It Happened By Design The Life And Work Of Arthur Q Davis

In 1947, a time in which few New Orleans-based architects were designing modern architecture, Arthur Q. Davis (b. 1920) and his partner Nathaniel C. Curtis established their practice in the city. The Curtis and Davis firm is best known for designing the city's iconic Louisiana Superdome and such modernist landmarks as New Orleans's Rivergate Exhibition Center, the Hyatt Regency and Marriott hotels, and the Milton K. Latter Library. Davis has designed public and private works commissioned throughout the United States as well as in Saudi Arabia, Germany, Egypt, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Davis's firm has received more than fifty awards for design excellence and, at age thirty-eight, Davis was made the youngest Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. It Happened by Design provides an affecting and thorough narrative of Davis's life and achievements. After serving in the Navy during World War II, Davis graduated from Harvard University's School of Design on the G.I. Bill, studying with Bauhaus school founder Walter Gropius. In this book, Davis explains how he fused Creole and Beaux-Arts ideas together, filtering those concepts through modernist aesthetics to create new forms while preserving the old. The book shows Davis challenging the architectural status quo during the Cold War and beyond. Whether discussing the politics of building in postwar Berlin, Vodou masters in the Caribbean, or struggles to modernize the skyline of his beloved New Orleans, Davis crafts a narrative with wit and insight. An introductory essay by J. Richard Gruber places Davis's work in the context of American architecture and provides a thorough summation of the architect's oeuvre.

In 1947, a time in which few New Orleans-based architects were designing modern architecture, Arthur Q. Davis (b. 1920) and his partner Nathaniel C. Curtis established their practice in the city. The Curtis and Davis firm is best known for designing the city's iconic Louisiana Superdome and such modernist landmarks as New Orleans's Rivergate Exhibition Center, the Hyatt Regency and Marriott hotels, and the Milton K. Latter Library. Davis has designed public and private works commissioned throughout the United States as well as in Saudi Arabia, Germany, Egypt, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Davis's firm has received more than fifty awards for design excellence and, at age thirty-eight, Davis was made the youngest Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. It Happened by Design provides an affecting and thorough narrative of Davis's life and achievements. After serving in the Navy during World War II, Davis graduated from Harvard University's School of Design on the G.I. Bill, studying with Bauhaus school founder Walter Gropius. In this book, Davis explains how he fused Creole and Beaux-Arts ideas together, filtering those concepts through modernist aesthetics to create new forms while preserving the old. The book shows Davis challenging the architectural status quo during the Cold War and beyond. Whether discussing the politics of building in postwar Berlin, Vodou masters in the Caribbean, or struggles to modernize the skyline of his beloved New Orleans, Davis crafts a narrative with wit and insight. An introductory essay by J. Richard Gruber places Davis's work in the context of American architecture and provides a thorough summation of the architect's oeuvre.

The Kingdome, John (“Jack”) Christiansen’s best-known work, was the largest freestanding concrete dome in the world. Built amid public controversy, the multipurpose arena was designed to stand for a thousand years but was demolished in a great cloud of dust after less than a quarter century. Many know the fate of Seattle’s iconic dome, but fewer are familiar with its innovative structural engineer, Jack Christensen (1927–2017), and his significant contribution to Pacific Northwest and modernist architecture. Christiansen designed more than a hundred projects in the region: public schools and gymnasiums, sculptural church spaces, many of the Seattle Center’s 1962 World’s Fair buildings, and the Museum of Flight’s vast glass roof all reflect his expressive ideas. Inspired by Northwest topography and drawn to the region’s mountains and profound natural landscapes, Christiansen employed hyperbolic paraboloid forms, barrel-vault structures, and efficient modular construction to echo and complement the forms he loved in nature. Notably, he became an enthusiastic proponent of using thin shell concrete—the Kingdome being the most prominent example—to create inexpensive, utilitarian space on a large scale. Tyler Sprague places Christiansen within a global cohort of thin shell engineer-designers, exploring the use of a remarkable structural medium known for its minimal use of material, architectually expressive forms, and long-span capability. Examining Christiansen’s creative design and engineering work, Sprague, who interviewed Christiansen extensively, illuminates his legacy of graceful, distinctive concrete architectural forms, highlighting their lasting imprint on the region’s built environment. A Michael J. Repass Book

Arranged in alphabetical order, these 5 volumes encompass the history of the cultural development of America with over 2300 entries.

Even the most well-known people have struggled to succeed! This follow-up to Fantastic Failures offers up a second dose of fascinating stories featuring flops that turned into triumphs. Kids today are under a lot of pressure to succeed, but failure has an important place in life as young people learn how to be a successful person. In his teaching career, Luke Reynolds saw the stress and anxiety his students suffered, whether it was over grades, fitting in, or simply getting things right the first time. Even More Fantastic Failures is a second installment in Luke Reynolds’s personal campaign to show kids it’s okay to fall down or make mistakes, just so long as you try, try again! Kids will read about a host of inspiring, courageous, and diverse people who have accomplished—or still are accomplishing—big things to make this world a better place. A wide range of stories about Barack Obama, Greta Thunberg, Nick Foles, Emma Gonzalez, Beyoncé, Ryan Coogler, John Cena, Socrates, and even the Jamaican national women’s soccer team, prove that the greatest mistakes and flops can turn into something amazing. In between these fun profiles, Reynolds features great scientists and other pivotal people whose game-changing discovery started as a failure. Readers will enjoy seeing stories they know highlighted in the new feature “Off the Page and On the Screen,” which showcases how failures and successes are presented in books and film. Each profile includes advice to readers on how to come back from their own flops and move forward to succeed.

Southern Bound represents a running conversation on books, writers, and literary travel written for the Mobile Press-Register Books page from 1995 to 2011 by John S. Sledge. The collection includes more than one hundred of the best pieces culled from Sledge’s total output of approximately seven hundred columns. Numerous classic authors are celebrated in these pages, including Homer, Plato, Gibbon, Melville, Proust, Conrad, Cather, and Steinbeck as well as modern writers such as Walter Edgar, Tom Franklin, and Eugene Walter. While some of the essays are relatively straightforward book reviews, others present meditative and deeply personal perspectives on the author’s literary experiences such as serving on the jury in the play version To Kill a Mockingbird; spending the night alone in a Jesuit college library’s venerable stacks; rambling through funky New Orleans bookshops; talking to Square Books owner Richard Howarth while overlooking the Oxford, Mississippi courthouse; rereading Treasure Island on the shores of Mobile Bay; and remembering a beloved father’s favorite books. Engaging and spirited, Southern Bound represents the critical art at its most accessible and will prove entertaining fare for anyone who loves the written word.

Following the disaster of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, people began to discuss and visualize the ways in which the urban structure of the city could be reorganized. Rather than defining the disaster recovery process as simply a matter of rebuilding the existing city, these voices called for a more radical rethinking of the city’s physical, social and environmental systems. This idea of disaster as an opportunity for urban restructuring is a hallmark of a "design moment." Design moments are different from the incremental process of urban growth and development. Instead of gradual growth and change, design moments present the opportunity for a significant restructuring of urban form that can shape the city for decades to come. As such, a design moment presents a critical juncture in the historical growth and development of a city. In this book we explore the question: what does urban design have to do with a disaster like Hurricane Katrina? Focused on New Orleans, the authors explore different dimensions of the post-disaster design moment, including the politics of physical redevelopment, the city’s history and identity, justice and the image of the city, demolition and housing development, and the environmental aspects of the recovery process. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Urban Design.

A THOUGHT-PROVOKING LOOK AT THE BIG BUSINESS AND IMMORAL PRACTICES BEHIND PROFESSIONAL SPORTS BY ACCLAIMED SPORTSWRITER DAVE ZIRIN, HAILED AS THE “CONSCIENCE OF AMERICAN SPORTSWRITING” (THE WASHINGTON POST ) The fastest-growing sector of today’s sports audience is the alienated fan. Complaints abound: from inflated ticket prices, $6 hot dogs, and $9 beers to owners endlessly demanding new multimillion-dollar stadiums funded by public tax dollars. Those sitting in the owners’ boxes are increasingly placing profit over players’ performances and fan loyalty. Bad Sports cuts through the hype and bombast to zero in on tales of abusive, dictatorial owners who move their teams thousands of miles away from their fan base, use their stadiums as religious and political platforms, or hold communities ransom for millions of dollars of taxpayer money to fund their gargantuan stadiums. As the multibillion-dollar sports-industrial complex continues to lumber along, Dave Zirin is the voice in the wilderness, speaking out for the common fan with a tough, passionate, and intelligent voice that will remind readers that there is more to sportswriting than glowing athlete profiles.