The Real Perspecta

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

The Real Perspecta

Author : Matthew Roman
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780262513937
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (139 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Real Perspecta by : Matthew Roman

Download or read book The Real Perspecta written by Matthew Roman and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amid the tricks and trompe l'oeils of contemporary practices, architecture is now, more than ever, in pursuit of the real. It is often suggested that architecture is more "real" than the other arts, more grounded and definitive. Yet even the most fundamental and concrete elements of architecture are often designed to conceal. This issue of Perspecta--the oldest and most distinguished student-edited architectural journal in America--embraces the paradoxical nature of the real, presenting it as a lens that magnifies the strategies and tactics of architecture, past, present, and future. How does architecture create real effects, change our built environment, and respond to crises? What are the tricks and trompe l'oeils of contemporary practice? Amid fake Europes, shape-shifting materials, and underwater asylums, Perspecta 42 navigates architecture's disciplinary boundaries to locate the real in the most unlikely of places. The real has been central to our understanding of architecture for the last hundred years, even if the discussion has been couched in other terms. While architecture anxiously situates itself between building and discourse, it never fully capitulates to either side. Through historical inquiry, theoretical writing, and contemporary projects, Perspecta 42 asserts that now, more than ever, architecture is in search of the real. The issue revolves around three encounters with the real. First, the physical: texts, projects, and conversations that relate to issues of material properties and our bodily surroundings--thoughts on such topics as sensory environments, smart materials, and the floor as a landscape of logistics. Second, authenticity: explorations of representation and hybrid realities, including the digital and the surreal. And, finally, institutional failures and man-made or natural crises: considerations of war, the current economic calamity, and racial politics. Contributors Michelle Addington, Lucia Allais, Alejandro Aravena, Mario Ballesteros, BIG, Andrew Blauvelt, Keller Easterling, Olafur Eliasson and Kurt Forster, Hal Foster, Lorens Holm, Jiang Jun, L.E.FT., Armin Linke, Metahaven, Spyros Papapetros, Emmanuel Petit, Antoine Picon, Bill Rankin, Damon Rich, Francois Roche, Matthew Stadler, Albena Yaneva, Yoon+Howeler, Andrew Zago, Mirko Zardini

Architecture from the Outside

Author : Elizabeth Grosz
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 9780262265362
Total Pages : 252 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (653 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Architecture from the Outside by : Elizabeth Grosz

Download or read book Architecture from the Outside written by Elizabeth Grosz and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2001-06-22 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays at the intersection of philosophy and architecture explore how we understand and inhabit space. To be outside allows one a fresh perspective on the inside. In these essays, philosopher Elizabeth Grosz explores the ways in which two disciplines that are fundamentally outside each another—architecture and philosophy—can meet in a third space to interact free of their internal constraints. "Outside" also refers to those whose voices are not usually heard in architectural discourse but who inhabit its space—the destitute, the homeless, the sick, and the dying, as well as women and minorities. Grosz asks how we can understand space differently in order to structure and inhabit our living arrangements accordingly. Two themes run throughout the book: temporal flow and sexual specificity. Grosz argues that time, change, and emergence, traditionally viewed as outside the concerns of space, must become more integral to the processes of design and construction. She also argues against architecture's historical indifference to sexual specificity, asking what the existence of (at least) two sexes has to do with how we understand and experience space. Drawing on the work of such philosophers as Henri Bergson, Roger Caillois, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, and Jacques Lacan, Grosz raises abstract but nonformalistic questions about space, inhabitation, and building. All of the essays propose philosophical experiments to render space and building more mobile and dynamic.

Perspecta 54

Author : Melinda Agron
Publisher : National Geographic Books
ISBN 13 : 0262543818
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Perspecta 54 by : Melinda Agron

Download or read book Perspecta 54 written by Melinda Agron and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Atopia as both the site of architecture’s critical confrontation with hegemonic systems and the theoretical space in which its own processes can be challenged. A literal no-place, atopia represents the spatial end-product of a society seemingly flattened by supra-territorial flows of information and material. It expresses both a physical artifact and condition of mass culture, and like the global systems of production and consumption from which it is conceived, atopia is both nowhere and everywhere at once. For the contributors of Perspecta 54, the ephemeral conditions of atopia are also an invitation to an equally unconstrained critical practice. Blurred boundaries—geopolitical, virtual, technical, disciplinary—offer sites for transgressive speculation and critique from beyond the limits of traditional design agency. What results is a form of design practice that ambiguously straddles impossibility and hyperreality. Atopia rejects both the escapist fantasy of utopia and the nihilism of dystopia, favoring instead a conceptual middle ground from which real-world conditions can be productively engaged and challenged. Architecture’s traditional objectives of critical inquiry—particularly the location of modes of complicity, agency, and resistance within larger structures—are mediated and reframed through nontraditional strategies of speculative design and fiction. For a profession that is routinely asked to navigate extreme complexity with limited tools, this approach suggests an expanded operational domain and possibilities for reinvigorated creative thought. From urban crises and climate emergencies to border disputes and geopolitics, Perspecta 54 examines atopia as both the site of architecture’s critical confrontation with hegemonic systems and the theoretical space in which its own processes can be challenged.

Architecture Depends

Author : Jeremy Till
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262012537
Total Pages : 269 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (62 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Architecture Depends by : Jeremy Till

Download or read book Architecture Depends written by Jeremy Till and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Architects, however, tend to deny this, fearing contingency and preferring to pursue perfection.

Impossible and Hyper-Real Elements of Architecture

Author : Carl Lostritto
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781951541552
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (415 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Impossible and Hyper-Real Elements of Architecture by : Carl Lostritto

Download or read book Impossible and Hyper-Real Elements of Architecture written by Carl Lostritto and published by . This book was released on 2022-07-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Impossible and Hyper-Real Elements of Architecture addresses how and why architects, artists, and designers manipulate reality. Front and center in this discourse is the role of rendering. Most often, to render is to engage a thick software interface, to accept a photographic framework of variables and effects, and to assume an unquestioned posture of articulating material, mass, and color. But like drawing, rendering is an interdisciplinary, algorithmic, historically rooted cultural practice as much as it is a digital vocation. The elements explored in this book are labeled "impossible" because they avoid a fixed relationship to a singular built reality. Digital bonsai trees, pixels, video game levels, grids, and dioramas extend like skewers through multiple media and formats. Through work that looks very real and can't possibly exist, representation becomes the territory of speculation, ambiguity, and curiosity.

Perspecta 46

Author : Joseph Clarke
Publisher : National Geographic Books
ISBN 13 : 0262525038
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Perspecta 46 by : Joseph Clarke

Download or read book Perspecta 46 written by Joseph Clarke and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2013-08-23 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays and projects illuminate the nature of error and its creative possibilities for architecture. Architecture never goes entirely according to plan. Every project deviates from its designers' expectations, and wise architects learn to anticipate, mitigate, and sometimes celebrate the errors along the way. Perspecta 46 argues that error is part of architecture's essence: mistranslations, contradictions, happy accidents, and wicked problems pervade our systems of design and building, almost always yielding surprising aberrations. Today, with increasingly complex projects underpinned by layers of computer code, small errors can proliferate rapidly, and the dream of errorless architecture seems more utopian than ever. This issue of Perspecta—the oldest and most distinguished student-edited architectural journal in America—considers the challenge of defining error, the difficulty of diagnosing and managing it, and the promise (and peril) of following its lead. Essays and projects illuminate error's ambiguous agency both in reality and in the architectural imagination, covering topics that range from Dante's cosmos of divine justice and Michelangelo's architectural “abuses” to Dada urbanism and the warped skyscrapers of Google Earth.

The Favored Circle

Author : Garry Stevens
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 9780262692786
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (927 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Favored Circle by : Garry Stevens

Download or read book The Favored Circle written by Garry Stevens and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2002-02-22 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A look at the field of architecture written by an outsider who demystifies the mechanics of fame and fortune. The popular view of architecture focuses on individual creative geniuses, those who have designed the most "significant" works. According to Garry Stevens, however, successful architects owe their success not so much to genius as to social background and a host of other factors that have very little to do with native talent. To concentrate only on the profession of architecture is to ignore the much larger field of architecture, which structures the entire social universe of the architect and of which architects are only one part. This book critically surveys that field, exposing many myths and debunking a number of heroes in the process. Using the conceptual apparatus of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, Stevens describes the field of architecture on two levels. First, he provides a detailed account of the field as it is at any given point in time, describing the different components and their relationships. Second, he analyzes the dynamics of the field through time, from the Renaissance to the present. He discusses the system of architectural education, as well as everyday aspects such as the competition for reputation. He concludes that throughout history, the most eminent architects have been connected to each other by master-pupil and collegiate relations. These networks, which still exist, provide a mechanism for architectural influence that runs parallel to that of the university-based schools.

Intentions in Architecture

Author : Christian Norberg-Schulz
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 9780262640022
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (4 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Intentions in Architecture by : Christian Norberg-Schulz

Download or read book Intentions in Architecture written by Christian Norberg-Schulz and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1968-09-15 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The chief focus of the book is on the symbolic and linguistic. The purpose is to develop an integrated theory of architectural description and architectural intention (and this includes the intention of the user as well as that of the designer), insofar as architecture is an art. Norberg-Schulz is a practicing architect; his buildings stand in several countries; and he elucidates the nature of architectural reality with a practiced eye and from a practical viewpoint. Although the methods and theory that his book develops are uncompromisingly rigorous and tightly formed, they are everywhere related to actual building, through specific examples and through the use of over 100 photographs. The structure that Norberg-Schulz has fashioned is surely one of the most impressive intellectual edifices that any architect has ever produced. The materials that are organically worked into it include Gestalt psychology, the mechanics of perception, information theory, modern analytic philosophy, and in particular, linguistic analysis, and the general theory of signs and symbols. The result, however, is not an eclectic hodge-podge; all these materials have their place and purpose; none is applied extraneously for "show" or purely decorative effect. And all this divergent material had to be joined according to plan within formal bounds in order to produce a theory with equally divergent applications: one that can treat not only of the aesthetics of architecture but equally well of its social, psychological, and cultural effects. The chief focus of the book is on the symbolic and linguistic. The purpose is to develop an integrated theory of architectural description and architectural intention (and this includes the intention of the user as well as that of the designer), insofar as architecture is an art.

The Women Who Changed Architecture

Author : Jan Cigliano Hartman
Publisher : Chronicle Books
ISBN 13 : 1648960863
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (489 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Women Who Changed Architecture by : Jan Cigliano Hartman

Download or read book The Women Who Changed Architecture written by Jan Cigliano Hartman and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2022-03-29 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A visual and global chronicle of the triumphs, challenges, and impact of over 100 women in architecture, from early practitioners to contemporary leaders. Marion Mahony Griffin passed the architectural licensure exam in 1898 and created exquisite drawings that buoyed the reputation of Frank Lloyd Wright. Her story is one of the many told in The Women Who Changed Architecture, which sets the record straight on the transformative impact women have made on architecture. With in-depth profiles and stunning images, this is the most comprehensive look at women in architecture around the world, from the nineteenth century to today. Discover contemporary leaders, like MacArthur Fellow Jeanne Gang, spearheading sustainable design initiatives, reimagining cities as equitable spaces, and directing architecture schools. An essential read for architecture students, architects, and anyone interested in how buildings are created and the history behind them.

Perspecta 52

Author : Charlotte Algie
Publisher : National Geographic Books
ISBN 13 : 0262537877
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Perspecta 52 by : Charlotte Algie

Download or read book Perspecta 52 written by Charlotte Algie and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considering a redefinition of global space. As much as it is a neoclassical compositional principle, the ensemble today is shifting into a new critical focus: it is a central figure in nascent developments in probabilistic mathematics and a critical logic in the development of artificial intelligence algorithms. Statistical ensembles are a specific adaptation of Markov processes. They produce and are produced by a highly circumscribed definition of creativity—that of a predictive state inherently based on a chain of linked, given events, thus a computational intelligence predicated on the established patterns of the database. Are these mathematical ensembles different from those of neoclassical composition? How are the new ensembles characterized and materialized relative to their conceptual tradition? This fifty-second issue of Perspecta—the oldest and most distinguished student-edited architectural journal in America—is a projective art history of ensemble as form and politics. It uses theories of ensemble to propose both alternative extensive stagings of design objects, as well as other resistant assemblies of the corps of architects. Ensemble is posed a lens to theorize object-parts and states of motion at once, together: an architecture of the city. The volume includes a new photographic essay on the contemporary city of Bengali by American and Indian artists. A collection of essays by interdisciplinary contributors interweave this new creative work, pointing toward a compositional project for an architecture that is multiple, extensive, spontaneous, collective, durational, temporary. Contributors Charlotte Algie, Hayden Bassett, Anya Bokov, Kim Bowes, Alex Bremner, Matteo Burioni, Swati Chattopadhyay, Jean-Louis Cohen, Mark Crinson, Arko Datto, Samia Henni, Heyward Hart, Mark Jarzombek, Vladimir Kulić, Jimenez Lai, Hannah Le Roux, John Loring, Zahra Malkani and Shahana Rajani, Emily Mann, Christina Maranci, Edward Mitchell, Brian Norwood, Itohan Oyasimwese, Cristina Osswald, Curtis Roth, Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Hans Tursack, Yasmin Vobis, Aaron Forrest

Brunelleschi, Lacan, Le Corbusier

Author : Lorens Holm
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000158411
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (1 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Brunelleschi, Lacan, Le Corbusier by : Lorens Holm

Download or read book Brunelleschi, Lacan, Le Corbusier written by Lorens Holm and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-25 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This well-argued, analytic text provides a greater understanding of spatial issues in the field of architecture. Re-interpreting the fifteenth century demonstration of perspective, Lorens Holm puts it in relation to today’s theories of subjectivity and elaborates for the first time the theoretical link between architecture and psychoanalysis. Divided into three sections, Brunelleschi, Lacan, Le Corbusier argues that perspective remains the primary and most satisfying way of representing form, because it is the paradigmatic form of spatial consciousness. Well-illustrated with over 100 images, this compelling book is a valuable study of this key aspect of architectural study and practice, making it an essential read for architects in their first year or their fiftieth.

The Architect

Author : Francesca Hughes
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 9780262581653
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (816 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Architect by : Francesca Hughes

Download or read book The Architect written by Francesca Hughes and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Architect: Reconstructing Her Practice examines how the introduction of womento the main body of architecture might bring about a reconstruction ofthe orders that pervade architectural production and consumption. At a moment when the architectural profession is beginning to shift from its traditionally male domination, The Architect: Reconstructing Her Practice examines how the introduction of women to the main body of architecture might bring about a reconstruction of the orders that pervade architectural production and consumption. In a collection of autobiographical essays in which practice is both the site and the vehicle for change, twelve American and European architects reflect on the nature of critical practice and its relation to architecture. The contributors were chosen not only for the distinguished quality of their work, but also for the range of architectural practices they collectively encompass--from the intersection of theory and philosophy to the intersection of building process and industry. Together, they present a compelling and provocative critique of architectural culture. All show a willingness to transgress the various mediums and territories of architecture, to recover and reopen certain discussions lost in the architectural discourse they have inherited.

Perspecta 29

Author : William Deresiewicz
Publisher : Perspecta
ISBN 13 : 9780262540926
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (49 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Perspecta 29 by : William Deresiewicz

Download or read book Perspecta 29 written by William Deresiewicz and published by Perspecta. This book was released on 1998 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This architectural journal examines the legacy of the academic and professional confrontations of the 1960s. Using documents from the Architect's Resistance and from the University, it presents contemporary American projects that represent a generation of

Architectural Robotics

Author : Keith Evan Green
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262334224
Total Pages : 279 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Architectural Robotics by : Keith Evan Green

Download or read book Architectural Robotics written by Keith Evan Green and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2016-02-10 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How a built environment that is robotic and interactive becomes an apt home to our restless, dynamic, and increasingly digital society. The relationship of humans to computers can no longer be represented as one person in a chair and one computer on a desk. Today computing finds its way into our pockets, our cars, our appliances; it is ubiquitous—an inescapable part of our everyday lives. Computing is even expanding beyond our devices; sensors, microcontrollers, and actuators are increasingly embedded into the built environment. In Architectural Robotics, Keith Evan Green looks toward the next frontier in computing: interactive, partly intelligent, meticulously designed physical environments. Green examines how these “architectural robotic” systems will support and augment us at work, school, and home, as we roam, interconnect, and age. Green tells the stories of three projects from his research lab that exemplify the reconfigurable, distributed, and transfigurable environments of architectural robotics. The Animated Work Environment is a robotic work environment of shape-shifting physical space that responds dynamically to the working life of the people within it; home+ is a suite of networked, distributed “robotic furnishings” integrated into existing domestic and healthcare environments; and LIT ROOM offers a simulated environment in which the physical space of a room merges with the imaginary space of a book, becoming “a portal to elsewhere.” How far beyond workstations, furniture, and rooms can the environments of architectural robotics stretch? Green imagines scaled-up neighborhoods, villages, and metropolises composed of physical bits, digital bytes, living things, and their hybrids. Not global but local, architectural robotics grounds computing in a capacious cyber-physical home.

Kid

Author : Sebastian de Souza
Publisher : Offliner Press
ISBN 13 : 1838389407
Total Pages : 418 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (383 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Kid by : Sebastian de Souza

Download or read book Kid written by Sebastian de Souza and published by Offliner Press. This book was released on 2021-03-18 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: London. The year 2078. Like all other major cities, London is a silent wasteland, abandoned and crumbling, populated only by the renegade ‘Offliner’ movement, the lawless ‘Seekers’ and other minorities that rejected The Upload in 2060. As a result, these rebels live off the grid and in abject poverty, taking shelter in makeshift shantytowns and hideouts. The Offliners have made the disused Piccadilly Circus Tube station their home: a fully self-sufficient, subterranean community of about 500 people, known as the ‘Cell’. In 2060, following a series of deadly pandemics, devastating environmental disasters and a violent surge in cyber terrorism, the UN made it compulsory for every tax paying citizen in all of its 193 united nations to login to the Perspecta Universe: a virtual reality universe provided by the tech giant Gnosys Inc. So began a period of history known as The Upload. Totally safe, pollution free, environmentally friendly: what was an alternative reality at first has become the only reality. Now, in 2078, billions of people all around the world exist in dedicated Hab-Belts – massive dormitory complexes surrounding the major cities – unconscious of the world around them: living, working, loving, learning, inside the Perspecta Universe. KID – A History of The Future follows Josh ‘Kid’ Jones, a young Offliner who discovers that an antiquated piece of technology called an ‘iPhone’, left to him by his father, seemingly allows him to communicate with the past through social media. He strikes up a friendship with Isabel Parry, a 16 year old in 2021, and the two begin communicating through time and space via Instagram. In doing so they are not only changing their own fate, but also the fate of the rest of the world.

Lateness

Author : Peter Eisenman
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691203911
Total Pages : 120 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Lateness by : Peter Eisenman

Download or read book Lateness written by Peter Eisenman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative case for historical ambiguity in architecture by one of the field's leading theorists Conceptions of modernity in architecture are often expressed in the idea of the zeitgeist, or "spirit of the age," an attitude toward architectural form that is embedded in a belief in progressive time. Lateness explores how architecture can work against these linear currents in startling and compelling ways. In this incisive book, internationally renowned architect Peter Eisenman, with Elisa Iturbe, proposes a different perspective on form and time in architecture, one that circumvents the temporal constraints on style that require it to be "of the times"—lateness. He focuses on three twentieth-century architects who exhibited the qualities of lateness in their designs: Adolf Loos, Aldo Rossi, and John Hejduk. Drawing on the critical theory of Theodor Adorno and his study of Beethoven's final works, Eisenman shows how the architecture of these canonical figures was temporally out of sync with conventions and expectations, and how lateness can serve as a form of release from the restraints of the moment. Bringing together architecture, music, and philosophy, and drawing on illuminating examples from the Renaissance and Baroque periods, Lateness demonstrates how today's architecture can use the concept of lateness to break free of stylistic limitations, expand architecture's critical capacity, and provide a new mode of analysis.

Experiencing Architecture, second edition

Author : Steen Eiler Rasmussen
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 9780262680028
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (8 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Experiencing Architecture, second edition by : Steen Eiler Rasmussen

Download or read book Experiencing Architecture, second edition written by Steen Eiler Rasmussen and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1964-03-15 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic examination of superb design through the centuries. Widely regarded as a classic in the field, Experiencing Architecture explores the history and promise of good design. Generously illustrated with historical examples of designing excellence—ranging from teacups, riding boots, and golf balls to the villas of Palladio and the fish-feeding pavilion of Beijing's Winter Palace—Rasmussen's accessible guide invites us to appreciate architecture not only as a profession, but as an art that shapes everyday experience. In the past, Rasmussen argues, architecture was not just an individual pursuit, but a community undertaking. Dwellings were built with a natural feeling for place, materials and use, resulting in “a remarkably suitable comeliness.” While we cannot return to a former age, Rasmussen notes, we can still design spaces that are beautiful and useful by seeking to understand architecture as an art form that must be experienced. An understanding of good design comes not only from one's professional experience of architecture as an abstract, individual pursuit, but also from one's shared, everyday experience of architecture in real time—its particular use of light, color, shape, scale, texture, rhythm and sound. Experiencing Architecture reminds us of what good architectural design has accomplished over time, what it can accomplish still, and why it is worth pursuing. Wide-ranging and approachable, it is for anyone who has ever wondered “what instrument the architect plays on.”