The Architect As Magician

The Architect as Magician explores the connection between magic and architecture. There is a belief that a greater understanding of the meaning of magic provides insights about architecture and architects' design process. Architects influence the effects of nature through the making of their buildings. In an analogous condition, magicians perform rituals in an attempt to influence the forces of nature. This book argues that architects could gain much by incorporating ideas from magic into their design process. The book demonstrates through historical and current examples the important influence magic has had on the practice of architecture. The authors explain how magic helps us to understand the way we infuse architecture with meaning and how magic affects and inspires architectural creation. Aimed at architects, students, scholars and researchers The Architect as Magician helps readers discover the ambiguous and spiritual elements in their design process.

The Architect as Magician explores the connection between magic and architecture. There is a belief that a greater understanding of the meaning of magic provides insights about architecture and architects’ design processes. Architects influence the effects of nature through the making of their buildings. In an analogous condition, magicians perform rituals in an attempt to influence the forces of nature. This book argues that architects could gain much by incorporating ideas from magic into their design process. The book demonstrates through historical and current examples the important influence magic has had on the practice of architecture. The authors explain how magic helps us to understand the way we infuse architecture with meaning and how magic affects and inspires architectural creation. Aimed at architects, students, scholars and researchers, The Architect as Magician helps readers discover the ambiguous and spiritual elements in their design process.

The Architect as Magician explores the connection between magic and architecture. There is a belief that a greater understanding of the meaning of magic provides insights about architecture and architects’ design processes. Architects influence the effects of nature through the making of their buildings. In an analogous condition, magicians perform rituals in an attempt to influence the forces of nature. This book argues that architects could gain much by incorporating ideas from magic into their design process. The book demonstrates through historical and current examples the important influence magic has had on the practice of architecture. The authors explain how magic helps us to understand the way we infuse architecture with meaning and how magic affects and inspires architectural creation. Aimed at architects, students, scholars and researchers, The Architect as Magician helps readers discover the ambiguous and spiritual elements in their design process.

An understanding of architects’ character traits can offer important insights into how they design buildings. These traits include leadership skills necessary to coordinate a team, honest and ethical behavior, being well educated and possessing a life-long love of learning, flexibility, resourcefulness, and visionary and strategic thinking. Characteristics such as these describe a successful person. Architects also possess these traits, but they have additional skills specifically valuable for the profession. These will include the ability to question the use of digital media, new materials, processes, and methods to convey meaning in architectural form. Although not exhaustive, a discussion of such subjects as defining, imaging, persuading, and fabricating will reveal representational meaning useful for the development of an understanding of architects’ character. Through the analogies and metaphors found in Greek myth, the book describes the elusive, hard-to-define characteristics of architects to engage the dilemmas of a changing architectural landscape. Building the Architect’s Character: Explorations in Traits examines traditional and archetypal characteristics of the successful architect to ask if they remain relevant today.

Almost, Not: The Architecture of Atelier Nishikata is the story of a remarkable architecture practice in Tokyo. Partners Reiko Nishio and Hirohito Ono have built just four residential works, until now remaining little-known outside of Japan. But the extraordinary, almost-ordinary quality of their work warrants the spotlight. It has much to teach students of architecture and experienced architects alike. This book is a hybrid between an architectural monograph and a magic instruction book. Author Leslie Van Duzer, a former magician's assistant and author of four monographs on 20th-century architecture, draws parallels between the effects and methods of architects and magicians. The introductory essay, "Almost, Not," presents an overview of Atelier Nishikata's approach, describing the effects engendered by their architecture and the methods behind the them. The essay is followed by four detailed project descriptions that elaborate on the strategies behind the work. These texts are richly illustrated with process work, diagrams, detailed drawings, and photographs, including before and after views of the renovated spaces, and views post-inhabitation. The volume closes with a lengthy interview with the architects to help flesh out the methods behind their madness.

As a child in Russia, Vladimir Nabokov enjoyed conjuring. In this engrossing book, Princeton's Michael Wood explores the blend of arrogance and mischief that makes Nabokov such a fascinating and elusive master of fiction. "Wood's book is . . . so acute in its insights, so replete with clear thoughts . . . . (It) offers us an entirely new set of insights into the work of a modern master".--THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS.

A hilarious, irreverent book about doing your own thing Meet Iggy Peck—creative, independent, and not afraid to express himself! In the spirit of David Shannon’s No, David and Rosemary Wells’s Noisy Nora, Iggy Peck will delight readers looking for irreverent, inspired fun. Iggy has one passion: building. His parents are proud of his fabulous creations, though they’re sometimes surprised by his materials—who could forget the tower he built of dirty diapers? When his second-grade teacher declares her dislike of architecture, Iggy faces a challenge. He loves building too much to give it up! With Andrea Beaty’s irresistible rhyming text and David Roberts’s puckish illustrations, this book will charm creative kids everywhere, and amuse their sometimes bewildered parents. Also from the powerhouse author-illustrator team of Iggy Peck, Architect, is Rosie Revere, Engineer, a charming, witty picture book about believing in yourself and pursuing your passion. Ada Twist, Scientist, the companion picture book featuring the next kid from Iggy Peck's class, is available in September 2016.