The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays

The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays
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exceptionally insightful

The classic collection of analytical essays by Rowe.

The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays
Colin Rowe
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Criticism | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
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Towards a New Architecture

Robert Venturi: Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture

Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism

Collage City

The Dynamics of Architectural Form

ASIN: 0262680378

Book Description

This collection of an important architectural theorist's essays considers and compares designs by Palladio and Le Corbusier, discusses mannerism and modern architecture, architectural vocabulary in the 19th century, the architecture of Chicago, neoclassicism and modern architecture, and the architecture of utopia.

Customer Reviews:

exceptionally insightful.......2001-04-28

Colin Rowe's essays are exceptionally insightful and truly enlightening. These essays were written decades ago but they're still enormously valuable and still very fresh. The first essay, from which the book takes its title and probably Rowe's most famous, is an analysis of the geometrical and proportional similarities between Le Corbusier's villa at Garches and Palladio's Villa Malcontenta. A brief but dense tour de force. Perhaps his next most famous essay is "Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal," written with Robert Slutzky. Also a real eye-opener. In other essays he discusses the curious relationship between the Chicago frame and modern architecture; neo-classicism and modern architecture; mannerism and modern architecture; La Tourette; 19th century thinking about architectural character and composition; and the architecture of utopia. These essays make you think, look at things differently, look at things you hadn't noticed, and they ultimately enlarge your understanding of architecture and your architectural field of vision. I'm grateful to Colin Rowe for that. After reading this book I bought his three-volume collection of essays, "As I Was Saying." I just had to have more. The essays in this book put your mind to work but Rowe's writing is also quite engaging. He's a genuinely independent thinker and a rigorous one too. These are wonderful essays and the book is highly recommended.

The classic collection of analytical essays by Rowe........1998-09-21

This collection of essays by Prof. Colin Rowe is considered to be among the most important analytical essays on architecture in this century. Prof. Rowe has won the Gold Medal in Architecture from Queen Elizabeth and was Professor of Architecture at Cornell for over 25 years.

Kindergarten Chats and Other Writings (Documents of Modern Art.)

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Still Great After 100 Years

Kindergarten Chats and Other Writings (Documents of Modern Art.)
Louis Sullivan
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

General | Education | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Preschool & Kindergarten | Education | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
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Louis Sullivan: Prophet of Modern Architecture, Revised Edition
Robert Venturi: Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture
Louis Sullivan: The Poetry of Architecture
The Idea of Louis Sullivan
Three American Architects: Richardson, Sullivan, and Wright, 1865-1915

ASIN: 0486238121

Book Description

One of America’s most original and influential architects, known for his many commercial buildings, expounds his theories in his most famous book. Reprint of definitive (1918) edition including 8 additional papers. 17 illustrations.

Customer Reviews:

Still Great After 100 Years.......2000-11-30

It seems hard to believe that I, or anyone, could possibly dare add to the body of praise (or criticism) of this stunning collection of articles completed by Louis Sullivan right after the turn of last century. Remarkably, even though written by an architect, this work has the beauty, form, and flow of the poetry of deep thought about lessons we can learn from nature - with barely a word about architecture. This book is a must for the romantic. A stimulating and fresh connection spanning 100 years with a truly brilliant mind. It is essential reading for the 21st century. Louis Sullivan developes his arguments with superbly fine points and magnificantly developed reasoning. I am humbled to think I can praise this dear and departed genius. I am in debted to this man's universal thinking, clarity of mind, and depth of soul. Read this book. Love it. Respect it. Re-read it. Cherish it.

Late-modern architecture and other essays

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Late-modern architecture and other essays
Charles Jencks
Manufacturer: Rizzoli
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

Average customer rating:

masterful overview

Modern Architecture and Other Essays
Vincent Scully
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Criticism | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

Modern | Schools, Periods & Styles | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Reference | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books
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Modern Architecture
Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan
Architecture Culture 1943-1968: A Documentary Anthology (Columbia Books of Architecture)

ASIN: 0691074429

Book Description

Vincent Scully has shaped not only how we view the evolution of architecture in the twentieth century but also the course of that evolution itself. Combining the modes of historian and critic in unique and compelling ways--with an audience that reaches from students and scholars to professional architects and ardent amateurs--Scully has profoundly influenced the way architecture is thought about and made.

This extensively illustrated and elegantly designed volume distills Scully's incalculable contribution. Neil Levine, a former student of Scully's, selects twenty essays that reveal the breadth and depth of Scully's work from the 1950s through the 1990s. The pieces are included for their singular contribution to our understanding of modern architecture as well as their relative unavailability to current readers. Levine offers a perceptive overview of Scully's distinguished career and introduces each essay, skillfully setting the scholarly and cultural scene. The selections address almost all of modern architecture's major themes and together go a long way toward defining what constitutes the contemporary experience of architecture and urbanism. Each is characteristically Scully--provocative, yet precise in detail and observation, written with passionate clarity. They document Scully's seminal views on the relationship between the natural and the built environment and trace his progressively intense concern with the fabric of the street and of our communities. The essays also highlight Scully's engagement with the careers of so many of the twentieth century's most significant architects, from Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Kahn to Robert Venturi.

In the tradition of great intellectual biographies, this finely made book chronicles our most influential architectural historian and critic. It is a gift to architecture and its history.

Customer Reviews:

masterful overview.......2007-10-03

While this book is not really the best choice for someone brand new to the study of architecture, it's nonetheless readable (my mother read much of it). If your goal is to understand the perspective of the great Vincent Scully, this is a well-edited, diverse primer.

The Gray Cloth: A Novel on Glass Architecture

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The Gray Cloth: A Novel on Glass Architecture
Paul Scheerbart
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

Reference | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

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Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens
Re-thinking History (Routledge Classics)
The Production of Space

ASIN: 0262692961

Book Description

The German expressionist, architectural visionary, author, inventor, and artist Paul Scheerbart (1863-1915) wrote several fictional utopian narratives related to glass architecture. In The Gray Cloth, the first of his novels to be translated into English, Scheerbart uses subtle irony and the structural simplicity of a fairy tale to present the theories of colored glass outlined in his well-known treatise Glass Architecture.

The novel is set forward in time to the mid-twentieth century. The protagonist, a Swiss architect named Edgar Krug, circumnavigates the globe by airship with his wife, constructing wildly varied, colored-glass buildings. His projects include a high-rise and exhibition/concert hall in Chicago, a retirement complex for air pilots on the Fiji Islands, the structure for an elevated train across a zoological park in northern India, and a suspended residential villa on the Kuria Muria Islands off the coast of Oman in the Arabian Sea. Fearing that his architecture is challenged by the colorfulness of women’s clothing, Krug insists that his wife wear all gray clothing with the addition of ten percent white. This odd demand brings him notoriety and sensationalizes his international building campaign. For the reader, it underlines the confluence of architecture with fashion, gender, and global media.

In his introduction John Stuart surveys Scheerbart’s career and role in German avant-garde circles, as well as his architectural and social ideas. He shows how Scheerbart strove to integrate his spiritual and romantic leanings with the modern world, often relying on glass architecture to do so. In addition to discussing the novel’s reception and its rediscovery by contemporary architects and critics, Stuart shows fiction to be a resource for the study of architecture and places The Gray Cloth in the context of German Expressionism.

Beyond Modernism: Essays on Art from the 70's and 80's

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Beyond Modernism: Essays on Art from the 70's and 80's
Kim Levin
Manufacturer: Icon (Harpe)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

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Color in Townscape: Handbook in Six Parts for Architects, Designers, and Contractors for City-Dwellers, and Other Observant People

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Color in Townscape: Handbook in Six Parts for Architects, Designers, and Contractors for City-Dwellers, and Other Observant People
Duttmann
Manufacturer: W H Freeman & Co (Sd)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0716713101

Selected Writings: Modern Painters/the Stones of Venice/the Seven Lamps of Architecture/Praeterita (Everyman's Library (Paper))

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Art and Insight...
Travesty
The selections in this book miss the point completely

Selected Writings: Modern Painters/the Stones of Venice/the Seven Lamps of Architecture/Praeterita (Everyman's Library (Paper))
John Ruskin
Manufacturer: Everyman Paperback Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | History & Criticism | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Essays | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

For Ruskin (1819-1900), the scrutiny of art ensures moral, social and religious comprehension of humanity's relationship to the world. This selection draws on Modern Painters (1843 - 1860) and The Stones of Venice (1851-1853) to present Ruskin's conception of art and the edification it works on human understanding.

Customer Reviews:

Art and Insight..........2002-03-17

I personally came to a knowledge, reading, and
study of John Ruskin late -- only during this
past half year. Though I had come across quotes
attributed to him on various subjects, and though
I had heard mentions of him on various cultural
programs, still nothing enticed me or intrigued
me enough to follow up -- until I came upon
two quotes from him in two very provocative sources.
The first source was in the ENCYCLOPEDIA AMERICANA
(1994)in an article on "Dante Alighieri." The quote
reads: "Each age has admired Dante for different
reasons. His contemporaries and immediate successors
dwelt on his rhetorical skill and ethical content;
the early 19th century admired his "Gothic" grandeur;
modern critics have delighted in the sharpness and
variety of his imagery and the subtlety with which he
mingles suggestive allegory with realism. * * *
Ruskin, speaking surely not for his own time alone,
wrote, 'I think the central man of all the world,
as representing IN PERFECT BALANCE the imaginative,
moral, and intellectual faculties, all at their
highest, is Dante.'"
The other quote is found in Jane Ellen Harrison's
wondrous and elegant presentation of Greek myth
and ritual study -- PROLEGOMENA TO THE STUDY OF
GREEK RELIGION. 1903/1908/1922; rpt. Princeton
Univ. Press, 1991; Mythos Books. That quote from
the beginning of Chapter 1 says: "In characterizing
the genius of the Greeks, Mr. Ruskin says: 'there
is no dread in their hearts; pensiveness, amazement,
often deepest grief and desolation, but terror never.
Everlasting calm in the presence of all Fate, and
joy such as they might win, not indeed from perfect
beauty, but from beauty at perfect rest."
This Everyman edition of Ruskin's SELECTED WRITINGS
is also a must-have for one's personal library.
There are wonderful footnotes and notes in the back,
as well as a very helpful chronology. There are
also extremely insightful and helpful editorial

comments and segues within the text itself which
highlight and explain Ruskin's insights and evolving
creativity. Ruskin's writings are so extensive and
fill so many volumes, that though there may be a
few overlaps of same excerpts in various collections,
they are usually at a minimum. That is why I was
glad to purchase several different collections of
his writings -- and so far, there is more than
enough new material in each one to have made the
purchases valuable.
One of the quotes which I especially like from this
volume is this one:
"For the artist who sincerely chooses the
noblest subject will also choose chiefly to
represent what makes that subject noble,
namely, the various heroism or other noble
emotions of the persons represented. If,
instead of this, the artist seeks only to make
his picture agreeable by the composition of its
masses and colours, or by any other merely
pictorial merit, as fine drawing of limbs, it
is evident, not only that any other subject
would have answered his purpose as well, but that
he is unfit to approach the subject he has chosen,
because he cannot enter into its deepest meaning,
and therefore cannot in reality have chosen it
for that meaning." [from MODERN PAINTERS III;
p.100 in Everyman]

Travesty.......1999-10-22

This selection of Ruskin's writings fails to convey much about the passion and poetry of the man and his work. For an excellent Ruskin anthology, stick with Rosenberg's The Genius of John Ruskin.

The selections in this book miss the point completely.......1999-08-26

Althought the editor has done a fine job of selecting sections of prose writing, he has failed to include anything that may give a glimpse into the thoughts and contemplations of John Ruskin. The overall effect is that of a politically correct tippy-toe around beautifully written passages that, in light of Ruskin's depth, say nothing at all and would thouroughly have disipointed Ruskin himself.

The Tree of Knowledge and Other Essays (Philosophy of History and Culture)

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The Tree of Knowledge and Other Essays (Philosophy of History and Culture)
G. H. Von Wright
Manufacturer: Brill Academic Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

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General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Medieval Thought | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Modern | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 9004097643

Book Description

In an autobiographical introduction the author tells about the two forces which have shaped his intellectual life: philosophy as an academic profession and philosophy as a search for a view of life. The book, accordingly, divides in two parts. The essays in the first part survey developments in logic and analytical philosophy in the perspective of the closing century and in the light of the author's long experience and participation in them. There are also essays on Musil's criticism of Mach, on the Finnish philosopher Eino Kaila's search for a monistic world view, and on Wittgenstein's place on the cultural map of the century. The papers in the second part deal with traits of contemporary civilization which have become problematic thanks to the impact of technological developments on political and social forms of life. Humanism, modernity, and scientific rationality are key-ideas taken up for critical scrutiny.

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MODERN ARCHITECTURE AND OTHER ESSAYS
VINCENT/ LEVINE, NEIL SCULLY
Manufacturer: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000KV5NU6

Book Description

This volume of the Cambridge History of Arabic Literature deals with writings on learned subjects from the 'Abbasid period (8th to 13th centuries AD), the golden age of Arabic literature. These cover a wide area, from philosophy, theology and law, through grammar and lexicography, to mathematics, astronomy and medicine. There are separate chapters on six of the greatest scholars of the period, on the development of translations from Greek into Arabic, and on the Arabic literature of the Christians and Jews who lived under the rule of the 'Abbasid caliphate.

Customer Reviews:

An indepth collection of Abbasid socio-cultural history.......2007-05-09

"Religion, learning and science in the Abbasid period" is a collection of scholarly essays on those categories. Although, largely written by Western scholars in the field, there are some nice essays from non-Western scholars. The chapter on "Arabic grammar" is excellent. The book is revealing in that it shows that Islamic scholarship was eons ahead of its time and certainly centuries ahead of contemporary European societies. The first Arabic dictionary is produced only 700 years ahead of Samuel Johnson's. It aslo shows Islam as a highly intellectual religion and its ability to reconcile both science and religion. Recommend it for anyone wirh a scholarly interest in the field.

Average customer rating:

Religion, Learning and Science in the 'Abbasid Period
M. J. Young
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000MBSUBI

Book Description

'I think this book is a great achievement. It is packed with useful information and thought-provoking analysis and discussion. The work on technological development is, especially, a very valuable original contribution to the work in this field. The book illuminates the technological trajectory so often ignored by economists, but which underlies Schumpeter's "clusters" of innovations, and the emphasis on trunk innovations and analysis of their role is of particular interest.' â€" Christopher Freeman, SPRU â€" Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Sussex, UK and Maastricht University, The Netherlands

This pathbreaking book addresses the economics of technological change as revealed by a unique methodology that uncovers the true nature of technological development. Masaaki Hirooka bases this new approach to the economics of technological change on recognition of the nonlinear dynamic nature of innovation.

In order to provide a richer understanding of technological development, the book focuses on the period of innovation prior to market-launch, grounding the analysis within a distinct innovation paradigm. This is expressed using three logistic trajectories: technology, development and diffusion, which make it possible to interpret and better understand technology foresight, infrastructure formation, long business cycles and national innovation systems. The author emphasizes the importance of the timing of innovation commitment, knowledge transfer between and within these trajectories, and the evolutionary character of innovation.

Those with an interest in economics, macroeconomics, technological change and evolutionary economics will find this book to be a highly stimulating and fascinating read.

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Parks & Recreation, published by National Recreation and Park Association on April 1, 2003. The length of the article is 419 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Sustenance for the American spirit: the role of parks and recreation in uncertain times. (@Issue).
Publication: Parks & Recreation (Magazine/Journal)
Date: April 1, 2003
Publisher: National Recreation and Park Association
Volume: 38 Issue: 4 Page: 8(1)

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