulated by Photoshop; some are collaged and pasted, others rendered in charcoal or watercolors. Leon Battista Alberti presents a trident-bearing god; the Ant Farm architecture group provides a naked John and Yoko; Archigram supplies its Air Hab Village with a photograph of a happy family. Without their architectural surroundings, the scale figures present themselves as architecture's refugees. They are the necessary but often overlooked reference points that give character to spaces imagined for but not yet occupied by humans. Here, they constitute a unique sourcebook and an architectural citizenry of their own.

An introduction to architectural thought, this text is a thorough and accessible discussion in search of the principles of the design process. Documenting the non-verbal processes and decisions that architects and designers make is a difficult task, but one that is important when trying to understand the development of architectural design through the ages. Michael Brawne uses his experience as a practicing architect, academic and educator to provide an overview of the subject. By looking at the practices and buildings of architects past and present he incorporates history and philosophy in the search for a theory of design.

Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) President's Medal Award (multi-media representation of architecture). Canada's most distinguished architectural critics and scholars offer fresh insights into the country's unique modern and contemporary architecture. Beginning with the nation's centennial and Expo 67 in Montreal, this fifty-year retrospective covers the defining of national institutions and movements: • How Canadian architects interpreted major external trends • Regional and indigenous architectural tendencies • The influence of architects in Canada's three largest cities: Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver Co-published with Canadian Architect, this comprehensive reference book is extensively illustrated and includes fifteen specially commissioned essays.

While most studies on the history of architectural theory have been concerned with what has been said and written, this book is concerned with how architecture theory has been created and transmitted. Architecture Thinking across Boundaries looks at architectural theory through the lens of intellectual history. Eleven original essays explore a variety of themes and contexts, each examining how architectural knowledge has been transferred across social, spatial and disciplinary boundaries - whether through the international circulation of ideas, transdisciplinary exchanges, or transfers from design practice to theory and back again. Dissecting the frictions, transformations and resistances that mark these journeys, the essays in this book reflect upon the myriad routes that architectural knowledge has taken while developing into architectural theory. They critically enquire the interstices – geographical, temporal and epistemological – that lie beyond fixed narratives. They show how unstable, vital and eminently mobile the processes of thinking about architecture have been.

"It is rare to find in recent structures architectural allusions that remind us of valued human experiences and teach us to prize what we may have taken for granted. Symmetry and mechanical efficiency we may find, and surface application of set architectural styles, but these make no fundamental appeal to most of us. Our more deeply rooted responses to such architectural elements as texture, contour, and scale should, Herb Greene writes in this book, be more carefully studied by architects. Greene has long been recognized as a designer of houses that excite the imagination. Now he presents a beautifully illustrated commentary on his principles and methods. Ranging from discussions of the lingering influences of Cartesian mechanism to explanations for the uninhabitability of large public housing projects, this commentary approaches the topic of organic architecture from a point of view that is philosophic as well as practical, artistic as well as historical. To explain the mysterious power of certain architectural images, Greene offers a matrix theory, relying on the teachings of Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty about the nature of perception. He shows how he applies this theory in fascinating accounts of the design processes followed in an assortment of his one-of-a-kind houses built for specific clients. The mass market also wins attention in this book, Greene presents fresh approaches to functional and aesthetic problems in subdivision housing, high-rise development, and the highway commercial strip. In the housing models the tenant is offered active encouragement to make his home uniquely expressive of his own interests and taste. All the developments offer suggestions for a positive relation to region and place. Plans and photographs of many of Greene's buildings are included, and details from several of his collage paintings are reproduced. In addition a varied selection of illustrations - including examples of advertising art, Frank Lloyd Wright house plans, and pre-Columbian Indian sculpture - accompanies his explanation of the perceptual process and its effect on our response to images." --

Exploring the related cultural forms of architecture and literature in the modern era