Essays on Thermodynamics, Architecture and Beauty, is a book that unfolds arguments and designs around the concept of "thermodynamic beauty". This new aesthetic category opens up new and unexpected directions to the architect's work, connecting architecture and thermodynamics without giving up the tectonic tradition. The compendium will be developed through the concepts of Somatisms, Monsters Assemblage, Verticalism and Thermodynamic Materialism, summarizing design strategies, and opening new territories at the scales of building, public space and landscape.

A unique examination of building and culture.

Architectural ceramics have long been confined to decorative surfaces. Today innovations in material technology, production methods and assembly systems allow applications that combine the materials' emotional attractiveness with new functionalities. Ceramic materials take the form of building systems that are used for facades, roofs and interior walls.

Beyond pottery, the universe of ceramics encompesses bricks and concrete, auiomotive componeats, watch mechanisms and the tiles on space shuttles. This book will surprise and stimulate, with a diverse range of high- and low-tech applications. Ceramics offers an unparalleled and inspiring insight into this fascinating material. Book jacket.

The Companion Species Manifesto is about the implosion of nature and culture in the joint lives of dogs and people, who are bonded in "significant otherness." In all their historical complexity, Donna Haraway tells us, dogs matter. They are not just surrogates for theory, she says; they are not here just to think with. Neither are they just an alibi for other themes; dogs are fleshly material-semiotic presences in the body of technoscience. They are here to live with. Partners in the crime of human evolution, they are in the garden from the get-go, wily as Coyote. This pamphlet is Haraway's answer to her own Cyborg Manifesto, where the slogan for living on the edge of global war has to be not just "cyborgs for earthly survival" but also, in a more doggish idiom, "shut up and train."

Architects today incorporate principles of sustainable design as a matter of necessity. But the challenge of unifying climate control and building functionality, of securing a managed environment within a natural setting--and combating the harsh forces of wind, water, and sun--presented a new set of obstacles to architects and engineers in the mid-twentieth century. First published in 1963, Design with Climate was one of the most pioneering books in the field and remains an important reference for practitioners, teachers, and students, over fifty years later. In this book, Victor Olgyay explores the impact of climate on shelter design, identifying four distinct climatic regions and explaining the effect of each on orientation, air movement, site, and materials. He derives principles from biology, engineering, meteorology, and physics, and demonstrates how an analytical approach to climate management can merge into a harmonious and aesthetically sound design concept. This updated edition contains four new essays that provide unique insights on issues of climate design, showing how Olgyay's concepts work in contemporary practice. Ken Yeang, John Reynolds, Victor W. Olgyay, and Donlyn Lyndon explore bioclimatic design, eco design, and rational regionalism, while paying homage to Olgyay's impressive groundwork and contributions to the field of architecture.

Dirt--as in clay gravel sand silt soil loam mud--is everywhere and it's free. The ground we walk on and grow crops in also just happens to be the most widely used building material on the planet. Civilizations throughout time have used it to create stable warm low-impact structures. The world's first skyscrapers were built of mud brick. Paul Revere Chairman Mao and Ronald Reagan all lived in earth houses at various points in their lives and several of the buildings housing Donald Judd's priceless collection at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa Texas are made of mud brick. Currently it is estimated that one half of the world's population--approximately three billion people on six continents--lives or works in buildings constructed of earth. And while the vast legacy of traditional and vernacular earthen construction has been widely discussed little attention has been paid to the contemporary tradition of earth architecture. Author Ronald Rael founder of Eartharchitecture.org provides a history of building with earth in the modern era focusing particularly on projects constructed in the last few decades that use rammed earth mud brick compressed earth cob and several other interesting techniques.Earth Architecture presents a selection of more than 40 projects that exemplify new creative uses of the oldest building material on the planet. Rael's engaging narrative addresses the misconceptions associated with earth architecture. Many assume that it's only used for housing in poor rural areas--but there are examples of airports embassies hospitals museums and factories that are made of earth. It's also assumed that earth is a fragile ephemeral material while in reality some of the oldest extant buildings on the planet are made of earth. Rael also touches on many topics that pervade both architecture and popular media todaysuch as the ecological benefits and the politics of building with earth particularly in developing nations where earth buildings are often thought of as pre-modern or backward. With engaging discussion and more than 300 imagesEarth Architecture showcases the beauty and simplicity of one of humankind's most evolved and sophisticated building technologies.

Earth Moves, Bernard Cache's first major work, conceptualizes a series of architectural images as vehicles for two important developments. First, he offers a new understanding of the architectural image itself. Following Gilles Deleuze and Henri Bergson, he develops an account of the image that is nonrepresentational and constructive--images as constituents of a primary, image world, of which subjectivity itself is a special kind of image. Second, Cache redefines architecture beyond building proper to include cinematic, pictoral, and other framings.Complementary to this classification, Cache offers what is to date the only Deleuzean architectural development of the "fold," a form and concept that has become important over the last few years. For Cache, as for Deleuze, what is significant about the fold is that it provides a way to rethink the relationship between interior and exterior, between past and present, and between architecture and the urban.

The emergence of modern sciences in the seventeenth century profoundly renewed our understanding of nature. For the last three centuries new ideas of nature have been continually developed by theology, politics, economics, and science, especially the sciences of the material world. The situation is even more unstable today, now that we have entered an ecological mutation of unprecedented scale. Some call it the Anthropocene, but it is best described as a new climatic regime. And a new regime it certainly is, since the many unexpected connections between human activity and the natural world oblige every one of us to reopen the earlier notions of nature and redistribute what had been packed inside. So the question now arises: what will replace the old ways of looking at nature? This book explores a potential candidate proposed by James Lovelock when he chose the name 'Gaia' for the fragile, complex system through which living phenomena modify the Earth. The fact that he was immediately misunderstood proves simply that his readers have tried to fit this new notion into an older frame, transforming Gaia into a single organism, a kind of giant thermostat, some sort of New Age goddess, or even divine Providence. In this series of lectures on 'natural religion,' Bruno Latour argues that the complex and ambiguous figure of Gaia offers, on the contrary, an ideal way to disentangle the ethical, political, theological, and scientific aspects of the now obsolete notion of nature. He lays the groundwork for a future collaboration among scientists, theologians, activists, and artists as they, and we, begin to adjust to the new climatic regime.

Landscript 5 examines material culture in landscape architecture theory and design. Designed landscapes are temporal assemblages of extant and introduced materials, constructed and maintained through the efforts of human labour, mediated through non-human forces, and shaped by constantly changing cultural relations. Sites are bounded by property lines, yet their material relationships - from the transport of construction commodities to global water cycles - extend to untold limits. Designed landscapes are models of human-nature relations, at the same time they are human-nature relations, simultaneously representing and actualising the co-production of the world. Landscript 5 looks at aesthetic implications and design opportunities that engage with the material culture of the landscape. SELLING POINTS: * Fifth instalment in Landscript architecture series * Explores the intersection of landscape and material culture * Studies the arising aesthetic implications and opportunities for design 240 b/w images

"De Re Aedificatoria, by Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472), was the first modern treatise on the theory and practice of architecture and in its time a model of learned Latin writing. Its importance for the subsequent history of architecture is incalculable; yet this is the first major English translation based on the original text on which Alberti's reputation as a theorist is founded.Joseph Rykwert and his colleagues have been scrupulous in following Alberti's original intentions. Their version is based on the critical text published in 1966 by Giovanni Orlandi. It replaces the only other significant English version, by the Venetian architect James Leoni, whose source was not the original Latin but an Italian translation dating from the sixteenth century.Rykwert's substantial introduction discusses Alberti's life and career - as papal functionary, writer on a wide variety of topics, and architect and discusses the "De Re Aedificatoria itself - its relation to the De Architectura of Vitruvius,its influence on contemporary and later architectural theory and practice, and its bibliographic history. The apparatus also includes an index and a glossary of terms. The translators were fortunate to have the help of eminent Alberti scholar Hans-Karl Lucke of the University of Toronto.Alberti set out to replace Vitruvius's authority, which had been undisputed for over a thousand years. In a Latin which was both more elegant and more precise than that of his ancient pred

Since the 1979 publication of The Writings of Robert Smithson, Robert Smithson's significance as a spokesman for a generation of artists has been widely acknowledged and the importance of his thinking to contemporary artists and art critics continues to grow. In addition to a new introduction by Jack Flam, The Collected Writings includes previously unpublished essays by Smithson and gathers hard-to-find articles, interviews, and photographs. Together these provide a full picture of his wide-ranging views on art and culture.

"As an old admirer of Cyril Smith, I'm delighted to learn that a collection of his essays on the arts will be published. They are a unique body of work which only he could have produced." —Meyer Schapiro Science, art, and history all share common or analogous patterns of hierarchical order that are embedded into the structure of the material world as well. This is a central insight of these essays by a generalist who has also spent a lifetime working in his specialty, the nature of materials. To Cyril Stanley Smith, the transformation of metals from one state to another, or the contrasts at one level that merge through repetition into uniformity at a higher level, carries solid metaphorical implications for the human condition. Cyril Stanley Smith's own expansion of outlook to encompass successively technology, science, history, and art is loosely implicit in the chronological ordering of the fourteen essays included in this volume and explicitly developed in one of them that "comes as close to an autobiography as I am ever likely to write" and traces the evolution of Smith's ideas on science and art. Trained as an industrial metallurgist, Smith turned to the purely scientific study of the structure of metals and alloys after his experience at Los Alamos during World War II, drawn in part by his delight in the intrinsic beauty of these structural manifestations of symmetry and natural design. A growing interest in the history of the science and technology of materials led him to consult the artifactual evidence—the art objects in museums that either greatly predate written historical records or provide, through scientific examination, more reliable information than do the surviving documents of their period. This direct contact with fine or formal art only reinforced Smith's intuition that the aesthetic impulse is at play over the full range of human activity, whether it leads to the making of a bronze sculpture, a scientific theory, or a social reorganization. A variety of investigations of art objects is cited in the text, and the author regards the accompanying illustrations to be as important as the text. In particular, the essays make the case that historically many advances and discoveries regarding metals and ceramics came about through aesthetic curiosity and the desire to improve works of fine and decorative art, rather than through scientific investigation or in response to the need for products having practical utility. Many techniques and even whole industries, Smith writes, began with the making and reproduction of art works. Other essays deal with the emerging understanding of the remarkable properties of steel, the positive uses of corrosion, ancient casting and molding techniques, and the connection between attempts to reproduce oriental porcelain in Europe and modern geological ideas. Still others are more philosophical in approach.

This is Kenneth Frampton's follow-up to his A Critical History of Modern Architecture.

Sun, Wind, and Light: Architectural Design Strategies G. Z. Brown This book is for designers who want to consider the form-generating potential of sun, wind, and light in the earliest stages of the design process. It is designed to fit with the rapid, conceptual, exploratory, and synthetic thinking that characterizes the beginning of the design process. The book stresses the energy implications of using sun, wind, and light. However, it is organized by the architectural elements designers manipulate--streets, open spaces and buildings, rooms and courtyards, and walls, roofs, floors, and windows. These elements are discussed in terms of their organization--layered, elongated, dispersed, compact, and zoned--and their attributes--shape, orientation, enclosure, edge, and size. In addition, the contents are matched to the scale that is being considered--building groups, individual buildings, and building parts. Sun, Wind, and Light is divided into three parts: The Design Strategies section is intended to help the designer formulate the basic concept for a project. This section uses a one- or two-page format that contains a simple memorable statement of the strategy, a clear, concise explanation of the strategy, several provocative historical and contemporary architectural illustrations of the potential impact of the strategy on a building's form and organization, and a rule of thumb that allows the designer to size elements instantly, without calculation. This format makes the strategies stimulating, fast to use, and easy to integrate with other design concerns. The Analysis Techniques section helps the designer define the context of the problem by understanding the sun, wind, and light resources of a particular site and climate, and how those resources can be used in a particular building to reduce the energy used for heating, cooling, and lighting. The third section, Strategies For Supplementing Passive Systems, addresses the ways design strategies can be supplemented with conventional heating, cooling, and lighting systems. The book is extensively referenced so that more detailed information can be located easily. It contains a glossary of energy-related terms so that it can be used effectively by those who are not energy experts. For easy retrieval of information, the book is indexed by subject, building, and architect, and by charts, graphs, and tables.

The oldest and most influential book ever written on architecture, this volume served as a guide to Bramante, Michelangelo, Palladio, Vignola, and countless others. It describes the classic principles of symmetry, harmony, and proportion as well as the ancients' methods, materials, and aesthetics. Authoritative translation by a distinguished Harvard professor.

Our thermal environment is as rich in cultural associations as our visual, acoustic, olfactory, and tactile environments. This book explores the potential for using thermal qualities as an expressive element in building design. Until quite recently, building technology and design has favored high-energy-consuming mechanical methods of neutralizing the thermal environment. It has not responded to the various ways that people use, remember, and care about the thermal environment and how they associate their thermal sense with their other senses. The hearth fire, the sauna, the Roman and Japanese baths, and the Islamic garden are discussed as archetypes of thermal delight about which rituals have developed--reinforcing bonds of affection and ceremony forged in the thermal experience. Not only is thermal symbolism now obsolete but the modern emphasis on central heating systems and air conditioning and hermetically sealed buildings has actually damaged our thermal coping and sensing mechanisms. This book for the solar age could help change all that and open up for us a new dimension of architectural experience. As the cost of energy continues to skyrocket, alternatives to the use of mechanical force must be developed to meet our thermal needs. A major alternative is the use of passive solar energy, and the book will provide those interested in solar design with a reservoir of ideas.

To Life! Eco Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet documents the burgeoning eco art movement from A to Z, presenting a panorama of artistic responses to environmental concerns, from Ant Farm's anti-consumer antics in the 1970s to Marina Zurkow's 2007 animation that anticipates the havoc wreaked upon the planet by global warming. This text is the first international survey of twentieth and twenty-first-century artists who are transforming the global challenges facing humanity and the Earth's diverse living systems. Their pioneering explorations are situated at today's cultural, scientific, economic, spiritual, and ethical frontiers. The text guides students of art, design, environmental studies, and interdisciplinary studies to integrate environmental awareness, responsibility, and activism into their professional and personal lives.

Weather Architecture further extends Jonathan Hill¿s investigation of authorship by recognising the creativity of the weather. At a time when environmental awareness is of growing relevance, the overriding aim is to understand a history of architecture as a history of weather and thus to consider the weather as an architectural author that affects design, construction and use in a creative dialogue with other authors such as the architect and user. Environmental discussions in architecture tend to focus on the practical or the poetic but here they are considered together. Rather than investigate architecture¿s relations to the weather in isolation, they are integrated into a wider discussion of cultural and social influences on architecture. The analysis of weather¿s effects on the design and experience of specific buildings and gardens is interwoven with a historical survey of changing attitudes to the weather in the arts, sciences and society, leading to a critical re-evaluation of contemporary responses to climate change.

With the rise of science, we moderns believe, the world changed irrevocably, separating us forever from our primitive, premodern ancestors. But if we were to let go of this fond conviction, Bruno Latour asks, what would the world look like? His book, an anthropology of science, shows us how much of modernity is actually a matter of faith. What does it mean to be modern? What difference does the scientific method make? The difference, Latour explains, is in our careful distinctions between nature and society, between human and thing, distinctions that our benighted ancestors, in their world of alchemy, astrology, and phrenology, never made. But alongside this purifying practice that defines modernity, there exists another seemingly contrary one: the construction of systems that mix politics, science, technology, and nature. The ozone debate is such a hybrid, in Latour's analysis, as are global warming, deforestation, even the idea of black holes. As these hybrids proliferate, the prospect of keeping nature and culture in their separate mental chambers becomes overwhelming--and rather than try, Latour suggests, we should rethink our distinctions, rethink the definition and constitution of modernity itself. His book offers a new explanation of science that finally recognizes the connections between nature and culture--and so, between our culture and others, past and present. Nothing short of a reworking of our mental landscape. We Have Never Been Modern blurs the boundaries among science, the humanities, and the social sciences to enhance understanding on all sides. A summation of the work of one of the most influential and provocative interpreters of science, it aims at saving what is good and valuable in modernity and replacing the rest with a broader, fairer, and finer sense of possibility.