Reinforced Concrete and the Modernization of American Building, 1900-1930

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Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 0801872979
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (18 download)

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Book Synopsis Reinforced Concrete and the Modernization of American Building, 1900-1930 by : Amy E. Slaton

Download or read book Reinforced Concrete and the Modernization of American Building, 1900-1930 written by Amy E. Slaton and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2003-04-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining the proliferation of reinforced-concrete construction in the United States after 1900, historian Amy E. Slaton considers how scientific approaches and occupations displaced traditionally skilled labor. The technology of concrete buildings—little studied by historians of engineering, architecture, or industry—offers a remarkable case study in the modernization of American production. The use of concrete brought to construction the new procedures and priorities of mass production. These included a comprehensive application of science to commercial enterprise and vast redistributions of skills, opportunities, credit, and risk in the workplace. Reinforced concrete also changed the American landscape as building buyers embraced the architectural uniformity and simplicity to which the technology was best suited. Based on a wealth of data that includes university curricula, laboratory and company records, organizational proceedings, blueprints, and promotional materials as well as a rich body of physical evidence such as tools, instruments, building materials, and surviving reinforced-concrete buildings, this book tests the thesis that modern mass production in the United States came about not simply in answer to manufacturers' search for profits, but as a result of a complex of occupational and cultural agendas.

The Architecture of Error

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262326086
Total Pages : 325 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

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Book Synopsis The Architecture of Error by : Francesca Hughes

Download or read book The Architecture of Error written by Francesca Hughes and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2014-10-31 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why the rise of redundant precision in architecture and the accompanying fear of error are key to understanding the discipline's needs, anxieties and desires. When architects draw even brick walls to six decimal places with software designed to cut lenses, it is clear that the logic that once organized relations between precision and material error in construction has unraveled. Precision, already a promiscuous term, seems now to have been uncoupled from its contract with truthfulness. Meanwhile error, and the always-political space of its dissent, has reconfigured itself. In The Architecture of Error Francesca Hughes argues that behind the architect's acute fetishization of redundant precision lies a special fear of physical error. What if we were to consider the pivotal cultural and technological transformations of modernism to have been driven not so much by the causes its narratives declare, she asks, as by an unspoken horror of loss of control over error, material life, and everything that matter stands for? Hughes traces the rising intolerance of material vagaries—from the removal of ornament to digitalized fabrication—that produced the blind rejection of organic materials, the proliferation of material testing, and the rhetorical obstacles that blighted cybernetics. Why is it, she asks, that the more we cornered physical error, the more we feared it? Hughes's analysis of redundant precision exposes an architecture of fear whose politics must be called into question. Proposing error as a new category for architectural thought, Hughes draws on other disciplines and practices that have interrogated precision and failure, citing the work of scientists Nancy Cartwright and Evelyn Fox Keller and visual artists Gordon Matta-Clark, Barbara Hepworth, Rachel Whiteread, and others. These non-architect practitioners, she argues, show that error need not be excluded and precision can be made accountable.

Building Knowledge, Constructing Histories

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Author :
Publisher : CRC Press
ISBN 13 : 0429013620
Total Pages : 1394 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (29 download)

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Book Synopsis Building Knowledge, Constructing Histories by : Ine Wouters

Download or read book Building Knowledge, Constructing Histories written by Ine Wouters and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2018-09-05 with total page 1394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Building Knowledge, Constructing Histories brings together the papers presented at the Sixth International Congress on Construction History (6ICCH, Brussels, Belgium, 9-13 July 2018). The contributions present the latest research in the field of construction history, covering themes such as: - Building actors - Building materials - The process of building - Structural theory and analysis - Building services and techniques - Socio-cultural aspects - Knowledge transfer - The discipline of Construction History The papers cover various types of buildings and structures, from ancient times to the 21st century, from all over the world. In addition, thematic papers address specific themes and highlight new directions in construction history research, fostering transnational and interdisciplinary collaboration. Building Knowledge, Constructing Histories is a must-have for academics, scientists, building conservators, architects, historians, engineers, designers, contractors and other professionals involved or interested in the field of construction history.

Building Knowledge, Constructing Histories, volume 2

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Publisher : CRC Press
ISBN 13 : 0429822537
Total Pages : 696 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (298 download)

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Book Synopsis Building Knowledge, Constructing Histories, volume 2 by : Ine Wouters

Download or read book Building Knowledge, Constructing Histories, volume 2 written by Ine Wouters and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2018-07-11 with total page 696 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Building Knowledge, Constructing Histories brings together the papers presented at the Sixth International Congress on Construction History (6ICCH, Brussels, Belgium, 9-13 July 2018). The contributions present the latest research in the field of construction history, covering themes such as: - Building actors - Building materials - The process of building - Structural theory and analysis - Building services and techniques - Socio-cultural aspects - Knowledge transfer - The discipline of Construction History The papers cover various types of buildings and structures, from ancient times to the 21st century, from all over the world. In addition, thematic papers address specific themes and highlight new directions in construction history research, fostering transnational and interdisciplinary collaboration. Building Knowledge, Constructing Histories is a must-have for academics, scientists, building conservators, architects, historians, engineers, designers, contractors and other professionals involved or interested in the field of construction history. This is volume 2 of the book set.

Water, Doors and Buildings: Studies in the History of Construction

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Author :
Publisher : Lulu.com
ISBN 13 : 0992875153
Total Pages : 738 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (928 download)

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Book Synopsis Water, Doors and Buildings: Studies in the History of Construction by : James Campbell

Download or read book Water, Doors and Buildings: Studies in the History of Construction written by James Campbell and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2019 with total page 738 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents 50 peer-reviewed papers presented at the Sixth Annual Conference of the Construction History Society held at Queens' College Cambridge from 5-7 April 2019 which cover a wide variety of topics on aspects of construction history with a section devoted entirely to papers on water engineering.

A Better Way to Build

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Publisher : Purdue University Press
ISBN 13 : 1557536341
Total Pages : 500 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (575 download)

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Book Synopsis A Better Way to Build by : Michael R. Adamson

Download or read book A Better Way to Build written by Michael R. Adamson and published by Purdue University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While architects have been the subject of many scholarly studies, we know very little about the companies that built the structures they designed. This book is a study in business history as well as civil engineering and construction management. It details the contributions that Charles J. Pankow, a 1947 graduate of Purdue University, and his firm have made as builders of large, often concrete, commercial structures since the company's foundation in 1963. In particular, it uses selected projects as case studies to analyze and explain how the company innovated at the project level. The company has been recognized as a pioneer in "design-build," a methodology that involves the construction company in the development of structures and substitutes negotiated contracts for the bidding of architects' plans. The Pankow companies also developed automated construction technologies that helped keep projects on time and within budget. The book includes dozens of photographs of buildings under construction from the company's archive and other sources. At the same time, the author analyzes and evaluates the strategic decision making of the firm through 2004, the year in which the founder died. While Charles Pankow figures prominently in the narrative, the book also describes how others within the firm adapted the business so that the company could survive a commercial market that changed significantly as a result of the recession of the 1990s. Extending beyond the scope of most business biographies, this book is a study in industry innovation and the power of corporate culture, as well as the story of one particular company and the individuals who created it.

Concrete and Culture

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Publisher : Reaktion Books
ISBN 13 : 1861899335
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (618 download)

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Book Synopsis Concrete and Culture by : Adrian Forty

Download or read book Concrete and Culture written by Adrian Forty and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2013-02-15 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concrete has been used in arches, vaults, and domes dating as far back as the Roman Empire. Today, it is everywhere—in our roads, bridges, sidewalks, walls, and architecture. For each person on the planet, nearly three tons of concrete are produced every year. Used almost universally in modern construction, concrete has become a polarizing material that provokes intense loathing in some and fervent passion in others. Focusing on concrete’s effects on culture rather than its technical properties, Concrete and Culture examines the ways concrete has changed our understanding of nature, of time, and even of material. Adrian Forty concentrates not only on architects’ responses to concrete, but also takes into account the role concrete has played in politics, literature, cinema, labor-relations, and arguments about sustainability. Covering Europe, North and South America, and the Far East, Forty examines the degree that concrete has been responsible for modernist uniformity and the debates engendered by it. The first book to reflect on the global consequences of concrete, Concrete and Culture offers a new way to look at our environment over the past century.

American Catholics and the Church of Tomorrow

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Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022656116X
Total Pages : 310 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (265 download)

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Book Synopsis American Catholics and the Church of Tomorrow by : Catherine R. Osborne

Download or read book American Catholics and the Church of Tomorrow written by Catherine R. Osborne and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-04-24 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the mid-twentieth century, American Catholic churches began to shed the ubiquitous spires, stained glass, and gargoyles of their European forebears, turning instead toward startling and more angular structures of steel, plate glass, and concrete. But how did an institution like the Catholic Church, so often seen as steeped in inflexible traditions, come to welcome this modernist trend? Catherine R. Osborne’s innovative new book finds the answer: the alignment between postwar advancements in technology and design and evolutionary thought within the burgeoning American Catholic community. A new, visibly contemporary approach to design, church leaders thought, could lead to the rebirth of the church community of the future. As Osborne explains, the engineering breakthroughs that made modernist churches feasible themselves raised questions that were, for many Catholics, fundamentally theological. Couldn’t technological improvements engender worship spaces that better reflected God's presence in the contemporary world? Detailing the social, architectural, and theological movements that made modern churches possible, American Catholics and the Churches of Tomorrow breaks important new ground in the history of American Catholicism, and also presents new lines of thought for scholars attracted to modern architectural and urban history.

Prior Art

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262048957
Total Pages : 401 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (62 download)

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Book Synopsis Prior Art by : Peter H. Christensen

Download or read book Prior Art written by Peter H. Christensen and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2024-05-07 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking text on the history of the use of patents in architecture. Although patents existed in Renaissance Italy and even in Confucian thought, it was not until the middle third of the nineteenth century that architects embraced the practice of patenting in significant numbers. Patents could ensure, as they did for architects’ engineering brethren, the economic and cultural benefits afforded by exclusive intellectual property rights. But patent culture was never directly translatable to the field of architecture, which tended to negotiate issues of technological innovation in the context of the more abstract issues of artistic influence and formal expression. In Prior Art, scholar Peter Christensen offers the first full-scale monographic treatment of this complex relationship between art and invention. Christensen’s method, a site-oriented approach steeped in multinational and multilingual archival work, is geared toward unifying fractured global histories of architectural patents through the distinct union of architectural, cultural, and legal history. Prior Art offers a record of the marriage of intellectual property and architectural invention—a momentous, understudied, and still underutilized aspect of architectural culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—and the ways in which it influenced how buildings are conceived, designed, engineered, constructed, and promoted.

A Bibliographic Guide to North American Industry

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Publisher : Scarecrow Press
ISBN 13 : 9780810867024
Total Pages : 324 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (67 download)

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Book Synopsis A Bibliographic Guide to North American Industry by : Dale A. Stirling

Download or read book A Bibliographic Guide to North American Industry written by Dale A. Stirling and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2009-03-26 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a view toward the heritage of North American Industry, A Bibliographic Guide to North American Industry: History, Health, and Hazardous Waste provides recommended readings in historical and contemporary literature related to the origins of specific industries, the health and safety issues they face, and how they manage waste and prevent pollution. It encompasses three areas of industry that are critical to understanding the whole of industry: historical development, protection of worker health, and management of associated hazardous substances and materials. This publication serves the reference needs of researchers examining issues of historical development of industry, worker exposure to hazardous substances and materials, and historic and contemporary management of hazardous wastes. The book is unique in using the North American Industrial Classification System as a framework for organizing bibliographic entries. Attorneys, historians, economists, and all others interested in historical and contemporary issues facing North American industry find here a useful and important resource.

Constructing Building Enclosures

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000081842
Total Pages : 372 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Constructing Building Enclosures by : Clifton Fordham

Download or read book Constructing Building Enclosures written by Clifton Fordham and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-07-21 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Constructing Building Enclosures investigates and interrogates tensions that arose between the disciplines of architecture and engineering as they wrestled with technology and building cultures that evolved to deliver structures in the modern era. At the center of this history are inventive architects, engineers and projects that did not settle for conventional solutions, technologies and methods. Comprised of thirteen original essays by interdisciplinary scholars, this collection offers a critical look at the development and the purpose of building technology within a design framework. Through two distinct sections, the contributions first challenge notions of the boundaries between architecture, engineering and construction. The authors then investigate twentieth-century building projects, exploring technological and aesthetic boundaries of postwar modernism and uncovering lessons relevant to enclosure design that are typically overlooked. Projects include Louis Kahn’s Weiss House, Minoru Yamasaki’s Science Center, Sigurd Lewerentz’s Chapel of Hope and more. An important read for students, educators and researchers within architectural history, construction history, building technology and design, this volume sets out to disrupt common assumptions of how we understand this history.

Further Studies in the History of Construction: the Proceedings of the Third Annual Conference of the Construction History Society

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Publisher : Lulu.com
ISBN 13 : 0992875129
Total Pages : 494 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (928 download)

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Book Synopsis Further Studies in the History of Construction: the Proceedings of the Third Annual Conference of the Construction History Society by : James Campbell

Download or read book Further Studies in the History of Construction: the Proceedings of the Third Annual Conference of the Construction History Society written by James Campbell and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2016 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the third in the series of volumes which provide the papers of the conferences held at Queens' College, Cambridge by the Construction History Society. Papers cover different aspects of the history of construction, including studies of different building materials, building firms, the development and education of building professionals, the construction of buildings and infrastructure, methods and techniques of construction, and other subjects related to the history and development of buildings.

Engineering Philadelphia

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Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 0801469732
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis Engineering Philadelphia by : Domenic Vitiello

Download or read book Engineering Philadelphia written by Domenic Vitiello and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sellers brothers, Samuel and George, came to North America in 1682 as part of the Quaker migration to William Penn’s new province on the shores of the Delaware River. Across more than two centuries, the Sellers family—especially Samuel’s descendants Nathan, Escol, Coleman, and William—rose to prominence as manufacturers, engineers, social reformers, and urban and suburban developers, transforming Philadelphia into a center of industry and culture. They led a host of civic institutions including the Franklin Institute, Abolition Society, and University of Pennsylvania. At the same time, their vast network of relatives and associates became a leading force in the rise of American industry in Ohio, Georgia, Tennessee, New York, and elsewhere. Engineering Philadelphia is a sweeping account of enterprise and ingenuity, economic development and urban planning, and the rise and fall of Philadelphia as an industrial metropolis. Domenic Vitiello tells the story of the influential Sellers family, placing their experiences in the broader context of industrialization and urbanization in the United States from the colonial era through World War II. The story of the Sellers family illustrates how family and business networks shaped the social, financial, and technological processes of industrial capitalism. As Vitiello documents, the Sellers family and their network profoundly influenced corporate and federal technology policy, manufacturing practice, infrastructure and building construction, and metropolitan development. Vitiello also links the family’s declining fortunes to the deindustrialization of Philadelphia—and the nation—over the course of the twentieth century.

The World in a Grain

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Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0399576444
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (995 download)

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Book Synopsis The World in a Grain by : Vince Beiser

Download or read book The World in a Grain written by Vince Beiser and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award The gripping story of the most important overlooked commodity in the world--sand--and the crucial role it plays in our lives. After water and air, sand is the natural resource that we consume more than any other--even more than oil. Every concrete building and paved road on Earth, every computer screen and silicon chip, is made from sand. From Egypt's pyramids to the Hubble telescope, from the world's tallest skyscraper to the sidewalk below it, from Chartres' stained-glass windows to your iPhone, sand shelters us, empowers us, engages us, and inspires us. It's the ingredient that makes possible our cities, our science, our lives--and our future. And, incredibly, we're running out of it. The World in a Grain is the compelling true story of the hugely important and diminishing natural resource that grows more essential every day, and of the people who mine it, sell it, build with it--and sometimes, even kill for it. It's also a provocative examination of the serious human and environmental costs incurred by our dependence on sand, which has received little public attention. Not all sand is created equal: Some of the easiest sand to get to is the least useful. Award-winning journalist Vince Beiser delves deep into this world, taking readers on a journey across the globe, from the United States to remote corners of India, China, and Dubai to explain why sand is so crucial to modern life. Along the way, readers encounter world-changing innovators, island-building entrepreneurs, desert fighters, and murderous sand pirates. The result is an entertaining and eye-opening work, one that is both unexpected and involving, rippling with fascinating detail and filled with surprising characters.

Building New Bridges - Bâtir de nouveaux ponts

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Author :
Publisher : University of Ottawa Press
ISBN 13 : 0776615521
Total Pages : 284 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (766 download)

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Book Synopsis Building New Bridges - Bâtir de nouveaux ponts by : Jeff Keshen

Download or read book Building New Bridges - Bâtir de nouveaux ponts written by Jeff Keshen and published by University of Ottawa Press. This book was released on 2005-06-30 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Questions of methodology and the use of sources are fundamental to all academic disciplines. In recent years, this topic has become far more challenging as scholars are increasingly adopting an interdisciplinary approach to achieve richer and deeper analyses, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. Building New Bridges / Bâtir de nouveaux ponts is a collection of scholarly papers that deals with the first principles of source identification and their effective utilization. The contributors to the volume come from a wide range of disciplines and represent both French and English Canada. Together, they explore and encourage the interdisciplinarity trend - around which considerable academic trepidation remains - and seek to explain, for example, how historians and those in English or Lettres françaises analyze texts, how scholars approach paintings, photography, and film, and how the study of music relates tempo and lyrics to wider societal trends. They utilize their respective research to elucidate means of effectively employing evidences and methods to achieve richer, deeper, and more nuanced results. As a whole, the collection provides an excellent primer for scholars of methodology.

On Frank Lloyd Wright's Concrete Adobe

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Author :
Publisher : Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN 13 : 9781409428176
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (281 download)

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Book Synopsis On Frank Lloyd Wright's Concrete Adobe by : Donald Leslie Johnson

Download or read book On Frank Lloyd Wright's Concrete Adobe written by Donald Leslie Johnson and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2013 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book provides a unique, in-depth and critical analysis of Wright's concrete block houses, set within their historical, biographical and theoretical contexts. In particular, it shows the full impact upon Wright of his contemporaries, architects Irving Gill and Rudolph Schindler. In doing so, it allows a full appreciation of Wright's, Gill's and Schindler's buildings beyond their architectonic and experiential qualities.

Urban Assemblages

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135202737
Total Pages : 354 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (352 download)

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Book Synopsis Urban Assemblages by : Ignacio Farías

Download or read book Urban Assemblages written by Ignacio Farías and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-08-21 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book takes it as a given that the city is made of multiple partially localized assemblages built of heterogeneous networks, spaces, and practices. The past century of urban studies has focused on various aspects—space, culture, politics, economy—but these too often address each domain and the city itself as a bounded and cohesive entity. The multiple and overlapping enactments that constitute urban life require a commensurate method of analysis that encompasses the human and non-human aspects of cities—from nature to socio-technical networks, to hybrid collectivities, physical artefacts and historical legacies, and the virtual or imagined city. This book proposes—and its various chapters offer demonstrations—importing into urban studies a body of theories, concepts, and perspectives developed in the field of science and technology studies (STS) and, more specifically, Actor-Network Theory (ANT). The essays examine artefacts, technical systems, architectures, place and eventful spaces, the persistence of history, imaginary and virtual elements of city life, and the politics and ethical challenges of a mode of analysis that incorporates multiple actors as hybrid chains of causation. The chapters are attentive to the multiple scales of both the object of analysis and the analysis itself. The aim is more ambitious than the mere transfer of a fashionable template. The authors embrace ANT critically, as much as a metaphor as a method of analysis, deploying it to think with, to ask new questions, to find the language to achieve more compelling descriptions of city life and of urban transformations. By greatly extending the chain or network of causation, proliferating heterogeneous agents, non-human as well as human, without limit as to their enrolment in urban assemblages, Actor-Network Theory offers a way of addressing the particular complexity and openness characteristic of cities. By enabling an escape from the reification of the city so common in social theory, ANT’s notion of hybrid assemblages offers richer framing of the reality of the city—of urban experience—that is responsive to contingency and complexity. Therefore Urban Assemblages is a pertinent book for students, practitioners and scholars as it aims to shift the parameters of urban studies and contribute a meaningful argument for the urban arena which will dominate the coming decades in government policies.