A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Forms of Practice: German-Swiss Architecture, 1980-2000 Irina Davidovici gta Verlag , June 2019 (Second Edition) Paperback | 7 x 9-1/2 inches | 340 pages | 186 illustrations | English | ISBN: 978-3856763787 | $75.00 Publisher Description : During the 1980s and 1990s, German-Swiss architecture gained worldwide acclaim on account of its structural and aesthetic coherence. Its precision, rigor and sobriety were, however, only outer manifestations of a deeper ethical orientation, reacting against formal arbitrariness and postmodern relativism. Swiss architects resorted to the discipline of concepts and formal reductionism in order to recover a sense of stability, normality, and cultural continuity. In Forms of Practice , Irina Davidovici provides an in-depth analysis of their work during the last decades of the twentieth century, discussing its cultural and theoretical conditions as facets of one artistic and cultural phenomenon. Richly detailed case studies and conceptual framew...

The Elements of Building: A Business Handbook For Residential Builders & Tradesmen Mark Q. Kerson From The Ground Up Publishing, January 2014 Paperback | 5 x 8 inches | 360 pages | No illustrations | English | ISBN: 978-0991327706 | $37.00 Publisher Description : The Elements of Building is about the business of residential construction, that is, how to build and run a construction company. It is a must have resource for new and seasoned tradesmen and builders. With 40 years of experience the author details the skill required to run a successful company. This invaluable handbook offers insightful guidance on hiring and working with employees and subcontractors; choosing and working with clients; estimating and bidding; managing money and marketing; and much more. dDAB Commentary : When this "business handbook for residential builders and tradesmen" arrived in the mail, I immediately flipped to the chapter that best applied to me: Designer, part of the Profession...

Education of an Architect: The Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture, 1964-1971 John Hejduk, et. al. The Monacelli Press , 1999 Paperback | 9-3/4 x 9 inches | 364 pages | 340 illustrations | English | ISBN: 978-1580930406 | $50.00 Publisher Description : On November 13, 1971, the exhibition Education of an Architect: A Point of View —featuring the work of Cooper Union students under the direction of the chairman of the Department of Architecture, John Hejduk, and the dean George Sadek—opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The installation of models, drawings, and photographs along with faculty and student statements, documented work from 1964 to 1971. To accompany the exhibition, The Cooper Union published an extremely influential limited edition book—long since out of print—of 54 projects by some 60 students showing their in depth explorations of problems based on the visual discoveries of cubism and neo-plasticism as they related to architectural space and...

Architecture of Nature/Nature of Architecture Diana Agrest ar+d (Applied Research + Design) , January 2019 Hardcover | 9 x 11-3/4 inches | 280 pages | English | ISBN: 978-1939621948 | $49.95 Publisher Description : Architecture of Nature/Nature of Architecture presents original research work, exploring the materiality and the forces at play in the history of the earth. While nature has always been historically embedded “within” architecture discourse in different forms, Architecture of Nature/Nature of Architecture departs from the traditional ‘nature as a referent’ approach, detaching itself as a free radical to become itself the object of study, transforming that relationship through one common element essential to both science and architecture in the production of knowledge: representation. This work was developed through unique drawings and models over for the past eight years in the context of the Advanced Research graduate studio “Architecture of Nature/ Nature of Arc...

Living on Campus: An Architectural History of the American Dormitory Carla Yanni University of Minnesota Press , April 2019 Paperback | 7 x 10 inches | 304 pages | 146 illustrations | English | ISBN: 978-1517904562 | $34.95 Publisher Description : Every fall on move-in day, parents tearfully bid farewell to their beloved sons and daughters at college dormitories: it is an age-old ritual. The residence hall has come to mark the threshold between childhood and adulthood, housing young people during a transformational time in their lives. Whether a Gothic stone pile, a quaint Colonial box, or a concrete slab, the dormitory is decidedly unhomelike, yet it takes center stage in the dramatic arc of many American families. This richly illustrated book examines the architecture of dormitories in the United States from the eighteenth century to 1968, asking fundamental questions: Why have American educators believed for so long that housing students is essential to educating them? And...

Japan Diaries: Architecture and More Aurora Fernández Per, Javier Mozas a+t , 2019 Hardcover | 4-3/4 x 6-1/2 inches | 480 pages | # illustrations | Languages | ISBN: 978-8409098798 | 29.00 € Publisher Description : Two voices, those of Aurora Fernández Per and Javier Mozas, tell the story of three trips around Japan: Spring 1995, Autumn 2004 and Summer 2018. One common thread, architecture, drives them to travel around the most influential country in terms of international design. Using texts, photos and drawings they interpret buildings, landscapes and everyday scenes. The publishers of a+t magazine and founders of the a+t research group provide us with the traveller’s version, that of the person arriving at a new place and narrating what they have seen. dDAB Commentary : Both the "architecture" and the "more" from the subtitle of Japan Diaries are on display on its cover. The colorful background is an information panel on Yakuri Temple in Kagawa, and...

Ladders (Architecture at Rice 34) Albert Pope Rice School of Architecture/ Princeton Architectural Press , December 1996 (Second Revised Edition, June 2015) Paperback | 5-1/4 x 8 inches | 278 pages (2nd ed: 338 pages) | English | ISBN: 9781616894115 | $29.95 Publisher Description : Albert Pope's 1996 seminal book Ladders is now available in a second edition. Considered a classic in the field of urbanism and one of our most requested out of print titles, Pope's provocative study of five post-war American cities examines the forces--including demographic upheavals, market expansions, and technological developments--that precipitated a change from the open system of the pre-war urban grid to the fragmented and closed spaces of suburban cul-de-sacs, expressways, and office parks. Through an incisive series of diagrams and photographs, Pope reveals the concepts, theories, and rules that have guided their organizational evolution into post architectural spaces whose charact...