Reading In 50 Buildings

From ancient Jordan to modern-day Manhattan, this world tour of great buildings offers a course in architectural history for readers of all ages. The 50 buildings presented here in chronological order represent the most compelling, intriguing, and awe-inspiring structures from all over the world. Full color.

Explores the rich and fascinating history of Reading through an examination of some of its greatest architectural treasures.

The most inspirational buildings in the world, as chosen by well-known contemporary architects. In this book, published in conjunction with the Twentieth Century Society, 50 contemporary architects choose the buildings from around the world that have inspired them and made an impact on their own work. Architectural journalist Pamela Buxton interviewed each of the architects to create these outstanding portraits of the buildings that have influenced modern architecture. The diverse selection is introduced by Twentieth Century Society director Catherine Croft, and illustrated throughout with photographs by Gareth Gardner and Edward Tyler. The book features a diverse range of inspirational buildings, from housing estates to castles, coal mines to cathedrals. Work by the giants of twentieth-century architecture including Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Alvar Aalto are featured, as well as lesser-known gems. Examples include Richard Rogers (of RHSP) on Maison de Verre (Paris, France); Chris Williamson (of Weston Williamson) on the Eames House by Charles and Ray Eames (Los Angeles, USA); Takero Shimazaki (of T-SA, UK) on Hexenhaus by Alison and Peter Smithson (Bad Karlshafen, Germany); Ted Cullinan (of Cullinan Studio) on Chapel of Notre Dame Du Haut by Le Corbusier (Ronchamp, France); Michael Squire (of Squire & Partners, UK) on Grundtvig’s Church by Peder Vilhelm Jensen-Klint (Copenhagen, Denmark); and Jonathan Woolf (of Jonathan Woolf Architects) on Haus Esters and Haus Lange by Mies van der Rohe (Krefeld, Germany). This beautifully produced book offers a great insight into the power of existing architecture and its immense influence on the world we build today.

Draw 50 Buildings and Other Structures teaches aspiring artists how to draw with ease by following simple, step-by-step instructions. Celebrated author Lee J. Ames shows readers how to draw famous structures from all over the world, as well as an igloo, a barn and silo, a windmill, and even a teepee. Ames's illustration style and renowned drawing method has made him a leader in the step-by-step drawing manual, and the 31 books in his Draw 50 series have sold more than three million copies. Ames's instruction allows seasoned artists to refine their technique and guides amateurs to develop their own artistic abilities. Even the youngest artists can draw the tallest, grandest structures. It's easy to construct any type of building when it's done the Draw 50 way.

The Art of Reading Buildings focuses on the practical art of reading a building and applying its positive and negative attributes in developing a size-up for fireground operations that center on structure fires. First-due company officers, incident commanders, and safety officers will appreciate the practical “street-wise” lessons captured in the book. Chief officers, training officers, engineers, firefighters, and fire science degree candidates will benefit from the wide range of building construction topics covered in this text. Features include: • Understand the technical and practical aspects of building construction • Learn on-the-spot building construction assessment using the authors’ custom Rapid Street-Read Guides • Develop a quick construction size-up for immediate application to fireground operations • Recognize firefighter traps in newer and alternative construction methods • This text covers objectives for the National Fire Academy’s Fire and Emergency Services in Higher Education (FESHE) Building Construction for Fire Protection course

You can use this book to design a house for yourself with your family; you can use it to work with your neighbors to improve your town and neighborhood; you can use it to design an office, or a workshop, or a public building. And you can use it to guide you in the actual process of construction. After a ten-year silence, Christopher Alexander and his colleagues at the Center for Environmental Structure are now publishing a major statement in the form of three books which will, in their words, "lay the basis for an entirely new approach to architecture, building and planning, which will we hope replace existing ideas and practices entirely." The three books are The Timeless Way of Building, The Oregon Experiment, and this book, A Pattern Language. At the core of these books is the idea that people should design for themselves their own houses, streets, and communities. This idea may be radical (it implies a radical transformation of the architectural profession) but it comes simply from the observation that most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by architects but by the people. At the core of the books, too, is the point that in designing their environments people always rely on certain "languages," which, like the languages we speak, allow them to articulate and communicate an infinite variety of designs within a forma system which gives them coherence. This book provides a language of this kind. It will enable a person to make a design for almost any kind of building, or any part of the built environment. "Patterns," the units of this language, are answers to design problems (How high should a window sill be? How many stories should a building have? How much space in a neighborhood should be devoted to grass and trees?). More than 250 of the patterns in this pattern language are given: each consists of a problem statement, a discussion of the problem with an illustration, and a solution. As the authors say in their introduction, many of the patterns are archetypal, so deeply rooted in the nature of things that it seemly likely that they will be a part of human nature, and human action, as much in five hundred years as they are today.

The legacies of theaters, hotels, fire stations, flour mills, and more -- torn down, burned down, and otherwise lost -- are uncovered in this bittersweet collection. Using archival photographs, blueprints, and written reports, Raymond Biesinger has rendered a selection of Canada's most iconic lost buildings in his signature minimalist style. Accompanying Biesinger's illustrations are Alex Bozikovic's descriptions which capture each building's historical, cultural, and architectural significance. Bozikovic draws on local histories, archived building permits and his own extensive knowledge of the Canadian urban architectural landscape and its history -- from the letters passed through Kelowna's unlikely art deco post office to the destruction of a home in Halifax's Africville -- to offer fascinating, sometimes forgotten stories about each building and its significance. An impossible architectural walking tour, 305 Lost Buildings of Canada spans the country, its cities and countryside, and its history. Cities change, buildings come and go, but in this fact-filed compendium, you'll find the lost wonders of Canada's architecture.

An engaging introduction to buildings, with a deft mix of nonfiction and fiction elements.