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Author: Gilbert Herbert Publisher: MIT Press (MA) ISBN: Category : Architecture Languages : en Pages : 438
Book Description
This is the story of what came to be known as the "packaged house," one of the few architect-inspired attempts to manufacture and market a prefabricated home. The plan began in the 1940s as a major collaborative effort between Walter Gropius, then at the height of his fame, and Konrad Wachsmann, a rising star-both in exile from their native Germany. For both men, this was the culmination of many years of experience in the field of industrialized housing and an unparalleled opportunity to make their long-cherished dream of a factory-made house a reality. How did this venture, which seemed to have everything going for it, turn out to be such a dismal failure? The answers to that question make this one of the most fascinating studies in the annals of modern architecture. Gilbert Herbert's analysis of the bold undertaking has within it not only the elements of personal drama, as far as Gropius and Wachsmann are concerned, but it unfolds consequences of more drastic significance for the development of industrially-produced housing the world over. Both architects represented a formidable combination of ability and experience; both had contributed significantly to the theory and practice of prefabrication, and had devised a system that was technically impeccable. That "only a small number of these immaculately conceived and engineered houses was actually sold" was not only a great disappointment for them, it was a grave shock to the whole movement for industrially-produced housing. The facts of the Gropius-Wachsmann case—now fully disclosed with extensive visual documentation—are instructive in themselves. But the real significance of this book lies in its ability to relate the facts to the history of industrialized housing and to the modern architect's confrontation with technological, economic, and social forces.
Author: Mark Erlich Publisher: University of Illinois Press ISBN: 0252054571 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 127
Book Description
The construction trades once provided unionized craftsmen a route to the middle class and a sense of pride and dignity often denied other blue-collar workers. Today, union members still earn wages and benefits that compare favorably to those of college graduates. But as union strength has declined over the last fifty years, a growing non-union sector offers lower compensation and more hazardous conditions, undermining the earlier tradition of upward mobility. Revitalization of the industry depends on unions shedding past racial and gender discriminatory practices, embracing organizing, diversity, and the new immigrant workforce, and preparing for technological changes. Mark Erlich blends long-view history with his personal experience inside the building trades to explain one of our economy’s least understood sectors. Erlich’s multifaceted account includes the dynamics of the industry, the backdrop of union policies, and powerful stories of everyday life inside the trades. He offers a much-needed overview of construction’s past and present while exploring roads to the future.
Author: Xiangnan Xiong Publisher: Taylor & Francis ISBN: 1000600815 Category : Architecture Languages : en Pages : 214
Book Description
Mies at Home is a radical rereading of one of the most significant periods in Mies van der Rohe’s career, from the mid- to late 1920s when he was developing his seminal spatial ideas— ideas that would culminate in his celebrated design of the Tugendhat House. The book examines how Mies’s experience of residing in his apartment, doubling as a studio, in central Berlin had an impact on his spatial concepts. It uncovers one of the most profound but virtually untold aspects of Mies’s development: how his visions of an ideal lifestyle came out of his own living experience and how they, in turn, informed his domestic architecture. Mies’s quest featured two breakthroughs. In the Weissenhof apartment building, he conveyed a flexible and manifold lifestyle that many of the avant-garde artists, including himself, were practicing. Later, in the Tugendhat House, he put forward an alternative way of living that centered on contemplation. Beautifully illustrated throughout, Mies at Home offers a fresh investigation of the diverse intentions and strategies the architect used in creating his iconic open spaces. It will be an insightful read for researchers, academics, and students in architectural history and theory.
Author: Nicolas P. Maffei Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1474284582 Category : Design Languages : en Pages : 273
Book Description
Norman Bel Geddes has long been considered the 'founder' of American industrial design. During his long career he worked on everything from theatre design, world fairs and cars to houses and product and packaging design. Nicolas P. Maffei's magisterial biography draws on original material from the archive at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, and places Bel Geddes' work within the fast-changing cultural and intellectual contexts of his time. Maffei shows how Bel Geddes' futuristic but pragmatic style – his notion of 'practical vision' – was central to his work, and highly influential on the professional practice of American industrial design in general.
Author: Ulrich Knaack Publisher: Walter de Gruyter ISBN: 3034611404 Category : Architecture Languages : en Pages : 134
Book Description
For a number of years, modular construction – the use of prefabricated elements in architecture – has once again become a subject of lively discussion and debate. Long written off as monotonous, today’s building components are actually highly differentiated and capable of supporting and enhancing the architect’s creativity. Numerous structures work with prefabricated components; for single-family homes the figure is ninety-eight percent, and modular systems are available that meet high aesthetic standards. This book provides an overview of the various different systems and their possible uses, particularly in the areas of housing, office, and industrial buildings. It explains the processes and components of modular construction and the behavior of the various materials when this construction approach is used. The authors offer strategies for planning and designing with prefabricated systems so that the architect can use them productively. Numerous drawings explain the principles of modular construction, while built examples forge a link between those principles and the practical activity of building.
Author: Thomas P. Hughes Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 9780226359274 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 568
Book Description
The book that helped earn Thomas P. Hughes his reputation as one of the foremost historians of technology of our age and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1990, American Genesis tells the sweeping story of America's technological revolution. Unlike other histories of technology, which focus on particular inventions like the light bulb or the automobile, American Genesis makes these inventions characters in a broad chronicle, both shaped by and shaping a culture. By weaving scientific and technological advancement into other cultural trends, Hughes demonstrates here the myriad ways in which the two are inexorably linked, and in a new preface, he recounts his earlier missteps in predicting the future of technology and follows its move into the information age.
Author: Brenda Vale Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1000553701 Category : Architecture Languages : en Pages : 205
Book Description
Originally published in 1995, this book unravels the history of the ‘temporary bungalow’ and shows that perhaps it was more a question of providing a new peace-time product for factories than a means of providing accommodation for the homeless. Built in a period of housing history which remains fascinating for architects and planners and admired by some of their first occupants but berated by others, those prefabs remaining today are subject to preservation orders but also perhaps offer a solution to the ongoing housing crisis in the UK. The book includes chapters on the development of the prefab house in the UK; comparisons with temporary housing programmes in the USA, Sweden and Germany; political and economic considerations to the UK Temporary Housing Programme and a discussion of the design of the Arcon, Uni-Seco, Tarran and Aluminium Temporary Bungalows.
Author: N. J. Habraken Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 9780262581950 Category : Architecture Languages : en Pages : 390
Book Description
The influential Dutch architect's long-awaited manifesto on the everyday environment as the first and best ground for establishing the significance and coherence of architecture. According to N. J. Habraken, intimate and unceasing interaction between people and the forms they inhabit uniquely defines built environment. The Structure of the Ordinary, the culmination of decades of environmental observation and design research, is a recognition and analysis of everyday environment as the wellspring of urban design and formal architecture. The author's central argument is that built environment is universally organized by the Orders of Form, Place, and Understanding. These three fundamental, interwoven principles correspond roughly to physical, biological, and social domains. Historically, "ordinary" environment was the background against which architects built the "extraordinary." Drawing upon extensive examples from archaeological and contemporary sites worldwide, the author illustrates profound recent shifts in the structure of everyday environment. One effect of these transformations, Habraken argues, has been the loss of implicit common understanding that previously enabled architects to formally enhance and innovate while still maintaining environmental coherence. Consequently, architects must now undertake a study of the ordinary as the fertile common ground in which form- and place-making are rooted. In focusing on built environment as an autonomous entity distinct from the societies and natural environments that jointly create it, this book lays the foundation for a new dialogue on methodology and pedagogy, in support of a more informed approach to professional intervention.
Author: Christine Wall Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1135091072 Category : Architecture Languages : en Pages : 252
Book Description
This book is unique in describing the history of post war reconstruction from an entirely new perspective by focusing on the changing relationship between architects and building workers. It considers individual, as well as collective, interactions with technical change and in doing so brings together, for the first time, an extraordinary range of sources including technical archives, oral history and visual material to describe the construction process both during and in the decades after the war. It focuses on the social aspects of production and the changes in working life for architects and building workers with increasing industrialization, in particular analysing the effect on the building process of introducing dimensionally co-ordinated components. Both architects and building workers have been accused of creating a built environment now popularly discredited: architects responsible for poor design and building workers for poor workmanship. However, many of the structures and ideas underpinning this period of rapid change were revolutionary in their commitment to a complete transformation of the building process. An Architecture of Parts adds to the growing literature on changes in the building world during and immediately after the Second World War. It is significant, both empirically and historically, in its examination of the ideas, technology and relationships that fired industrialization of the building process in mid-century Britain.
Author: Colin Davies
Author: Colin Davies
Author: Gilbert Herbert
Author: Mark Erlich
Author: Xiangnan Xiong
Author: Nicolas P. Maffei
Author: Ulrich Knaack
Author: Thomas P. Hughes
Author: Brenda Vale
Author: N. J. Habraken
Author: Christine Wall