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Architectural Philosophy is the first book to outline a philosophical account of architecture and to establish the singularity of architectural practice and theory. This dazzling sequence of essays opens out the subject of architecture, touching on issues as wide ranging as the problem of memory and the dystopias of science fiction. Arguing for the indissolubility of form and function, Architectural Philosophy explores both the definition of the site and the possibility of alterity. The analysis of the nature of the present and the complex sructure of repetition allows for the possibility of judgement, a judgement that arises from a reworked politics of architecture.
This little handbook acts as a brief introduction to philosophical ideas and how they intersect with architecture: its reception and appreciation as well as its practice. It suggests that since design is the core human discipline, being the only activity that involves the imaginative conception of ideas, leading to artifacts that are realised as actual constructions in the world, architecture itself can be regarded as a way of overcoming philosophical tensions by suggesting practical possibilities, namely designs, that appear to bridge between rival theories and approaches.
Philosophy for Architects is an engaging and easy-to-grasp introduction to philosophical questions of interest to students of architectural theory. Topics include Aristotle's theories of "visual imagination" and their relevance to digital design, the problem of optical correction as explored by Plato, Hegel's theory of zeitgeist, and Kant's examinations of space and aesthetics, among others. Focusing primarily on nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy, it provides students with a wider perspective concerning philosophical problems that come up in contemporary architectural debates.
A Philosophy of Chinese Architecture: Past, Present, Future examines the impact of Chinese philosophy on China’s historic structures, as well as on modern Chinese urban aesthetics and architectural forms. For architecture in China moving forward, author David Wang posits a theory, the New Virtualism, which links current trends in computational design with long-standing Chinese philosophical themes. The book also assesses twentieth-century Chinese architecture through the lenses of positivism, consciousness (phenomenology), and linguistics (structuralism and poststructuralism). Illustrated with over 70 black-and-white images, this book establishes philosophical baselines for assessing architectural developments in China, past, present and future.
Louise Erdrich is one of the most critically and commercially successful Native American writers. This book is the first fully comprehensive treatment of Erdrich's writing, analysing the textual complexities and diverse contexts of her work to date. Drawing on the critical archive relating to Erdrich's work and Native American literature, Stirrup explores the full depth and range of her authorship. Breaking Erdrich's oeuvre into several groupings - poetry, early and late fiction, memoir and children's writing - Stirrup develops individual readings of both the critical arguments and the texts themselves. He argues that Erdrich's work has developed an increasing political acuity to the relationship between ethics and aesthetics in Native American literatures. Erdrich's insistence on being read as an American writer is shown to be in constant and mutually-inflecting dialogue with her Ojibwe heritage.This sophisticated analysis is of use to students and readers at all levels of engagement with Erdrich's writing.
The author outlines the major ideas and issues that have emerged in the growing movement of green architecture and sustainable design over the last thirty years. The book asks individuals to understand how the philosophy of sustainable design can affect their own work.
Architectural Reflections: Studies in the Philosophy and Practice of Architecture focuses on the principles, techniques, and the philosophical context and practice of architecture. The book first ponders on natural imagination, ethics of architecture, and an interpretation of Wittgenstein's comments on architecture. Topics include the meaning of play, language-game and gesture-language, role of aesthetics, reality of architecture, fine art and practical art, origin of the work of architecture, concept of psychological 'position', artistic condensation, and figures of architectural form. The manuscript then examines Alvar Aalto and the state of modernism and Gunnar Asplund and the dilemma of classicism. Topics include modernism and modernismus, issue of classicism, and connections and collaborations. The text takes a look at the thoughts of Hans Scharoun, Sigurd Lewerentz, and Gerrit Rietveld on the relationship of philosophy and architecture. The publication is a valuable reference for philosophers and architects wanting to study further the philosophy and practice of architecture.
The two volumes of Architectural Theory bring together the fundamental elements of architecture and present them in a new and accessible format. The books define the areas of knowledge necessary for successful design and criticism and, for the first time in the history of architectural literature, integrate all the concepts to form a balanced and comprehensive whole. Volume One, A History of the Categories in Architecture and Philosophy, establishes the framework of architectural theory. The author presents a systematic analysis of what constitutes 'good' architecture in the West, tracing the history of architectural theory through the metaphysics of ancient Greece, the doctrines of early an...
Philosophers on the art of cinema mainly remain silent about architecture. Discussing cinema as ‘mass art’, they tend to forget that architecture, before cinema, was the only existing ‘mass art’. In this work author Nadir Lahiji proposes that the philosophical understanding of the collective human sensorium in the apparatus of perception must once again find its true training ground in architecture. Building art puts the collective mass in the position of an ‘expert critic’ who identifies themselves with the technical apparatus of architecture. Only then can architecture regain its status as ‘mass art’ and, as the book contends, only then can it resume its function as the only ‘artform’ that is designed for the political pedagogy of masses, which originally belonged to it in the period of modernity before the invention of cinema.