A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

The Architecture of Suspense: The Built World in the Films of Alfred Hitchcock by Christine Madrid French University of Virginia Press , September 2022 Paperback (also available in hardcover and ebook) | 6-3/4 x 7-3/4 inches | 274 pages | 66 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9780813947679 | $29.50 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : The inimitable, haunting films of Alfred Hitchcock took place in settings, both exterior and interior, that deeply impacted our experiences of his most unforgettable works. From the enclosed spaces of Rope and Rear Window to the wide-open expanses of North by Northwest , the physical worlds inhabited by desperate characters are a crucial element in our perception of the Hitchcockian universe. As Christine Madrid French reveals in this original and indispensable book, Hitchcock’s relation to the built world was informed by an intense engagement with location and architectural form—in an era marked by modernism’s advance—fueled by some of the most creative midc...

Shaping the Postwar Landscape: New Profiles from the Pioneers of American Landscape Design Project Charles A. Birnbaum, Scott Craver (Editors) University of Virginia Press , November 2018 Hardcover | 7 x 9 inches | 248 pages | English| ISBN: 9780813941738 | $65.00 Publisher Description : Shaping the Postwar Landscape is the latest contribution to the Cultural Landscape Foundation’s well-known reference project, Pioneers of American Landscape Design, the first volume of which appeared nearly a quarter of a century ago. The present collection features profiles of seventy-two important figures, including landscape architects, architects, planners, artists, horticulturists, and educators. The volume focuses principally on individuals whose careers reached their height during the period between the end of World War II and the American Bicentennial. In that postwar era, landscape architects played an important part in the revitalization of American cities, introducing ...

Environmental Design: Architecture, Politics, and Science in Postwar America Avigail Sachs University of Virginia Press , July 2018 Hardcover | 7 x 8 inches | 240 pages | | English | ISBN: 978-0813941271 | $39.50 Publisher Description : Much of twentieth-century design was animated by the creative tension of its essential duality: is design an art or a science? In the postwar era, American architects sought to calibrate architectural practice to evolving scientific knowledge about humans and environments, thus elevating the discipline’s stature and enmeshing their work in a progressive restructuring of society. This political and scientific effort was called "environmental design," a term expanded in the 1960s to include ecological and liberal ideas. In her expansive new study, Avigail Sachs examines the theoretical scaffolding and practical legacy of this professional effort. Inspired by Lewis Mumford’s 1932 challenge enjoining architects to go beyond visual exp...