Mark Foster Gage

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Mark Foster Gage

Author : Mark Foster Gage
Publisher : Rizzoli Publications
ISBN 13 : 0847862097
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (478 download)

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Book Synopsis Mark Foster Gage by : Mark Foster Gage

Download or read book Mark Foster Gage written by Mark Foster Gage and published by Rizzoli Publications. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gage, Yale theorist, architect, and pioneer of the digital avant-garde in architecture and design, presents here a phantasmagoria of ideas and built work in his first monograph. Architect to Lady Gaga and Nicola Formichetti, Mark Foster Gage has spent 20 years leading the digital architectural avant-garde, pushing the boundaries of what is possible in architecture and design and exploding expectations. This volume features built and unbuilt work from around the globe, from a penthouse in downtown Manhattan to retail stores in Hong Kong. The work shown goes beyond traditional architecture to the realm of fashion and fine art, and includes Gage’s celebrated Valentine’s Sculpture for Times Square, a 3-D-printed outfit for Lady Gaga, as well as designs for Google Glass, Solar Flowers, and robotic tulips. Mark Foster Gage, whose work Harper’s Bazaar has called “effortlessly chic” and who has been labeled a “boundary breaker,” is a visionary for today. Filled with surprises and creations of wonder, such as a tower for New York’s 57th Street with mouthlike balconies on giant wings or a retail space bedecked with a hundred-faceted mirror, Gage’s work at once challenges expectations of what architecture might be and, as well, frequently fills one with a sense of excitement. Gage’s work is further elucidated in the book by the critical musings of eminent architects and cultural touchstones Peter Eisenman and Robert A.M. Stern.

Mark Foster Gage

Author : Mark Foster Gage
Publisher : Oro Editions
ISBN 13 : 9781954081499
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (814 download)

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Book Synopsis Mark Foster Gage by : Mark Foster Gage

Download or read book Mark Foster Gage written by Mark Foster Gage and published by Oro Editions. This book was released on 2022-07-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the course of a ten-month invited competition Mark Foster Gage Architects, using tools ranging from artificial intelligence to 3D fractal software, re-invented the design languages of the ancient Nabatean civilization located on the Arabian Peninsula to propose the first Saudi resort in the modern era that would be open for international tourists. Isolated in a vast desert, with little infrastructure and virtually no visitors, lie the ancient ruins of Mada'in Saleh, and the site for the project. With five-hundred pages and over 1,500 images this is a book that documents the design process of this project, complete with all of its ideas, misdirections, failures, restarts, breakthroughs, and everything in-between. Of interest to architects and non-architects alike, this book heralds a new generation of creative techniques and design technologies that promise to redefine how we think of the past, present and future of the built environment in the 21st century and beyond. With contributions by: Karel Klein, David Ruy, Mitch McEwen, Amina Blacksher, Ferda Kolatan, Tom Wiscombe, Ellie Abrons, Adam Fure, Michael Young, Jimenez Lai, Kristy Balliet, Elena Manferdini, Florencia Pita

Aesthetic Theory: Essential Texts for Architecture and Design

Author : Mark Foster Gage
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393733491
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (937 download)

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Book Synopsis Aesthetic Theory: Essential Texts for Architecture and Design by : Mark Foster Gage

Download or read book Aesthetic Theory: Essential Texts for Architecture and Design written by Mark Foster Gage and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-10-18 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of pivotal ideas about beauty from throughout history, with an introduction and critical headnotes. This collection of writings on beauty includes selections from twenty key philosophers and theoreticians spanning two millennia: Plato • Aristotle • Vitruvius • Alberti • Kant • Burke • Fiedler • Nietzsche • Wilde • Bergson • Bell • Scott • Benjamin • Bataille • Sontag • Jameson • Scarry • Nehamas • Zangwill • Freedberg and Gallese With an introduction and critical headnotes explaining the importance of each text, Mark Foster Gage offers a framework for a provocative history of ideas about beauty as they relate to contemporary thinking on architecture and design. In a world increasingly defined by sumptuous visuality, the concepts of beauty and visual sensation are not mere intellectual exercises but standards that define the very nature of design practice across disciplines and that are essential to the emerging worlds of design and architecture in the twenty-first century.

Aesthetics Equals Politics

Author : Mark Foster Gage
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262039435
Total Pages : 329 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (62 download)

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Book Synopsis Aesthetics Equals Politics by : Mark Foster Gage

Download or read book Aesthetics Equals Politics written by Mark Foster Gage and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-04-16 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How aesthetics—understood as a more encompassing framework for human activity—might become the primary discourse for political and social engagement. These essays make the case for a reignited understanding of aesthetics—one that casts aesthetics not as illusory, subjective, or superficial, but as a more encompassing framework for human activity. Such an aesthetics, the contributors suggest, could become the primary discourse for political and social engagement. Departing from the “critical” stance of twentieth-century artists and theorists who embraced a counter-aesthetic framework for political engagement, this book documents how a broader understanding of aesthetics can offer insights into our relationships not only with objects, spaces, environments, and ecologies, but also with each other and the political structures in which we are all enmeshed. The contributors—philosophers, media theorists, artists, curators, writers and architects including such notable figures as Jacques Rancière, Graham Harman, and Elaine Scarry—build a compelling framework for a new aesthetic discourse. The book opens with a conversation in which Rancière tells the volume's editor, Mark Foster Gage, that the aesthetic is “about the experience of a common world.” The essays following discuss such topics as the perception of reality; abstraction in ethics, epistemology, and aesthetics as the “first philosophy”; Afrofuturism; Xenofeminism; philosophical realism; the productive force of alienation; and the unbearable lightness of current creative discourse. Contributors Mark Foster Gage, Jacques Rancière, Elaine Scarry, Graham Harman, Timothy Morton, Ferda Kolatan, Adam Fure, Michael Young, Nettrice R. Gaskins, Roger Rothman, Diann Bauer, Matt Shaw, Albena Yaneva, Brett Mommersteeg, Lydia Kallipoliti, Ariane Lourie Harrison, Rhett Russo, Peggy Deamer, Caroline Picard Matt Shaw, Managing Editor

Designing Social Equality

Author : Mark Foster Gage
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351249649
Total Pages : 132 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (512 download)

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Book Synopsis Designing Social Equality by : Mark Foster Gage

Download or read book Designing Social Equality written by Mark Foster Gage and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-18 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political polarization and the unequal distribution of rights and massive economic inequality continue to dramatically divide today’s societies. As such, there is a pressing need for those who design the physical fabric in which we co-exist to challenge these divisive trends by imagining more than just frameworks for living. The question is how. While aesthetic discourse has long been part of art, design, and architecture’s intellectual histories, it has, for nearly a century, been largely dismissed as the mere superficial pursuit of only visual pleasure. In Designing Social Equality, Mark Foster Gage proposes a dramatic realignment between aesthetic thought, politics, social equality, and the design of our physical world. By reconsidering historic concepts from the deep history of aesthetic philosophy and deftly weaving them with emerging intellectual positions from a variety of disciplines, including those of Xenofeminism, Object-Oriented Ontology, Dark Ecology, and others, the book introduces a ground-breaking intellectual framework. Through what used to be known as the practice, teaching, and discourse of architecture and design, this framework sets out to reconfigure a more encompassing social theory of how humanity perceives its very reality and how it might begin to more justly define that reality through new ways of reconsidering the built environment.

Composites, Surfaces, and Software

Author : Mark Gage
Publisher : Yale School of Architecture Bo
ISBN 13 : 9780393733334
Total Pages : 158 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (333 download)

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Book Synopsis Composites, Surfaces, and Software by : Mark Gage

Download or read book Composites, Surfaces, and Software written by Mark Gage and published by Yale School of Architecture Bo. This book was released on 2010 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Boat, airplane, and automobile design tools and software are now applied to architectural projects using robotics and high-strength, low-weight, carbon fiber composites. Greg Lynn's studio and Mark Foster Gage's seminar at Yale—with participants Frank Gehry, Lise Ann Couture, Chris Bangle, and Greg Foley, among others—generated a lively dialogue invigorating the future of design.

Michelangelo

Author : Giulio Carlo Argan
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 392 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (321 download)

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Book Synopsis Michelangelo by : Giulio Carlo Argan

Download or read book Michelangelo written by Giulio Carlo Argan and published by . This book was released on 2004-07 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive volume on Michelangelo's architectural production.

The Emancipated Spectator

Author : Jacques Ranciere
Publisher : Verso Books
ISBN 13 : 1844678326
Total Pages : 120 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (446 download)

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Book Synopsis The Emancipated Spectator by : Jacques Ranciere

Download or read book The Emancipated Spectator written by Jacques Ranciere and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The theorists of art and film commonly depict the modern audience as aesthetically and politically passive. In response, both artists and thinkers have sought to transform the spectator into an active agent and the spectacle into a communal performance. In this follow-up to the acclaimed The Future of the Image, Rancière takes a radically different approach to this attempted emancipation. First asking exactly what we mean by political art or the politics of art, he goes on to look at what the tradition of critical art, and the desire to insert art into life, has achieved. Has the militant critique of the consumption of images and commodities become, ironically, a sad affirmation of its omnipotence?

Parametricism 2.0

Author : Patrik Schumacher
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1118736168
Total Pages : 136 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (187 download)

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Book Synopsis Parametricism 2.0 by : Patrik Schumacher

Download or read book Parametricism 2.0 written by Patrik Schumacher and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-04-25 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Parametricism is an avant-garde architecture and design movement that has been growing and maturing over the last 15 years, emerging as a remarkable global force. The tendency started in architecture but now encompasses all design disciplines, from urban design to fashion. In architecture, the style has an international following and is currently progressing beyond its experimental roots to make an impact on a broader scale, with practices like Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) winning and completing large-scale architectural projects worldwide. Parametricism implies that all elements and aspects of an architectural composition or product are parametrically malleable; and the style owes its original, unmistakable physiognomy to its unprecedented use of computational design tools and fabrication methods. All design parameters are conceived as variables that allow the design to vary and adapt to the diverse, complex and dynamic requirements of contemporary society. Although Parametricism has been talked about and hotly debated for a number of years, so far there has been no publication dedicated to Parametricism. The issue is guest-edited by Patrik Schumacher, partner at ZHA, and one of the world's most highly renowned advocates of Parametricism. Contributors: Philippe Block, Shajay Bhooshan, Mark Burry, Mario Carpo, Manuel DeLanda, John Frazer, Mark Foster Gage, Enriqueta Llabres and Eduardo Rico, Achim Menges, Theo Spyropoulos, Robert Stuart-Smith, Philip F Yuan. Featured architects and designers: Arup, Mark Fornes/THEVERYMANY, Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) and Ross Lovegrove.

On Beauty and Being Just

Author : Elaine Scarry
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400847354
Total Pages : 144 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis On Beauty and Being Just by : Elaine Scarry

Download or read book On Beauty and Being Just written by Elaine Scarry and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-21 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Have we become beauty-blind? For two decades or more in the humanities, various political arguments have been put forward against beauty: that it distracts us from more important issues; that it is the handmaiden of privilege; and that it masks political interests. In On Beauty and Being Just Elaine Scarry not only defends beauty from the political arguments against it but also argues that beauty does indeed press us toward a greater concern for justice. Taking inspiration from writers and thinkers as diverse as Homer, Plato, Marcel Proust, Simone Weil, and Iris Murdoch as well as her own experiences, Scarry offers up an elegant, passionate manifesto for the revival of beauty in our intellectual work as well as our homes, museums, and classrooms. Scarry argues that our responses to beauty are perceptual events of profound significance for the individual and for society. Presenting us with a rare and exceptional opportunity to witness fairness, beauty assists us in our attention to justice. The beautiful object renders fairness, an abstract concept, concrete by making it directly available to our sensory perceptions. With its direct appeal to the senses, beauty stops us, transfixes us, fills us with a "surfeit of aliveness." In so doing, it takes the individual away from the center of his or her self-preoccupation and thus prompts a distribution of attention outward toward others and, ultimately, she contends, toward ethical fairness. Scarry, author of the landmark The Body in Pain and one of our bravest and most creative thinkers, offers us here philosophical critique written with clarity and conviction as well as a passionate plea that we change the way we think about beauty.

Ecologies of Inception

Author : Simone Ferracina
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000543269
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (5 download)

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Book Synopsis Ecologies of Inception by : Simone Ferracina

Download or read book Ecologies of Inception written by Simone Ferracina and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Responding to increasing levels of planetary pollution, waste generation, carbon dioxide emission and environmental collapse, Ecologies of Inception re-thinks potentiality—an object’s ability to change—in architecture and design. The book problematizes the still-prevailing modern paradigm of design practice: the technical tabula rasa, a tendency to begin from scratch and use raw, amorphous, and obedient materials that can be easily and effectively manipulated, facilitating a seamless and faithful embodiment of intentions. Instead, the philosophy of design developed in the text prompts—through a variety of case studies, thinkers, and disciplines—a collective reconsideration of value, dissociating it from the projects and signatures of any one author or generation. Whereas the merits of up-cycling and circular design are canonically defined vis-à-vis status-quo economic and socio-cultural orthodoxies, this project unpacks the theoretical assumptions that underpin these practices, showing that they perpetuate the same biases and exclusions that generate waste in the first place. As an alternative, the book introduces a nodal and exaptive paradigm for design: a conceptual and methodological toolset for engaging the durational and anthropocenic materiality of the third millennium, and for radically prioritizing practices of maintenance, reuse, care, and co-option. This approach, which is inspired by (and builds upon) evolutionary biology, technological disobedience, queer use, adaptive reuse, experimental preservation, and improvisational practices such as collage, adhocism, bricolage, and kit-bashing, refuses to reduce pre-existing material substrates to abstract lists of properties or featureless lumps, encountering them on their own terms—as situated individuals and co-authors. Ecologies of Inception will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, educators, and professional architects and designers interested in sustainable design and seeking to develop conceptual and design tools commensurate with the magnitude and urgency of the climate emergency.

Speculative Everything

Author : Anthony Dunne
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262019841
Total Pages : 235 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (62 download)

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Book Synopsis Speculative Everything by : Anthony Dunne

Download or read book Speculative Everything written by Anthony Dunne and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013-12-06 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How to use design as a tool to create not only things but ideas, to speculate about possible futures. Today designers often focus on making technology easy to use, sexy, and consumable. In Speculative Everything, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby propose a kind of design that is used as a tool to create not only things but ideas. For them, design is a means of speculating about how things could be—to imagine possible futures. This is not the usual sort of predicting or forecasting, spotting trends and extrapolating; these kinds of predictions have been proven wrong, again and again. Instead, Dunne and Raby pose “what if” questions that are intended to open debate and discussion about the kind of future people want (and do not want). Speculative Everything offers a tour through an emerging cultural landscape of design ideas, ideals, and approaches. Dunne and Raby cite examples from their own design and teaching and from other projects from fine art, design, architecture, cinema, and photography. They also draw on futurology, political theory, the philosophy of technology, and literary fiction. They show us, for example, ideas for a solar kitchen restaurant; a flypaper robotic clock; a menstruation machine; a cloud-seeding truck; a phantom-limb sensation recorder; and devices for food foraging that use the tools of synthetic biology. Dunne and Raby contend that if we speculate more—about everything—reality will become more malleable. The ideas freed by speculative design increase the odds of achieving desirable futures.

Log 40

Author : Cynthia Davidson
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780990735281
Total Pages : 166 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (352 download)

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Book Synopsis Log 40 by : Cynthia Davidson

Download or read book Log 40 written by Cynthia Davidson and published by . This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Log 40 assembles a wide-ranging collection of thoughtful essays on some of the most urgent questions and debates in architecture today, bringing them into dialogue with those of architecture¿s recent past. The legacy and current status of architectural images are considered from radically different vantages, in Brett Steele¿s anecdotal discourse on Zaha Hadid¿s 1983 painting The World (89 Degrees), John May¿s exacting dissection of ¿architecture after imaging,¿ and Hana Gründler¿s exploration of the ethical implications of drawing borderlines. The issue features commentary by two contemporary architects on contemporary buildings: V. Mitch McEwen on David Adjaye¿s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, and Elisabetta Terragni on OMA¿s Fondazione Prada in Milan. Other highlights include an excerpt from Noah¿s Ark, the new collection of Hubert Damisch¿s singular writings on architecture; a lively response by Mark Foster Gage to Michael Meredith¿s recent Log essay on indifference; and a sampling of new domestic objects designed by architects.

Log 33

Author : Cynthia C. Davidson
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780990735212
Total Pages : 156 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (352 download)

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Book Synopsis Log 33 by : Cynthia C. Davidson

Download or read book Log 33 written by Cynthia C. Davidson and published by . This book was released on 2015-02-12 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: [Winter 2015] Log 33 delivers emerging currents and renewed interests in architectural thought. It includes a thorough examination of object-oriented philosophy: two essays offering contrasting positions on its value for the architectural discipline as well as a conversation between philosopher Graham Harman and architects Todd Gannon, David Ruy, and Tom Wiscombe. Objects are invoked throughout the issue in myriad other ways ¿ in essays on the postcritical legacy, architecture and objecthood, shape and character, history and machines ¿ highlighting the currency and multivalence of the term object in the discourse today. Log 33, which follows two best-selling issues, also presents Wolfgang Schivelbusch¿s ¿World Machines,¿ the new preface to his recently republished book The Railway Journey as well as critical commentary on architectural events from around the world, essays on urban noise and architectural acoustics, new explorations of the architect¿s hand in drawing, and more.

New York Splendor

Author : Wendy Moonan
Publisher : Rizzoli Publications
ISBN 13 : 0847846350
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (478 download)

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Book Synopsis New York Splendor by : Wendy Moonan

Download or read book New York Splendor written by Wendy Moonan and published by Rizzoli Publications. This book was released on 2018-10-23 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Design authority Wendy Moonan takes the reader on a tour of some of New York City's finest residential rooms--past and present. The selection of interiors is about the "wow" factor--New York residential spaces that elicit gasps of pleasure and surprise when first seen. Some are very grand, others sparingly modern or eclectic. All are exceptional and, Moonan promises, unforgettable. Groundbreaking rooms include Brooke Astor's elegant library by Albert Hadley; Gloria Vanderbilt's sublime patchwork bedroom; Donald Judd's dramatically spare art-filled loft; Adolfo's opulent and magnificently red entrance hall; a Peter Marino-designed penthouse with sweeping midtown views; and Jamie Drake's stunning dining room for the mayor's residence, Gracie Mansion. Other illustrious interior designers and architects represented in the book include Mario Buatta, Robert Couturier, Albert Hadley, Denning & Fourcade, Mark Hampton, Philip Johnson, Charlotte Moss, Thomas O'Brien, Paul Rudolph, Bunny Williams, and Steven Gambrel. New York is the epicenter of interior-design innovations. Residents embrace myriad styles--from pure period historicism to bracing modernity. Moonan investigates the city's best residential spaces and presents them here, a book for the libraries of design lovers and professionals in the field.

Architecture and Objects

Author : Graham Harman
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 1452962359
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (529 download)

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Book Synopsis Architecture and Objects by : Graham Harman

Download or read book Architecture and Objects written by Graham Harman and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2022-07-26 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thinking through object-oriented ontology—and the work of architects such as Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid—to explore new concepts of the relationship between form and function Object-oriented ontology has become increasingly popular among architectural theorists and practitioners in recent years. Architecture and Objects, the first book on architecture by the founder of object-oriented ontology (OOO), deepens the exchange between architecture and philosophy, providing a new roadmap to OOO’s influence on the language and practice of contemporary architecture and offering new conceptions of the relationship between form and function. Graham Harman opens with a critique of Heidegger, Derrida, and Deleuze, the three philosophers whose ideas have left the deepest imprint on the field, highlighting the limits of their thinking for architecture. Instead, Harman contends, architecture can employ OOO to reconsider traditional notions of form and function that emphasize their relational characteristics—form with a building’s visual style, function with its stated purpose—and constrain architecture’s possibilities through literalism. Harman challenges these understandings by proposing de-relationalized versions of both (zero-form and zero-function) that together provide a convincing rejoinder to Immanuel Kant’s dismissal of architecture as “impure.” Through critical engagement with the writings of Peter Eisenman and fresh assessments of buildings by Rem Koolhaas, Frank Gehry, and Zaha Hadid, Architecture and Objects forwards a bold vision of architecture. Overcoming the difficult task of “zeroing” function, Harman concludes, would place architecture at the forefront of a necessary revitalization of exhausted aesthetic paradigms.

An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis

Author : Mogens Herman Hansen
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191518255
Total Pages : 1416 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (915 download)

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Book Synopsis An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis by : Mogens Herman Hansen

Download or read book An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis written by Mogens Herman Hansen and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2004-11-11 with total page 1416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first ever documented study of the 1,035 identifiable Greek city states (poleis) of the Archaic and Classical periods (c.650-325 BC). Previous studies of the Greek polis have focused on Athens and Sparta, and the result has been a view of Greek society dominated by Sophokles', Plato's, and Demosthenes' view of what the polis was. This study includes descriptions of Athens and Sparta, but its main purpose is to explore the history and organization of the thousand other city states. The main part of the book is a regionally organized inventory of all identifiable poleis covering the Greek world from Spain to the Caucasus and from the Crimea to Libya. This inventory is the work of 47 specialists, and is divided into 46 chapters, each covering a region. Each chapter contains an account of the region, a list of second-order settlements, and an alphabetically ordered description of the poleis. This description covers such topics as polis status, territory, settlement pattern, urban centre, city walls and monumental architecture, population, military strength, constitution, alliance membership, colonization, coinage, and Panhellenic victors. The first part of the book is a description of the method and principles applied in the construction of the inventory and an analysis of some of the results to be obtained by a comparative study of the 1,035 poleis included in it. The ancient Greek concept of polis is distinguished from the modern term `city state', which historians use to cover many other historic civilizations, from ancient Sumeria to the West African cultures absorbed by the nineteenth-century colonializing powers. The focus of this project is what the Greeks themselves considered a polis to be.