Architecture: Books & Ebooks

"Whatever 'ugliness' is, it remains a problematic category in architectural aesthetics - alternately vilified and appropriated, either to shock or to invert conventions of architecture. This book presents eighteen new essays which rethink ugliness in architecture - from brutalism to eclectic postmodern architectural productions - and together offer a diverse reappraisal of the history and theory of postmodern architecture and design.

Architects are used to designing visually. In order to expand their basic design tools, this book explores the interactions between sound, space, hearing, and architecture. To this end, the author uses contemporary and historic buildings and projects, but also fictional, philosophical, and theoretical approaches – the idea is not only to define sound as a source, but also as an instrument of architectural space. By introducing a metatheory of'critical hearing', designers are able to acoustically test their projects and contribute to their design with auditive input, already at the design stage.

The 21st century faces a radical change in how we produce construction materials – a shift towards cultivating, breeding, raising, farming, or growing future resources. This book presents innovative industrialized production methods for cultivated building materials, like cement grown by bacteria, bricks made of mushroom mycelium, or bamboo fibers as reinforcement for concrete. Spanning from scientific research to product development and architectural application, this book builds a bridge between the academic and the professional world of architecture. The book describes the challenges, strategies, and goals in the first part, followed by a second part on bamboo, A cultivated building material and a number of examples in the third part which form the bridge from cultivated materials to building products.

In Design for Good, John Cary offers character-driven, real-world stories about projects around the globe that offer more—buildings that are designed and created with and for the people who will use them. The book reveals a new understanding of the ways that design shapes our lives and gives professionals and interested citizens the tools to seek out and demand designs that dignify.

This text is the first to offer a comprehensive critical history and analysis of the greening of architecture through accumulative reduction of negative environmental effects caused by buildings, urban designs and settlements. Describing the progressive development of green architecture from 1960 to 2010, it illustrates how it is ever evolving and ameliorated through alterations in form, technology, materials and use and it examines different places worldwide that represent a diversity of cultural and climatic contexts.

Language of Architecture provides students and professional architects with the basic elements of architectural design, divided into twenty-six easy-to-comprehend chapters. This visual reference includes an introductory, historical view of the elements, as well as an overview of how these elements can and have been used across multiple design disciplines.

The aim of this book is to provide designers, teachers, students, and interested laypersons with a set of ideas that will enrich their conversation, their writing, and above all their thinking about architecture. Written in a conversational style, it introduces difficult concepts gradually, step by step. Architectural theorists and philosophers are mentioned in passing and their works are listed in the bibliography, but they are not the subject of the book.

Focusing on architecture from all regions of the world, this three-volume set profiles the twentieth century's vast chronicle of architectural achievements, both within and well beyond the theoretical confines of modernism.

Arranged alphabetically, entries trace the development of the art forms in classical civilizations such as ancient Greece and Rome.

Containing over 6,000 entries from Aalto to Zwinger and written in a clear and concise style, this authoritative dictionary covers architectural history in detail, from ancient times to the present day.

An essential one-volume reference of architectural topics using Francis D.K. Ching's signature presentation. It is the only dictionary that provides concise, accurate definitions illustrated with finely detailed, hand-rendered drawings. From Arch to Wood, every concept, technology, material and detail important to architects and designers are presented in Ching's unique style.