No Matter Theories And Practices Of The Ephemeral In Architecture

Download No Matter Theories And Practices Of The Ephemeral In Architecture full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online No Matter Theories And Practices Of The Ephemeral In Architecture ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!

No Matter: Theories and Practices of the Ephemeral in Architecture

Author : Anastasia Karandinou
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317087151
Total Pages : 398 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis No Matter: Theories and Practices of the Ephemeral in Architecture by : Anastasia Karandinou

Download or read book No Matter: Theories and Practices of the Ephemeral in Architecture written by Anastasia Karandinou and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do digital media (mobile phones, GPS, iPods, portable computers, internet, virtual realities, etc.) affect the way we perceive, inhabit and design space? Why do architects traditionally design, draw and map the visual, as opposed to other types of sensations of space (the sound, the smell, the texture, etc.)? Architecture is not only about the solid, material elements of space; it is also about the invisible, immaterial, intangible elements of space. This book examines the design, representation and reception of the ephemeral in architecture. It discusses how architects map and examine the spatial qualities that these elements create and questions whether - and if so, how - they take them into account in the designing process. Karandinou argues that current interest in the ephemeral in contemporary culture and architecture is related to the evolution of digital media; and that it is related to the new ways of thinking about space and everyday situations that new media enables. With sound and video recording devices now being embedded in everyday gadgets and mobile phones, capturing sounds or ephemeral situations and events has become an everyday habit. New animation techniques allow designers to think about space through time, as they are able to design dynamic and responsive spaces, as well as static spaces explored by someone over time. Contemporary video games are no longer based on a simple visual input and a keyboard; they now involve other senses, movement, and the response of the whole body in space. This book therefore argues that the traditional binary opposition between the sensuous and the digital is currently being reversed. Subsequently, new media can also function as a new tool-to-think-with about space. Designers are now able to think through time, and design spaces accordingly. Time, temporality, ephemerality, become central issues in the designing process. The notion first claimed by Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s, that the emergence of new di

Practices of Ephemera in Early Modern England

Author : Callan Davies
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000833925
Total Pages : 263 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (8 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Practices of Ephemera in Early Modern England by : Callan Davies

Download or read book Practices of Ephemera in Early Modern England written by Callan Davies and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-02-03 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection is the first to historicise the term ephemera and its meanings for early modern England and considers its relationship to time, matter, and place. It asks: how do we conceive of ephemera in a period before it was routinely employed (from the eighteenth century) to describe ostensibly disposable print? In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—when objects and texts were rapidly proliferating—the term began to acquire its modern association with transitoriness. But contributors to this volume show how ephemera was also integrally related to wider social and cultural ecosystems. Chapters explore those ecosystems and think about the papers and artefacts that shaped homes, streets, and cities or towns and their attendant preservation, loss, or transformation. The studies here therefore look beyond static records to think about moments of process and transmutation and accordingly get closer to early modern experiences, identities, and practices.

Elements of Architecture

Author : Mikkel Bille
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317279220
Total Pages : 463 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (172 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Elements of Architecture by : Mikkel Bille

Download or read book Elements of Architecture written by Mikkel Bille and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-26 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elements of Architecture explores new ways of engaging architecture in archaeology. It conceives of architecture both as the physical evidence of past societies and as existing beyond the physical environment, considering how people in the past have not just dwelled in buildings but have existed within them. The book engages with the meeting point between these two perspectives. For although archaeologists must deal with the presence and absence of physicality as a discipline, which studies humans through things, to understand humans they must also address the performances, as well as temporal and affective impacts, of these material remains. The contributions in this volume investigate the way time, performance and movement, both physically and emotionally, are central aspects of understanding architectural assemblages. It is a book about the constellations of people, places and things that emerge and dissolve as affective, mobile, performative and temporal engagements. This volume juxtaposes archaeological research with perspectives from anthropology, architecture, cultural geography and philosophy in order to explore the kaleidoscopic intersections of elements coming together in architecture. Documenting the ephemeral, relational, and emotional meeting points with a category of material objects that have defined much research into what it means to be human, Elements of Architecture elucidates and expands upon a crucial body of evidence which allows us to explore the lives and interactions of past societies.

The Architecture of Persistence

Author : David Fannon
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000410471
Total Pages : 383 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (4 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Architecture of Persistence by : David Fannon

Download or read book The Architecture of Persistence written by David Fannon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-08-24 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Architecture of Persistence argues that continued human use is the ultimate measure of sustainability in architecture, and that expanding the discourse about adaptability to include continuity as well as change offers the architectural manifestation of resilience. Why do some buildings last for generations as beloved and useful places, while others do not? How can designers today create buildings that remain useful into the future? While architects and theorists have offered a wide range of ideas about building for change, this book focuses on persistent architecture: the material, spatial, and cultural processes that give rise to long-lived buildings. Organized in three parts, this book examines material longevity in the face of constant physical and cultural change, connects the dimensions of human use and contemporary program, and discusses how time informs the design process. Featuring dozens of interviews with people who design and use buildings, and a close analysis of over a hundred historic and contemporary projects, the principles of persistent architecture introduced here address urgent challenges for contemporary practice while pointing towards a more sustainable built environment in the future. The Architecture of Persistence: Designing for Future Use offers practitioners, students, and scholars a set of principles and illustrative precedents exploring architecture’s unique ability to connect an instructive past, a useful present, and an unknown future.

Mood and Mobility

Author : Richard Coyne
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262552019
Total Pages : 389 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Mood and Mobility by : Richard Coyne

Download or read book Mood and Mobility written by Richard Coyne and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2024-05-21 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An argument that as we engage with social media on our digital devices we receive, modify, intensify, and transmit moods. We are active with our mobile devices; we play games, watch films, listen to music, check social media, and tap screens and keyboards while we are on the move. In Mood and Mobility, Richard Coyne argues that not only do we communicate, process information, and entertain ourselves through devices and social media; we also receive, modify, intensify, and transmit moods. Designers, practitioners, educators, researchers, and users should pay more attention to the moods created around our smartphones, tablets, and laptops. Drawing on research from a range of disciplines, including experimental psychology, phenomenology, cultural theory, and architecture, Coyne shows that users of social media are not simply passive receivers of moods; they are complicit in making moods. Devoting each chapter to a particular mood—from curiosity and pleasure to anxiety and melancholy—Coyne shows that devices and technologies do affect people's moods, although not always directly. He shows that mood effects are transitional; different moods suit different occasions, and derive character from emotional shifts. Furthermore, moods are active; we enlist all the resources of human sociability to create moods. And finally, the discourse about mood is deeply reflexive; in a kind of meta-moodiness, we talk about our moods and have feelings about them. Mood, in Coyne's distinctive telling, provides a new way to look at the ever-changing world of ubiquitous digital technologies.

The Routledge Companion to Hermeneutics

Author : Jeff Malpas
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317676645
Total Pages : 754 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (176 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Routledge Companion to Hermeneutics by : Jeff Malpas

Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Hermeneutics written by Jeff Malpas and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-11-20 with total page 754 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hermeneutics is a major theoretical and practical form of intellectual enquiry, central not only to philosophy but many other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. With phenomenology and existentialism, it is also one of the twentieth century’s most important philosophical movements and includes major thinkers such as Heidegger, Gadamer and Ricoeur. The Routledge Companion to Hermeneutics is an outstanding guide and reference source to the key philosophers, topics and themes in this exciting subject and is the first volume of its kind. Comprising over fifty chapters by a team of international contributors the Companion is divided into five parts: main figures in the hermeneutical tradition movement, including Heidegger, Gadamer and Ricoeur main topics in hermeneutics such as language, truth, relativism and history the engagement of hermeneutics with central disciplines such as literature, religion, race and gender, and art hermeneutics and world philosophies including Asian, Islamic and Judaic thought hermeneutic challenges and debates, such as critical theory, structuralism and phenomenology.

exlibris

Author : Giovanni Corbellini
Publisher : LetteraVentidue Edizioni
ISBN 13 : 8862427549
Total Pages : 167 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (624 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis exlibris by : Giovanni Corbellini

Download or read book exlibris written by Giovanni Corbellini and published by LetteraVentidue Edizioni. This book was released on 2022-05-18 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Architects write a lot, especially now when conceptual aspects have become central in the advanced reflections and narrative forms increasingly intersect the quest of design practices far an ultimate legitimation. In the growing mass of the publishing offer, these keywords try to highlight recurrent issues, tracking synthetic paths of orientation between different critical positions, with particular attention to what happens in the neighbouring fields of the arts and sciences.

The Architecture of Luxury

Author : Annette Condello
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317044762
Total Pages : 211 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Architecture of Luxury by : Annette Condello

Download or read book The Architecture of Luxury written by Annette Condello and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-16 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past century, luxury has been increasingly celebrated in the sense that it is no longer a privilege (or attitude) of the European elite or America’s leisure class. It has become more ubiquitous and now, practically everyone can experience luxury, even luxury in architecture. Focusing on various contexts within Western Europe, Latin America and the United States, this book traces the myths and application of luxury within architecture, interiors and designed landscapes. Spanning from antiquity to the modern era, it sets out six historical categories of luxury - Sybaritic, Lucullan, architectural excess, rustic, neoEuropean and modern - and relates these to the built and unbuilt environment, taking different cultural contexts and historical periods into consideration. It studies some of the ethical questions raised by the nature of luxury in architecture and discusses whether architectural luxury is an unqualified benefit or something which should only be present within strict limits. The author argues how the ideas of permissible and impermissible luxury have informed architecture and how these notions of ethical approval have changed from one context to another. Providing voluptuous settings for the nobles and the leisure class, luxury took the form of not only grand palaces, but also follies, country and suburban houses, private or public entertainment venues and ornate skyscrapers with fast lifts. The Architecture of Luxury proposes that in Western societies the growth of the leisure classes and their desire for various settings for pleasure resulted in a constantly increasing level of ’luxury’ sought within everyday architecture.

The Architecture of Pleasure

Author : Josephine Kane
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317044738
Total Pages : 354 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Architecture of Pleasure by : Josephine Kane

Download or read book The Architecture of Pleasure written by Josephine Kane and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-16 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The amusement parks which first appeared in England at the turn of the twentieth century represent a startlingly novel and complex phenomenon, combining fantasy architecture, new technology, ersatz danger, spectacle and consumption in a new mass experience. Though drawing on a diverse range of existing leisure practices, the particular entertainment formula they offered marked a radical departure in terms of visual, experiential and cultural meanings. The huge, socially mixed crowds that flocked to the new parks did so purely in the pursuit of pleasure, which the amusement parks commodified in exhilarating new guises. Between 1906 and 1939, nearly 40 major amusement parks operated across Britain. By the outbreak of the Second World War, millions of people visited these sites each year. The amusement park had become a defining element in the architectural psychological pleasurescape of Britain. This book considers the relationship between popular modernity, pleasure and the amusement park landscape in Britain from 1900-1939. It argues that the amusement parks were understood as a new and distinct expression of modern times which redefined the concept of public pleasure for mass audiences. Focusing on three sites - Blackpool Pleasure Beach, Dreamland in Margate and Southend's Kursaal - the book contextualises their development with references to the wider amusement park world. The meanings of these sites are explored through a detailed examination of the spatial and architectural form taken by rides and other buildings. The rollercoaster - a defining symbol of the amusement park - is given particular focus, as is the extent to which discourses of class, gender and national identity were expressed through the design of these parks.

The Architecture of Edwin Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew

Author : Iain Jackson
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 131704486X
Total Pages : 406 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Architecture of Edwin Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew by : Iain Jackson

Download or read book The Architecture of Edwin Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew written by Iain Jackson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-16 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew were pioneers of Modern Architecture in Britain and its former colonies from the late 1920s through to the early 1970s. As a barometer of twentieth century architecture, their work traces the major cultural developments of that century from the development of modernism, its spread into the late-colonial arena and finally, to its re-evaluation that resulted in a more expressive, formalist approach in the post-war era. This book thoroughly examines Fry and Drew's highly influential 'Tropical Architecture' in West Africa and India, whilst also discussing their British work, such as their post World War II projects for the Festival of Britain, Harlow New Town, Pilkington Brothers’ Headquarters and Coychurch Crematorium. It highlights the collaborative nature of Fry and Drew's work, including schemes undertaken with Elizabeth Denby, Walter Gropius, Denys Lasdun, Pierre Jeanneret and Le Corbusier. Positioning their architecture, writing and educational endeavours within a wider context, this book illustrates the significant artistic and cultural contributions made by Fry and Drew throughout their lengthy careers.

Architecture in an Age of Uncertainty

Author : Benjamin Flowers
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317179145
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (171 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Architecture in an Age of Uncertainty by : Benjamin Flowers

Download or read book Architecture in an Age of Uncertainty written by Benjamin Flowers and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the past two decades economic bubbles inflated and architectural spending around the globe reached fever pitch. In both well-established centers of capital accumulation and far--flung locales, audacious building projects sprang up, while the skyscraper, heretofore more commonly associated with American capitalism, seemed as if it might pack up and relocate to Dubai and Shanghai. Of course, much has changed in the past couple of years. In formerly free-spending Dubai, the tallest building in the world is now is named after the president of Abu Dhabi after he stepped in with last--minute debt financing. In cities across the United States, housing prices have nose-dived and cleared lots sit ready for commercial redevelopment that likely won't take place for another decade. Similar stories are not hard to find in many other nations. Architecture firms that swelled in flush days are jettisoning employees at a startling rate. In the context of economic instability (and its attendant social and political consequences), this edited volume brings together scholars, critics, and architects to discuss the present state of uncertainty in the practice and discipline of architecture. The chapters are organized into three main areas of inquiry: economics, practice, and technology. Within this larger framework, authors explore issues of security, ecological design, disaster architecture, the future of architectural practice, and the ethical obligations of the social practice of design. In doing so, it argues that this period has actually afforded architecture a valuable moment of self-reflection, where alternative directions for both the theory and practice of architecture might be explored rather than continuing with an approach which was so nurtured by capitalist prosperity and affluence.

The Architectural Capriccio

Author : Dr Lucien Steil
Publisher : Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN 13 : 9781409431916
Total Pages : 556 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (319 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Architectural Capriccio by : Dr Lucien Steil

Download or read book The Architectural Capriccio written by Dr Lucien Steil and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2014-01-17 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together leading writers and practicing architects including Jean Dethier, David Mayernik, Massimo Scolari, Robert Adam, David Watkin and Leon Krier, this volume provides a kaleidoscopic, multilayered exploration of the Architectural Capriccio. It not only explains the phenomena within a historical context, but moreover, demonstrates its contemporary validity and appropriateness as a holistic design methodology, an inspiring pictorial strategy, an efficient rendering technique and an optimal didactic tool. The book shows and comments on a wide range of historic masterworks and highlights contemporary artists and architects excelling in a modern updated, refreshed and original tradition of the Capriccio.

The Challenge of Emulation in Art and Architecture

Author : David Mayernik
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317039254
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Challenge of Emulation in Art and Architecture by : David Mayernik

Download or read book The Challenge of Emulation in Art and Architecture written by David Mayernik and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-01 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emulation is a challenging middle ground between imitation and invention. The idea of rivaling by means of imitation, as old as the Aenead and as modern as Michelangelo, fit neither the pessimistic deference of the neoclassicists nor the revolutionary spirit of the Romantics. Emulation thus disappeared along with the Renaissance humanist tradition, but it is slowly being recovered in the scholarship of Roman art. It remains to recover emulation for the Renaissance itself, and to revivify it for modern practice. Mayernik argues that it was the absence of a coherent understanding of emulation that fostered the fissuring of artistic production in the later eighteenth century into those devoted to copying the past and those interested in continual novelty, a situation solidified over the course of the nineteenth century and mostly taken for granted today. This book is a unique contribution to our understanding of the historical phenomenon of emulation, and perhaps more importantly a timely argument for its value to contemporary practice.

Recto Verso: Redefining the Sketchbook

Author : Angela Bartram
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317070003
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Recto Verso: Redefining the Sketchbook by : Angela Bartram

Download or read book Recto Verso: Redefining the Sketchbook written by Angela Bartram and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together a broad range of contributors including art, architecture, and design academic theorists and historians, in addition to practicing artists, architects, and designers, this volume explores the place of the sketchbook in contemporary art and architecture. Drawing upon a diverse range of theories, practices, and reflections common to the contemporary conceptualisation of the sketchbook and its associated environments, it offers a dialogue in which the sketchbook can be understood as a pivotal working tool that contributes to the creative process and the formulation and production of visual ideas. Along with exploring the theoretical, philosophical, psychological, and curatorial implications of the sketchbook, the book addresses emergent digital practices by way of examining contemporary developments in sketchbook productions and pedagogical applications. Consequently, these more recent developments question the validity of the sketchbook as both an instrument of practice and creativity, and as an educational device. International in scope, it not only explores European intellectual and artistic traditions, but also intercultural and cross-cultural perspectives, including reviews of practices in Chinese artworks or Islamic calligraphy, and situational contexts that deal with historical examples, such as Roman art, or modern practices in geographical-cultural regions like Pakistan.

Building Transatlantic Italy

Author : Paolo Scrivano
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317170822
Total Pages : 458 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (171 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Building Transatlantic Italy by : Paolo Scrivano

Download or read book Building Transatlantic Italy written by Paolo Scrivano and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the end of the Second World War, America’s newly acquired status of hegemonic power- together with the launch of ambitious international programs such as the Marshall Plan- significantly altered existing transatlantic relations. In this context, Italian and American architectural cultures developed a fragile dialogue characterized by successful exchanges and forms of collaboration but also by reciprocal wariness. The dissemination of models and ideas concerning architecture generated complex effects and frequently led to surprising misinterpretations, obstinate forms of resistance and long negotiations between the involved parties. Issues of continuity and discontinuity dominated Italian culture and society at the time since at stake was the possible balance between allegedly long-established traditions and the prospect of a radical rupture with recent history. Architectural culture often contributed to reach a compromise between very diverging attitudes. Situated in the larger realm of studies on Americanization, this book questions current interpretations of transatlantic relations in architecture. By reconsidering the means and effects of the dialogue that unfolded between the two sides of the Atlantic during the postwar years, the volume analyzes how cultural and formal models were developed in one context and then modified when transferred to a new one as well as the fortune of this cultural exchange in terms of circulation, amplification, and simplification.

Obsolescence

Author : Daniel M. Abramson
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022631345X
Total Pages : 203 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (263 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Obsolescence by : Daniel M. Abramson

Download or read book Obsolescence written by Daniel M. Abramson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-02-12 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Things fall apart. But in his innovative, wide-ranging, and well-illustrated book, Daniel Abramson investigates the American definition of what falling apart entails. We build new buildings partly in response to demand, but even more because we believe that existing buildings are slowly becoming obsolete and need to be replaced. Abramson shows that our idea of obsolescence is a product of our tax code, which was shaped by lobbying from building interests who benefit from the idea that buildings depreciate and need to be replaced. The belief in depreciation is not held worldwide which helps explain why preservation movements struggle more in America than elsewhere. Abramson s tour of our idea of obsolescence culminates in an assessment of recent tropes of sustainability, which struggle to cultivate the idea that the greenest building is the one that already exists."

A Theory of Architecture

Author : Nikos A. Salingaros
Publisher : Off The Common Books
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 522 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis A Theory of Architecture by : Nikos A. Salingaros

Download or read book A Theory of Architecture written by Nikos A. Salingaros and published by Off The Common Books. This book was released on 2021-04-02 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than a decade in the making, this is a textbook of architecture, useful for every architect: from first-year students, to those taking senior design studio, to graduate students writing a Ph.D. dissertation in architectural theory, to experienced practicing architects. It is very carefully written so that it can be read even by the beginning architecture student. The information contained here is a veritable gold mine of design techniques. This book teaches the reader how to design by adapting to human needs and sensibilities, yet independently of any particular style. Here is a unification of genuine architectural knowledge that brings a new clarity to the discipline. It explains much of what people instinctively know about architecture, and puts that knowledge for the first time in a concise, understandable form. Dr. Salingaros has experience in the organization of the built environment that few practicing architects have. The later chapters of this new book touch on very sensitive topics: what drives architects to produce the forms they build; and why architects use only a very restricted visual vocabulary. Is it personal inventiveness, or is it something more, which perhaps they are not even aware of? There has not been such a book treating the very essence of architecture. The only other author who is capable of raising a similar degree of passion (and controversy) is Christopher Alexander, who happens to be Dr. Salingaros’ friend and architectural mentor. “Surely no voice is more thought-provoking than that of this intriguing, perhaps historically important, new thinker?” From the Preface by His Royal Highness, Charles, The Prince of Wales “A New Vitruvius for 21st-Century Architecture and Urbanism?” Dr. Ashraf SalamaChair, Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar “Architecture, Salingaros argues, is governed by universal and intuitively understood principles, which have been exemplified by all successful styles and in all civilizations that have left a record of themselves in their buildings. The solution is not to return to the classical styles… the solution is to return to first principles and build within their constraints… ” Dr. Roger Scruton Philosopher, London, UK “A fundamental text, among the most significant of the past several years.” Dr. Vilma Torselli Architect and Author, Milan, Italy “A Theory of Architecture demonstrates how mathematics and the social sciences offer keys to designing a humane architecture. In this brilliant tome Salingaros explains why many modern buildings are neither beautiful nor harmonious and, alternatively, how architects and patrons can employ scale, materials and mathematical logic to design structures which are exciting, nourishing, and visually delightful.” Duncan G. Stroik Professor of Architecture, University of Notre Dame, Indiana “Salingaros explores ways to clarify and formalize our understanding of aesthetic forms in the built environment, using mathematics, thermodynamics, Darwinism, complexity theory and cognitive sciences. Salingaros’ remarkable observations suggest that concepts of complexity and scale can someday provide a full-bodied explanation for both the practice and the appreciation of architecture.” Kim Sorvig Architecture & Planning, University of New Mexico See this book’s Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Theory_of_Architecture Nikos A. Salingaros is an internationally known urbanist and architectural theorist who has studied the scientific bases underlying architecture for thirty years. Utne Reader ranked him as “One of 50 visionaries who are changing your world”, and Planetizen as 11th among “The top 100 urban thinkers of all time”. He is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Texas at San Antonio.