The Building World

In 2010, Burj Khalifa achieved the title of Tallest Building in the World. The 2,717-foot structure, located in downtown Dubai, has 160 habitable floors and can accommodate more than 12,000 people. Its 54 elevators take only 60 seconds to reach the world's highest observation deck on the 124th floor. Suitable for ages 10 and up with adult supervision, this two-foot-high replica model of the ultramodern building appeals to hobbyists of all ages and makes a great family activity. Complete, easy-to-follow instructions include detailed diagrams for ease of assembly.

An essential exploration of how Russian ideas about the United States shaped architecture and urban design from the czarist era to the fall of the U.S.S.R. Idealized representations of America, as both an aspiration and a menace, played an important role in shaping Russian architecture and urban design from the American Revolution until the fall of the Soviet Union. Jean-Louis Cohen traces the powerful concept of “Amerikanizm” and its impact on Russia’s built environment from early czarist interest in Revolutionary America, through the spectacular World’s Fairs of the 19th century, to department stores, skyscrapers, and factories built in Russia using American methods during the 20th century. Visions of America also captivated the Russian avant-garde, from El Lissitzky to Moisei Ginzburg, and Cohen explores the ongoing artistic dialogue maintained between the two countries at the mid-century and in the late Soviet era, following a period of strategic competition. This first major study of Amerikanizm in the architecture of Russia makes a timely contribution to our understanding of modern architecture and its broader geopolitics.

From the bestselling author of Skyscrapers, the behind-the-scenes story of the most extraordinary building in the world: One World Trade Center. The new World Trade Center represents one of the most complex collaborations in human history. Nearly every state in the nation, a dozen countries around the world, and more than 25,000 workers helped raise the tower, which consumed ninety million pounds of steel, one million square feet of glass, and enough concrete to pave a sidewalk from New York to Chicago. With more than seventy interviews with the people most intimately involved, and unprecedented access to the building site, suppliers, and archives, Duprè unfurls the definitive story of fourteen years of conflict and controversy-and its triumphant resolution. This fascinating, oversize book delivers new insight into the 1,776-foot-tall engineering marvel, from design and excavation through the final placement of its spire. It offers: Access to the minds of world-class architects, engineers, ironworkers, and other tradespeople Panoramas of New York from One World Observatory-1,268 feet above the earth Dramatic cutaways that show the building's advanced structural technologies A time-lapse montage showing the evolution of the sixteen-acre site Chronologies tracking design, construction, and financial milestones, with rare historic photographs It also features extensive tour of the entire Trade Center, including in-depth chapters on Two, Three, Four, and Seven World Trade Center; the National September 11 Memorial & Museum; Liberty Park; St. Nicholas National Shrine; and the soaring Transportation Hub. One World Trade Center is the only book authorized by the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, and the one book necessary to understand the new World Trade Center in its totality. This is a must-have celebration of American resilience and ingenuity for all who are invested in the rebuilding of Ground Zero.

Thanks to modern technology, we are now living in an age of multiplatform fictional worlds, as television, film, the Internet, graphic novels, toys, and more facilitate the creation of diverse yet compact imaginary universes, which are often recognizable as brands and exhibit well-defined identities. This volume, situated at the cutting edge of media theory, explores this phenomenon from both theoretical and practical perspectives, uncovering how the construction of these worlds influences our own determination of values and meaning in contemporary society.

Humans are builders--we make structures to span rivers, to connect points of land, to offer shelter. Indeed, throughout history, civilizations have created structures of such immense scale, requiring such tremendous resources, that they might have been thought impossible. From the Taj Mahal to the Suez Canal, from Solomon's Temple to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, these feats of macro-engineering are a testament to the creativity and foresight of engineers, architects, government officials, and diplomats. Who came up with the ideas for these projects? How did they see them through to completion? What obstacles--diplomatic, legal, logistical, and engineering--had to be overcome for these structures to be built? What impact did these engineering projects have on the economies and cultures of their societies? This encyclopedia answers all these questions, showing how central these great engineering projects are to the history of civilization. It includes the legal documents that launched them. Building the World comprises detailed entries on over forty of the most important engineering projects in world history, such as: Washington D.C., the Eiffel Tower, and the Channel Tunnel. The rich illustration program includes 66 photographs and 30 illustrations, maps, and drawings that document the most important structures ever built. Each entry includes a detailed history of the planning and construction of the project, and a discussion of its subsequent importance. A unique feature of the encyclopedia is an extensive primary source collection that illustrates how the decision to create such a structure came to be, demonstrating the importance of individuals in imagining, planning, and building some of the most famous engineering landmarks in the world.

World Building represents the state-of-the-discipline in worlds-based approaches to discourse, collected together for the first time. Over the last 40 years the 'text-as-world' metaphor has become one of the most prevalent and productive means of describing the experiencing of producing and receiving discourse. This has been the case in a range of disciplines, including stylistics, cognitive poetics, narratology, discourse analysis and literary theory. The metaphor has enabled analysts to formulate a variety of frameworks for describing and examining the textual and conceptual mechanics involved in human communication, articulating these variously through such concepts as 'possible worlds', 'text-worlds' and 'storyworlds'. Each of these key approaches shares an understanding of discourse as a logically grounded, cognitively and pragmatically complex phenomenon. Discourse in this sense is capable of producing highly immersive and emotionally affecting conceptual spaces in the minds of discourse participants. The chapters examine how best to document and analyze this and this is an essential collection for stylisticians, linguists and narrative theorists.