Taking Shape A New Contract Between Architecture And Nature

'Taking Shape' explores the evolution of scientific and academic theories that have resulted in the concept of sustainability. Susannah Hagan uses this as a basis to argue for developments in the future and argues that these theories are not 'just an intellectual and aesthetic regression' as they are often perceived to be. By focusing on the impact of the new theories of sustainable technology and new materials in architecture, Hagan moves the discourse and practice of environmental sustainability within architecture towards a greater degree of awareness of both its cultural significance and cultural potential. In short, it demonstrates the capacity of sustainable architecture to embrace cultural and technical innovation.

Design Education: Creating Thinkers to Improve the World is a curricular resource that offers theoretical concepts and practical advice for teaching lessons in design to PreK-12 grade students. The book is for art educators at the preK-12 level in schools, museums, and enrichment programs, and university professors in teacher preparation programs. Design education is about problem-solving, learning through objects of our daily lives, and the role design plays in social responsibility and the creative economy. Designers utilize research methods, technology, sketching, and the construction of prototypes. The basis of these techniques, systems, and tools may be taught to Prek-12 students. Students need lifelong skills that build their creativity and problem-solving capabilities to better understand the world and themselves and use visual communication to advance their abilities to express ideas. Design is a study about life and can touch on all school subjects, making it a valuable interdisciplinary study. Students are able to directly apply thinking strategies and learning about facts, figures, and concepts at the same time they are crafting meaningful ideas about the importance, influence, and social implications of everyday items and the potential to improve the world.

This book explores how Malaysia, as a multicultural modern nation, has approached issues of nationalism and regionalism in terms of physical expression of the built environment. Ever since the nation’s post-Colonial era, architects and policy makers have grappled with the theoretical and practical outcomes of creating public architecture that effectively responds to traditions, nationhood and modernity. The authors compile and analyse prevailing ideas and strategies, present case studies in architectural language and form, and introduce the reader to tensions arising between a nationalist agenda and local ‘regionalist’ architectural language. These dichotomies represent the very nature of multicultural societies and issues with identity; a challenge that various nations across the globe face in a changing environment. This topical and pertinent volume will appeal to students and scholars of urban planning, architecture and the modern city.

"Offers an intense scholarly experience in its comprehensiveness, its variety of voices and its formal organization... the editors took a risk, experimented and have delivered a much-needed resource that upends the status-quo." - Architectural Histories, journal of the European Architectural History Network "Architectural theory interweaves interdisciplinary understandings with different practices, intentions and ways of knowing. This handbook provides a lucid and comprehensive introduction to this challenging and shifting terrain, and will be of great interest to students, academics and practitioners alike." - Professor Iain Borden, UCL Bartlett School of Architecture "In this collection, architectural theory expands outward to interact with adjacent discourses such as sustainability, conservation, spatial practices, virtual technologies, and more. We have in The Handbook of Architectural Theory an example of the extreme generosity of architectural theory. It is a volume that designers and scholars of many stripes will welcome." - K. Michael Hays, Eliot Noyes Professor of Architectural Theory, Harvard University The SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory documents and builds upon the most innovative developments in architectural theory over the last two decades. Bringing into dialogue a range of geographically, institutionally and historically competing positions, it examines and explores parallel debates in related fields. The book is divided into eight sections: Power/Difference/Embodiment Aesthetics/Pleasure/Excess Nation/World/Spectacle History/Memory/Tradition Design/Production/Practice Science/Technology/Virtuality Nature/Ecology/Sustainability City/Metropolis/Territory. Creating openings for future lines of inquiry and establishing the basis for new directions for education, research and practice, the book is organized around specific case studies to provide a critical, interpretive and speculative enquiry into the relevant debates in architectural theory.

Understanding Sustainable Architecture is a review of the assumptions, beliefs, goals and bodies of knowledge that underlie the endeavour to design (more) sustainable buildings and other built developments. Much of the available advice and rhetoric about sustainable architecture begins from positions where important ethical, cultural and conceptual issues are simply assumed. If sustainable architecture is to be a truly meaningful pursuit then it must be grounded in a coherent theoretical framework. This book sets out to provide that framework. Through a series of self-reflective questions for designers, the authors argue the ultimate importance of reasoned argument in ecological, social and built contexts, including clarity in the problem framing and linking this framing to demonstrably effective actions. Sustainable architecture, then, is seen as a revised conceptualisation of architecture in response to a myriad of contemporary concerns about the effects of human activity. The aim of this book is to be transformative by promoting understanding and discussion of commonly ignored assumptions behind the search for a more environmentally sustainable approach to development. It is argued that design decisions must be based on both an ethical position and a coherent understanding of the objectives and systems involved. The actions of individual designers and appropriate broader policy settings both follow from this understanding.

The Elements of Architecture is a clear and well structured introduction to sustainable architecture, which concentrates on general principles to make an accessible and comprehensive primer for undergraduate students. The author takes a fresh and logical approach, focusing on the way aspects of the built environment are experienced by the occupants and how that experience is interpreted in architectural design. He works through basic elements and senses (sun; heat; light; sound; air; water and fire) to explain and frame effective environmental architectural design - not only arguing that the buildings we inhabit should be viewed as extensions of our bodies that interact with and protect us from these elements, but also using this analogy to explain complex ideas in an accessible manner.

Since the mid-1980s, and in particular the 1992 environmental summit in Rio de Janeiro, sustainability has become a global issue and the subject of international debate. In the context of architecture sustainability implies the use of intelligent technology, innovative construction methods, ecologically friendly materials and use of environmentally-friendly energy resources. This book begins with an overview of the various approaches and developments in sustainable architecture, followed by an in-depth section on urbanism looking at several European towns. In the third section the technologies, materials and methods of ecological architecture are examined. Concluding the volume are 23 sophisticated and innovative European case studies. The author and architect Dominique Gauzin-Müller has specialised on energy and environmental issues and ecological architecture for over 15 years.