Letters To Architects

Letters to Architects presents letters addressed to architects practicing throughout the world, many of them contemporaries with Frank Lloyd Wright during the first half of the twentieth century. Taken as a whole, this selection of letters aims at revealing an underlying unity of purpose: the growth of his work and the unquestionable magnitude of influence it engendered in the world of architecture. The letters are organized into five sections. Section One presents the first publication ever to be made of the letters between Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis H. Sullivan. Section Two traces Wright's concern, through letters addressed to both European and American architects, that his work be understood as the cornerstone of an American Culture. In Section Three, correspondence has been selected to include three specific persons: Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Lewis Mumford, and Howard Myers. These men offered Wright a special forum from which he could speak to the profession as a whole, most particularly through the medium of publication. Section Four narrates, by means of letters to various architects concerned with the assembling and exhibition of the largest one man architectural exhibition ever to be produced, the details, trials, problems, and results of such a large undertaking. Section Five recounts the honors bestowed on Frank Lloyd Wright first in England, in 1941, and then in his own country, in 1949. It shows his concern for the profession of architecture in the moving address he gave at the occasion of his receiving the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects.

Architects and contract administrators spend a great deal of timewriting letters of various types. Many of them are routine andrepetitive in character, but they require proper consideration ifpotentially dangerous liability situations are to be avoided. This book provides some 285 standard letters for use at allstages of project administration. To assist the user, they aregrouped into sections which correspond with the RIBA Plan of Work:the aim is to cover all the common situations encountered inpractice. The book has been revised to take account of the latest contractrevisions and many letters have been added. Unless otherwisestated, all letters are suitable for use with: JCT 98 WCD 98 IFC 98 MW 98 GC/Works/1 (1998) The latest edition also takes account of the three new RIBAStandard Forms of Agreement for Appointment of an Architect:SFA/99, CE/99 and SW/99 Although primarily written for architects and contractsadministrators, the book will also be of use to project managersand employers’ agents under WCD 98. Contractors will alsofind much of interest.

The basics of the profession and practice of architecture, presented in illustrated A-Z form. The word "architect" is a noun, but Doug Patt uses it as a verb—coining a term and making a point about using parts of speech and parts of buildings in new ways. Changing the function of a word, or a room, can produce surprise and meaning. In How to Architect, Patt—an architect and the creator of a series of wildly popular online videos about architecture—presents the basics of architecture in A-Z form, starting with "A is for Asymmetry" (as seen in Chartres Cathedral and Frank Gehry), detouring through "N is for Narrative," and ending with "Z is for Zeal" (a quality that successful architects tend to have, even in fiction—see The Fountainhead's architect-hero Howard Roark.) How to Architect is a book to guide you on the road to architecture. If you are just starting on that journey or thinking about becoming an architect, it is a place to begin. If you are already an architect and want to remind yourself of what drew you to the profession, it is a book of affirmation. And if you are just curious about what goes into the design and construction of buildings, this book tells you how architects think. Patt introduces each entry with a hand-drawn letter, and accompanies the text with illustrations that illuminate the concept discussed: a fallen Humpty Dumpty illustrates the perils of fragile egos; photographs of an X-Acto knife and other hand tools remind us of architecture's nondigital origins. How to Architect offers encouragement to aspiring architects but also mounts a defense of architecture as a profession—by calling out a defiant verb: architect!

The Crystal Chain - "Die glaserne Kette" - was a utopian correspondence initiated by Bruno Taut in 1919-1920, in which a small group of like-minded architects and artists exchanged ideas on what form the architecture of the future should take. Unfettered by the demands of practicability, the members of the group described their visions of an ideal society and of a beneficent architecture in a series of dazzling, fantastic letters and drawings. Although the letters are referred to in almost every survey of twentieth century architecture, this is the first book to offer in English the complete texts of all the known Crystal Chain letters, including some which have never been published in German. The letters are accompanied by illustrations, an introductory essay, and explanatory notes. The Crystal Chain letters document the crisis of modernism that afflicted German architectural theory in the years immediately following the First World War. The trauma of the war and the subsequent social unrest led the radical architects to reject the materialism and positivism that had characterized the "Kaiserreich." The result was an ideological and aesthetic vacuum, and the search for suitable alternatives provided the basis for the correspondence. After a year of intense theoretical speculation, several of the links in the chain, including Bruno and Max Taut, Walter Gropius, Hans and Wassili Luckhardt, and Hans Scharoun, emerged as leading advocates and practitioners of the new architecture in Germany. Iain Boyd Whyte is an English architectural historian. He is the author of several books including Bruno Taut and the Architecture of Activism, and the translator of Industriekultur: Peter Behrens and the AEG (MIT Press, 1984).

This alphabet book teaches concepts of architecture and design through materials, buildings, and shapes - all while learning your ABCs! Each letter is taught through a main lesson page and a secondary page where the child can see, learn, and find more of the letter being learned. Here's to all of the little future architects learning their letters and words!

Spanning a period of over half a century, from the early 1940s until his death in 1999, Colin Rowe wrote a multitude of letters to his parents in England and to friends Henry Russell Hitchcock and Ernst Gombrich; to colleagues Stanford Anderson, Robert Maxwell, Michael Spens, Alan Colquhoun, Alvin Boyarsky, John Miller; to architects Louis Kahn and Peter Eisenman; and most intimately and candidly, to his brother, sister-in-law, and nephews in Oxford, England.