Architecture And Spectacle A Critique

Download Architecture And Spectacle A Critique full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online Architecture And Spectacle A Critique ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!

Architecture and Spectacle: A Critique

Author : Gevork Hartoonian
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351957430
Total Pages : 514 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (519 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Architecture and Spectacle: A Critique by : Gevork Hartoonian

Download or read book Architecture and Spectacle: A Critique written by Gevork Hartoonian and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on six leading contemporary architects: Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Bernard Tschumi, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas and Steven Holl, this book puts forward a unique and insightful analysis of "neo-avant-garde" architecture. It discusses the spectacle and excess which permeates contemporary architecture in reference to the present aesthetic tendency for image making, but does so by applying the tectonic of theatricality discussed by the 19th-century German architect Gottfried Semper. In doing so, it breaks new ground by opening up a dialogue between the study of the past and the design of the present. The work of each discussed architect is seen as addressing a historiographical problem. To this end, and this is the second important aspect of this book, the chosen buildings are discussed in terms of the thematic of the culture of building (the tectonic of column and wall for example) rather the formal, and this through a discussion that is informed by the latest available theories. Having set the aesthetic implication of the processes of the digitalization of architecture, the book's conclusion highlights "strategies" by which architecture might postpone the full consequences of digitalization, and thus the becoming of architecture as ornament on its own right.

Commodification And Spectacle in Architecture

Author : William S. Saunders
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 1452907609
Total Pages : 142 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (529 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Commodification And Spectacle in Architecture by : William S. Saunders

Download or read book Commodification And Spectacle in Architecture written by William S. Saunders and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than ever, architectural design is seen as a means to promote commercial goals rather than as an end in itself. Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, for example, simply cannot be considered apart from its intended role as a catalyst for the economic revitalization of Bilbao and its ability to attract tourist dollars, regardless of its architectural merits. A built environment intended to seduce consumers is more likely to offer instant gratification than to invite independent thought and reflection. But how harmful, if at all, is this unprecedented commercialization of architecture? Framed with a provocative introduction by Kenneth Frampton, the contributions to Commodification and Spectacle in Architecture stake out a variety of positions in the debate over the extent to which it is possible—or desirable—to escape from, resist, or suggest plausible alternatives to the dominant culture of consumer capitalism. Rejecting any dreamy nostalgia for an idealized present or past in which design is completely divorced from commerce—and, in some cases, celebrating the pleasures of spectacle—the individual essays range from indictments of particular architects and critiques of the profession to broader concerns about what the phenomenon of commodification means for the practice of democracy and the health of society. Bringing together an impressive and varied group of critics and practitioners, Commodification and Spectacle in Architecture will help to sharpen the discussion of how design can respond to our hypercommodified culture. Contributors: Michael Benedikt, Luis Fernández-Galiano, Thomas Frank, Kevin Ervin Kelley, Daniel Naegele, Rick Poynor, Michael Sorkin, Wouter Vanstiphout. William S. Saunders is editor of Harvard Design Magazine and assistant dean for external relations at the Harvard Design School. He is the author of Modern Architecture: Photographs by Ezra Stoller. Kenneth Frampton is Ware Professor of Architecture at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation and author of many books, including Labour, Work, and Architecture.

Crisis of the Object

Author : Gevork Hartoonian
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134172095
Total Pages : 342 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (341 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Crisis of the Object by : Gevork Hartoonian

Download or read book Crisis of the Object written by Gevork Hartoonian and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-09-21 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looking back over the twentieth century, Hartoonian discusses the work of three major architects: Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry and Bernard Tschumi, in reference to their theoretical positions and historicizes present architecture in the context of the ongoing secularization of the myths surrounding the traditions of nineteenth century architecture in general, and, in particular, Gottfried Semper's discourse on the tectonic. Providing a valuable contribution to the current debates surrounding architectural history and theory, this passionately written book makes valuable reading for any architect.

Global Perspectives on Critical Architecture

Author : Gevork Hartoonian
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317127447
Total Pages : 302 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (171 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Global Perspectives on Critical Architecture by : Gevork Hartoonian

Download or read book Global Perspectives on Critical Architecture written by Gevork Hartoonian and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-03 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Judging from the debates taking place in both education and practice, it appears that architecture is deeply in crisis. New design and production techniques, together with the globalization of capital and even skilled-labour, have reduced architecture to a commodified object, its aesthetic qualities tapping into the current pervasive desire for the spectacular. These developments have changed the architect’s role in the design and production processes of architecture. Moreover, critical architectural theories, including those of Breton, Heidegger and Benjamin, which explored the concepts of technology, modernism, labour and capital and how technology informed the cultural, along with later theories from the 1960s, which focused more on the architect’s theorization of his/her own design strategies, seem increasingly irrelevant. In an age of digital reproduction and commodification, these theoretical approaches need to be reassessed. Bringing together essays and interviews from leading scholars such as Kenneth Frampton, Peggy Deamer, Bernard Tschumi, Donald Kunze and Marco Biraghi, this volume investigates and critically addresses various dimensions of the present crisis of architecture. It poses questions such as: Is architecture a conservative cultural product servicing a given producer/consumer system? Should architecture’s affiliative ties with capitalism be subjected to a measure of criticism that can be expanded to the entirety of the cultural realm? Is architecture’s infusion into the cultural the reason for the visibility of architecture today? What room does the city leave for architecture beyond the present delirium of spectacle? Should the thematic of various New Left criticisms of capitalism be taken as the premise of architectural criticism? Or alternatively, putting the notion of criticality aside is it enough to confine criticism to the production of insightful and pleasurable texts?

Towards a Critique of Architecture’s Contemporaneity

Author : Gevork Hartoonian
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000865479
Total Pages : 127 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (8 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Towards a Critique of Architecture’s Contemporaneity by : Gevork Hartoonian

Download or read book Towards a Critique of Architecture’s Contemporaneity written by Gevork Hartoonian and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-02-14 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pursuing historical analogies between nineteenth-century theories and the current practices captivated by digital reproducibility, this book offers a critical take on architecture’s contemporaneity through four essays: tectonics, materiality, cladding, and labor. Fundamental to this proposition is the historicity of Gottfried Semper’s theorization of architecture amidst the outpouring of new materials and construction techniques during the 1850s. Starting with Semper’s differentiation between theatricalization and the tectonic of theatricality, this book examines thematic essential to architecture’s self-representation. Even though the title of this book recalls the Semperian Four Elements of Architecture, its argument encapsulates a unique historico-theoretical project probing the tectonic of theatricality beyond Semper. The invisible tie between technique and labor is the cord running through the four subjects covered in this book. In exploring these subjects from the theoretical standpoint of Marxian dialectics, this book’s contribution is focused on, but not limited to, the topicality of labor today when its relationship with capital has been further obscured by the prevailing digitalization of commodity exchange value, starting roughly in the 1990s. Each essay examines Semper’s theorization of architecture in contradistinction to the ways in which technology’s mediation has dominated architecture’s representation. Burrowing through the invisible tie between technique and work, asymptomatic of architecture’s predicament in global capitalism, Towards a Critique of Architecture’s Contemporaneity advances the scope of architectural criticism beyond the exhausted formalism and architecture’s turn to philosophy circa the 1980s and the present tendencies for presentism. It will therefore be of interest to researchers and students of architectural history and theory.

Architecture Between Spectacle and Use

Author : Anthony Vidler
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780300125542
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (255 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Architecture Between Spectacle and Use by : Anthony Vidler

Download or read book Architecture Between Spectacle and Use written by Anthony Vidler and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the state of contemporary architecture worldwide and the ways in which it is caught between the art of display and the accommodation of use.

The Age of Spectacle

Author : Tom Dyckhoff
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 1448136903
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (481 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Age of Spectacle by : Tom Dyckhoff

Download or read book The Age of Spectacle written by Tom Dyckhoff and published by Random House. This book was released on 2017-04-20 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A great storyteller . . . you would be hard pushed to find a more knowledgeable or entertaining [guide]' Icon 'Such an interesting book . . . I cannot recommend it enough.' Lauren Laverne In Dubai, a luxury apartment block is built in the shape of a giant iPod. In China, President Xi Jinping denounces the trend of constructing ‘bizarre’ new buildings in wacky shapes and colours. In Cincinnati, celebrity architect Zaha Hadid is paid millions to design a single ‘iconic’ structure – with the hope of single-handedly transforming the region’s ailing fortunes. These incidents are all part of the same story: the rise of the age of spectacle. Over the last fifty years, there has been a revolution in how our cities operate. In The Age of Spectacle, Tom Dyckhoff tells the story of how architecture became obsessed with the flashy, the monumental and the ostentatious – and how we all have to live with the consequences. Exploring cityscapes from New York to Beijing, and from Bilbao to Portsmouth, Dyckhoff shows that we are not just witnessing a new kind of building: we are living through a fundamental transformation in how our urban spaces work. The corporate explosion of the last few decades has fundamentally shifted the relationship between architects, politicians and cities’ inhabitants, fostering innovative new kinds of engineering and design, but also facilitating ill-conceived vanity projects and commercial power-grabs. Timely, passionate and bursting with new ideas, The Age of Spectacle is both an examination of how twenty-first century cities work, and a manifesto for a radically new kind of urbanism. Our cities, Dyckhoff shows, can thrive in the age of spectacle – but only if they engage us not just with dazzling structures, but by responding to the needs of the people who inhabit them. 'Engaging . . . The “iconic” building is the most obvious architectural phenomenon of our age yet, somehow, no one has quite done what Tom Dyckhoff does with The Age of Spectacle, which is to tell its story clearly and plainly.' Rowan Moore, Observer 'First class. Finally, a book that nails the iconic movement – Tom Dyckhoff’s The Age of Spectacle is the book that I wish I had written.' Simon Jenkins 'Unusually accessible [and] well argued.' Evening Standard

Building Art

Author : Paul Goldberger
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307946398
Total Pages : 546 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (79 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Building Art by : Paul Goldberger

Download or read book Building Art written by Paul Goldberger and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2017-11-14 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here, from Pulitzer Prize–winning critic Paul Goldberger, is the first full-fledged critical biography of Frank Gehry, undoubtedly the most famous architect of our time. Goldberger follows Gehry from his humble origins—the son of working-class Jewish immigrants in Toronto—to the heights of his extraordinary career. He explores Gehry’s relationship to Los Angeles, a city that welcomed outsider artists and profoundly shaped him in his formative years. He surveys the full range of his work, from the Bilbao Guggenheim to the Walt Disney Concert Hall in L.A. to the architect’s own home in Santa Monica, which galvanized his neighbors and astonished the world. He analyzes his carefully crafted persona, in which an amiable surface masks a driving ambition. And he discusses his use of technology, not just to change the way a building looks, but to revolutionize the very practice of the field. Comprehensive and incisive, Building Art is a sweeping view of a singular artist—and an essential story of architecture’s modern era.

Icebergs, Zombies, and the Ultra-Thin

Author : Matthew Soules
Publisher : Chronicle Books
ISBN 13 : 1648960294
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (489 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Icebergs, Zombies, and the Ultra-Thin by : Matthew Soules

Download or read book Icebergs, Zombies, and the Ultra-Thin written by Matthew Soules and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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.

A Critical History of Contemporary Architecture

Author : Elie G. Haddad
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351962590
Total Pages : 536 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (519 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis A Critical History of Contemporary Architecture by : Elie G. Haddad

Download or read book A Critical History of Contemporary Architecture written by Elie G. Haddad and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1960, following as it did the last CIAM meeting, signalled a turning point for the Modern Movement. From then on, architecture was influenced by seminal texts by Aldo Rossi and Robert Venturi, and gave rise to the first revisionary movement following Modernism. Bringing together leading experts in the field, this book provides a comprehensive, critical overview of the developments in architecture from 1960 to 2010. It consists of two parts: the first section providing a presentation of major movements in architecture after 1960, and the second, a geographic survey that covers a wide range of territories around the world. This book not only reflects the different perspectives of its various authors, but also charts a middle course between the 'aesthetic' histories that examine architecture solely in terms of its formal aspects, and the more 'ideological' histories that subject it to a critique that often skirts the discussion of its formal aspects.

Why We Build

Author : Rowan Moore
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 0062277596
Total Pages : 366 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (622 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Why We Build by : Rowan Moore

Download or read book Why We Build written by Rowan Moore and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-08-20 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an era of brash, expensive, provocative new buildings, a prominent critic argues that emotions—such as hope, power, sex, and our changing relationship to the idea of home—are the most powerful force behind architecture, yesterday and (especially) today. We are living in the most dramatic period in architectural history in more than half a century: a time when cityscapes are being redrawn on a yearly basis, architects are testing the very idea of what a building is, and whole cities are being invented overnight in exotic locales or here in the United States. Now, in a bold and wide-ranging new work, Rowan Moore—former director of the Architecture Foundation, now the architecture critic for The Observer—explores the reasons behind these changes in our built environment, and how they in turn are changing the way we live in the world. Taking as his starting point dramatic examples such as the High Line in New York City and the outrageous island experiment of Dubai, Moore then reaches far and wide: back in time to explore the Covent Garden brothels of eighteenth-century London and the fetishistic minimalism of Adolf Loos; across the world to assess a software magnate’s grandiose mansion in Atlanta and Daniel Libeskind’s failed design for the World Trade Center site; and finally to the deeply naturalistic work of Lina Bo Bardi, whom he celebrates as the most underrated architect of the modern era.

Towards a Critique of Architecture's Contemporaneity

Author : Gevork Hartoonian
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781032418681
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (186 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Towards a Critique of Architecture's Contemporaneity by : Gevork Hartoonian

Download or read book Towards a Critique of Architecture's Contemporaneity written by Gevork Hartoonian and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pursuing historical analogies between nineteenth-century theories and the current practices captivated by digital reproducibility, this book offers a critical take on architecture's contemporaneity through four essays: tectonics, materiality, cladding, and labor. Fundamental to this proposition is the historicity of Gottfried Semper's theorization of architecture amidst the outpouring of new materials and construction techniques during the 1850s. Starting with Semper's differentiation between theatricalization and the tectonic of theatricality, this book examines thematic essential to architecture's self-representation. Even though the title of this book recalls the Semperian Four Elements of Architecture, its argument encapsulates a unique historico-theoretical project probing the tectonic of theatricality beyond Semper. The invisible tie between technique and labor is the cord running through the four subjects covered in this book. In exploring these subjects from the theoretical standpoint of Marxian dialectics, this book's contribution is focused on, but not limited to, the topicality of labor today when its relationship with capital has been further obscured by the prevailing digitalization of commodity exchange value, starting roughly in the 1990s. Each essay examines Semper's theorization of architecture in contradistinction to the ways in which technology's mediation has dominated architecture's representation. Burrowing through the invisible tie between technique and work, asymptomatic of architecture's predicament in global capitalism, Towards a Critique of Architecture's Contemporaneity advances the scope of architectural criticism beyond the exhausted formalism and architecture's turn to philosophy circa the 1980s and the present tendencies for presentism. It will therefore be of interest to researchers and students of architectural history and theory.

Critical Architecture

Author : Jane Rendell
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134120028
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (341 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Critical Architecture by : Jane Rendell

Download or read book Critical Architecture written by Jane Rendell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-09-12 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical Architecture examines the relationship between critical practice in architecture and architectural criticism. Placing architecture in an interdisciplinary context, the book explores architectural criticism with reference to modes of criticism in other disciplines - specifically art criticism - and considers how critical practice in architecture operates through a number of different modes: buildings, drawings and texts. With forty essays by an international cast of leading architectural academics, this accessible single source text on the topical subject of architectural criticism is ideal for undergraduate as well as post graduate study.

Critique of Architecture

Author : Douglas Spencer
Publisher : Birkhäuser
ISBN 13 : 3035621640
Total Pages : 228 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (356 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Critique of Architecture by : Douglas Spencer

Download or read book Critique of Architecture written by Douglas Spencer and published by Birkhäuser. This book was released on 2021-01-18 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critique of Architecture offers a renewed and radical theorization of the relations between capital and architecture. It explicates the theoretical gymnastics through which architecture legitimates its services to neoliberalism, examines the discipline’s production of platforms for happily compliant consumers, and challenges its entrepreneurial self-image. Critique of Architecture also addresses the discourse of autonomy, questioning its capacity to engage effectively with the terms and conditions of capitalism today, analyses the post-political turns of contemporary architecture theory, and reckons with the legacies and limitations of critical theory.

Crisis of the Object

Author : Gevork Hartoonian
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134172109
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (341 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Crisis of the Object by : Gevork Hartoonian

Download or read book Crisis of the Object written by Gevork Hartoonian and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-09-21 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looking back over the twentieth century, Hartoonian discusses the work of three major architects: Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry and Bernard Tschumi, in reference to their theoretical positions and historicizes present architecture in the context of the ongoing secularization of the myths surrounding the traditions of nineteenth century architecture in general, and, in particular, Gottfried Semper's discourse on the tectonic. Providing a valuable contribution to the current debates surrounding architectural history and theory, this passionately written book makes valuable reading for any architect.

Privacy and Publicity

Author : Beatriz Colomina
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262531399
Total Pages : 403 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Privacy and Publicity by : Beatriz Colomina

Download or read book Privacy and Publicity written by Beatriz Colomina and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1996-02-28 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through a series of close readings of two major figures of the modern movement, Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier, Beatriz Colomina argues that architecture only becomes modern in its engagement with the mass media, and that in so doing it radically displaces the traditional sense of space and subjectivity. Privacy and Publicity boldly questions certain ideological assumptions underlying the received view of modern architecture and reconsiders the methodology of architectural criticism itself. Where conventional criticism portrays modern architecture as a high artistic practice in opposition to mass culture, Colomina sees the emerging systems of communication that have come to define twentieth-century culture—the mass media—as the true site within which modern architecture was produced. She considers architectural discourse as the intersection of a number of systems of representation such as drawings, models, photographs, books, films, and advertisements. This does not mean abandoning the architectural object, the building, but rather looking at it in a different way. The building is understood here in the same way as all the media that frame it, as a mechanism of representation in its own right. With modernity, the site of architectural production literally moved from the street into photographs, films, publications, and exhibitions—a displacement that presupposes a new sense of space, one defined by images rather than walls. This age of publicity corresponds to a transformation in the status of the private, Colomina argues; modernity is actually the publicity of the private. Modern architecture renegotiates the traditional relationship between public and private in a way that profoundly alters the experience of space. In a fascinating intellectual journey, Colomina tracks this shift through the modern incarnations of the archive, the city, fashion, war, sexuality, advertising, the window, and the museum, finally concentrating on the domestic interior that constructs the modern subject it appears merely to house.

Visual Delight in Architecture

Author : Lisa Heschong
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000378969
Total Pages : 374 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (3 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Visual Delight in Architecture by : Lisa Heschong

Download or read book Visual Delight in Architecture written by Lisa Heschong and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-11 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Visual Delight in Architecture examines the many ways that our lives are enriched by the presence of natural daylight and window views within our buildings. It makes a compelling case that daily exposure to the rhythms of daylight is essential to our health and well-being, tied to the very genetic foundations of our physiology and cognitive function. It describes all the subtlety, beauty, and pleasures of well-daylit spaces and attractive window views, and explains how these are woven into the fabric of both our everyday sensory experience and enduring cultural perspectives. All types of environmental designers, along with anyone interested in human health and well- being, will fi nd new insights offered by Visual Delight in Architecture. The book is both accessible and provocative, full of personal stories and persuasive research, helping designers to gain a deeper understanding of the scientific basis of their designs, scientists to better grasp the real-world implications of their work, and everyone to more fully appreciate the role of windows in their lives.