Sex and Buildings

Sex and Buildings PDF Author: Richard J. Williams
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1780231415
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
Massive modern skyscrapers, obelisks, towers—all are structures that, thanks to their phallic shape, are often associated with sex. But other buildings are more subtly connected, as they provide the frameworks for our sexual lives and act as reminders of our sexual memories. This relationship between sex and buildings mattered more than ever in the United States and Europe during the turbulent twentieth century, when a culture of unprecedented sexual frankness and tolerance emerged and came to dominate many aspects of public life. Part architectural history, part cultural history, and part travelogue, Sex and Buildings explores how progressive sexual attitudes manifest themselves in architecture, asking what progressive sexuality might look like architecturally and exploring the successes and failures of buildings' attempts to reflect it. In search of structures that reflect the sexual mores of their inhabitants, Richard J. Williams visits modernist buildings in Southern California, the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, the Playboy Mansion in Chicago, the Seagram in New York, communes from the 1960s, and more. A fascinating and often funny look at a period of extraordinary social change coupled with aesthetic invention, Sex and Buildings will change the way we look at the buildings around us.

India

India PDF Author: Peter Scriver
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1780234686
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 386

Book Description
A place of astonishing contrasts, India is home to some of the world’s most ancient architectures as well as some of its most modern. It was the focus of some of the most important works created by Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn, among other lesser-known masters, and it is regarded by many as one of the key sites of mid-twentieth century architectural design. As Peter Scriver and Amit Srivastava show in this book, however, India’s history of modern architecture began long before the nation’s independence as a modern state in 1947. Going back to the nineteenth century, Scriver and Srivastava look at the beginnings of modernism in colonial India and the ways that public works and patronage fostered new design practices that directly challenged the social order and values invested in the building traditions of the past. They then trace how India’s architecture embodies the dramatic shifts in Indian society and culture during the last century. Making sense of a broad range of sources, from private papers and photographic collections to the extensive records of the Indian Public Works Department, they provide the most rounded account of modern architecture in India that has yet been available.

KØBENHAVN. Urban Architecture and Public Spaces

KØBENHAVN. Urban Architecture and Public Spaces PDF Author: Eva Herrmann
Publisher: Detail Special
ISBN: 9783955535384
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
This book reveals Copenhagen's quality of life using the example of built spaces. It leads its readers on a tour of exploration, visiting exciting architecture projects and surprising districts between Orestadt and Nordhavn. A total of over 25 exceptional buildings, urban squares and public spaces created in the past 10 years are presented. Documented with brilliant photos, general plans and texts, these projects paint an image of a brave generation of architects and planners who are not afraid to employ novel solutions. On display are daring typologies such as Amager Bakke, a ski slope on a waste incineration plant by BIG, spectacular iconic buildings, including the Royal Danish Aquarium by 3XN or popular public spaces for the urban community.

Manual of Section

Manual of Section PDF Author: Paul Lewis
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1616895551
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Book Description
Along with plan and elevation, section is one of the essential representational techniques of architectural design; among architects and educators, debates about a project's section are common and often intense. Until now, however, there has been no framework to describe or evaluate it. Manual of Section fills this void. Paul Lewis, Marc Tsurumaki, and David J. Lewis have developed seven categories of section, revealed in structures ranging from simple one-story buildings to complex structures featuring stacked forms, fantastical shapes, internal holes, inclines, sheared planes, nested forms, or combinations thereof. To illustrate these categories, the authors construct sixty-three intricately detailed cross-section perspective drawings of built projects—many of the most significant structures in international architecture from the last one hundred years—based on extensive archival research. Manual of Section also includes smart and accessible essays on the history and uses of section.

The Open Hand

The Open Hand PDF Author: Russell Walden
Publisher: Cambridge : MIT Press
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 522

Book Description
The fourteen essays are by Russell Walden, Paul Turner, Patricia Sekler, Maurice Favre, Brian Taylor, Charles Jencks, Anthony Sutcliffe, Robert Fishman, Martin Purdy, John Winter, Maxwell Fry, Jane Drew, Madhu Sarin, and Stanislaus von Moos.

Seeing Like a State

Seeing Like a State PDF Author: James C. Scott
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300252986
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 462

Book Description
“One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades.”—John Gray, New York Times Book Review Hailed as “a magisterial critique of top-down social planning” by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail—sometimes catastrophically—in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. “Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.”—New Yorker “A tour de force.”— Charles Tilly, Columbia University

Icebergs, Zombies, and the Ultra-Thin

Icebergs, Zombies, and the Ultra-Thin PDF Author: Matthew Soules
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1648960294
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Book Description
"Soules's excellent book makes sense of the capitalist forces we all feel but cannot always name... Icebergs, Zombies, and the Ultra Thin arms architects and the general public with an essential understanding of how capitalism makes property. Required reading for those who think tomorrow can be different from today."— Jack Self, coeditor of Real Estates: Life Without Debt In Icebergs, Zombies, and the Ultra Thin, Matthew Soules issues an indictment of how finance capitalism dramatically alters not only architectural forms but also the very nature of our cities and societies. We rarely consider architecture to be an important factor in contemporary economic and political debates, yet sparsely occupied ultra-thin "pencil towers" develop in our cities, functioning as speculative wealth storage for the superrich, and cavernous "iceberg" homes extend architectural assets many stories below street level. Meanwhile, communities around the globe are blighted by zombie and ghost urbanism, marked by unoccupied neighborhoods and abandoned housing developments. Learn how the use of architecture as an investment tool has accelerated in recent years, heightening inequality and contributing to worldwide financial instability: • See how investment imperatives shape what and how we build, changing the very structure of our communities • Delve into high-profile projects, like the luxury apartments of architect Rafael Viñoly's 432 Park Avenue • Understand the convergence of technology, finance, and spirituality, which together are configuring the financialized walls within which we eat, sleep, and work Includes dozens of photos and drawings of architectural phenomena that have changed the way we live. Essential reading for anyone interested in architecture, design, economics, and understanding the way our world is formed.

Charlotte Perriand

Charlotte Perriand PDF Author: Justin McGuirk
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781872005522
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
An affordable, concise survey on the influential modernist designer's interiors, buildings, furniture and more, from a sawtooth ski resort to sculptural chaises longues From the onset of her career, Charlotte Perriand was a maverick who believed in good design as a force for the betterment of society. Many young designers would be devastated by a rejection from Le Corbusier's studio, but when the great architect told her they had no use for a female furniture designer, Perriand only became more determined to prove her mettle as an artist. Under Le Corbusier, and long after she left his studio, Perriand's contributions to both furniture design and architecture demonstrated a unique attention to the organic artistry of nature as well as the egalitarian possibilities of the machine age. Her leftwing populist politics motivated much of her work, from modular furniture systems to major architectural projects. This monograph explores Perriand's most famous interiors, original furniture and architectural projects, as well as her never-before-seen sketchbooks, shedding new light on her creative process and place in design history. Charlotte Perriand (1903-99) experienced the first breakthrough in her career with Le Bar sous le toit, a 1927 interior design piece that predicted the elegant minimalism and utilitarian nature of her future work. Although today she is perhaps best known for her early chaise longue designs, Perriand also created the plans for a number of major buildings across Europe and contributed interior designs to Le Corbusier's Unit d'habitation. She worked in places as diverse as Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro and London in her pursuit of accessible design.

Resisting Postmodern Architecture

Resisting Postmodern Architecture PDF Author: Stylianos Giamarelos
Publisher: UCL Press
ISBN: 1800081332
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 438

Book Description
Since its first appearance in 1981, critical regionalism has enjoyed a celebrated worldwide reception. The 1990s increased its pertinence as an architectural theory that defends the cultural identity of a place resisting the homogenising onslaught of globalisation. Today, its main principles (such as acknowledging the climate, history, materials, culture and topography of a specific place) are integrated in architects’ education across the globe. But at the same time, the richer cross-cultural history of critical regionalism has been reduced to schematic juxtapositions of ‘the global’ with ‘the local’. Retrieving both the globalising branches and the overlooked cross-cultural roots of critical regionalism, Resisting Postmodern Architecture resituates critical regionalism within the wider framework of debates around postmodern architecture, the diverse contexts from which it emerged, and the cultural media complex that conditioned its reception. In so doing, it explores the intersection of three areas of growing historical and theoretical interest: postmodernism, critical regionalism and globalisation. Based on more than 50 interviews and previously unpublished archival material from six countries, the book transgresses existing barriers to integrate sources in other languages into anglophone architectural scholarship. In so doing, it shows how the ‘periphery’ was not just a passive recipient, but also an active generator of architectural theory and practice. Stylianos Giamarelos challenges long-held ‘central’ notions of supposedly ‘international’ discourses of the recent past, and outlines critical regionalism as an unfinished project apposite for the 21st century on the fronts of architectural theory, history and historiography.

The Architecture of Neoliberalism

The Architecture of Neoliberalism PDF Author: Douglas Spencer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472581539
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 227

Book Description
The Architecture of Neoliberalism pursues an uncompromising critique of the neoliberal turn in contemporary architecture. This book reveals how a self-styled parametric and post-critical architecture serves mechanisms of control and compliance while promoting itself, at the same time, as progressive. Spencer's incisive analysis of the architecture and writings of figures such as Zaha Hadid, Patrik Schumacher, Rem Koolhaas, and Greg Lynn shows them to be in thrall to the same notions of liberty as are propounded in neoliberal thought. Analysing architectural projects in the fields of education, consumption and labour, The Architecture of Neoliberalism examines the part played by contemporary architecture in refashioning human subjects into the compliant figures - student-entrepreneurs, citizen-consumers and team-workers - requisite to the universal implementation of a form of existence devoted to market imperatives.