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Nature has always been a source of inspiration for the design of the human environment. The analysis of biological constructions can not only lead to astonishing technical solutions but can also inspire the design of architecture. Bionics is a fascinating border area between pure research and practical application: biologists, chemists, physicists, mineralogists, and paleontologists meet up with material scientists, engineers, and architects and transfer their knowledge to architecture and construction. Using numerous practical examples, this richly illustrated introduction traces the process from the understanding of how something functions, to abstraction—for example in computer models—and the construction of initial prototypes, through to fully functional manufacture and production.
A successor volume to the editors' Dependency under Challenge: The Political Economy of the Commonwealth Caribbean (Manchester U. Press, 1984), this volume reviews political and economic developments of the 1980s not just in the Commonwealth Caribbean but in the whole of the Caribbean region, in original analyses by specialist scholars in the field of Caribbean studies. Paper edition (unseen), $15.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Material Synthesis: Fusing the Physical and the Computational Guest-edited by Achim Menges A new understanding of the material in architecture is fast emerging. Designers are no longer conceiving of the digital realm as separate from the physical world. Instead computation is being regarded as the key interface for material exploration and vice versa. This represents a significant perceptual shift in which the materiality of architecture is no longer seen to be a fixed property and passive receptor of form, but is transformed into an active generator of design and an adaptive agent of architectural performance. In stark contrast to previous linear and mechanistic modes of fabrication and con...
This book comprises a first survey of the Collaborative Research Center SFB-TRR 141 ‘Biological Design and Integrative Structures – Analysis, Simulation and Implementation in Architecture’, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft since October 2014. The SFB-TRR 141 provides a collaborative framework for architects and engineers from the University of Stuttgart, biologists and physicists from the University of Freiburg and geoscientists and evolutionary biologists from the University of Tübingen. The programm is conceptualized as a dialogue between the disciplines and is based on the belief that that biomimetic research has the potential to lead everyone involved to new findings ...
In this book a foreign affairs analyst takes a hard look at the influence that U.S. officials and organizations brought to bear between 1960 and 1976 on the armed forces and police, large corporations, political parties, news media, and regional development agencies of Brazil.
Design Transactions presents the outcome of new research to emerge from ‘Innochain’, a consortium of six leading European architectural and engineering-focused institutions and their industry partners. The book presents new advances in digital design tooling that challenge established building cultures and systems. It offers new sustainable and materially smart design solutions with a strong focus on changing the way the industry thinks, designs, and builds our physical environment. Divided into sections exploring communication, simulation and materialisation, Design Transactions explores digital and physical prototyping and testing that challenges the traditional linear construction methods of incremental refinement. This novel research investigates ‘the digital chain’ between phases as an opportunity for extended interdisciplinary design collaboration. The highly illustrated book features work from 15 early-stage researchers alongside chapters from world-leading industry collaborators and academics.
This book examines the manifestations of architecture, cities, and design processes within digital culture. Adopting a comparative and critical method, the author looks at past and present encounters of the digital with architectural discourse and practice. Along three central themes – machines, networks, and computation – the book begins by discussing transformations of the analogy between architecture and the machine since the early twentieth century, foregrounding questions about the relations between architecture, humans, machines, and the environment. It moves on to the city, to observe how big data and smart city sustainable management systems have transformed historical visions of...
How is innovative architecture created? How can efficient synergies between planners and manufacturers be achieved? And how does an enterprise such as seele, with its proven high-level qualifications in the area of steel and glass, respond to planners' design ideas? These are just some of the questions answered in Innovative Design + Construction, the new publication in the DETAILdevelopment series. Using prestigious international projects as examples, the book explains the working philosophy and approach of the seele company, which stands for innovation in construction and customised solutions using the materials of glass, steel, aluminium and membranes like few other companies.
We live in a time when 3D printing has matured from a hobbyist and prototyping tool to a technology with potential to disrupt entire industries in and around the built environment. The developments in additive manufacturing are transforming architecture and design no less than they impact engineering and construction. The book portrays the rapid advances in research and industrial processes that have paved the road for this upheaval. In five chapters that cover historical development, engineering aspects, the digital design process, interactions with other technologies and potential for functionalization through additive manufacturing, the editors have curated a text that illustrates how a complex network of actors inspires and influences each other to make thistechnological transformation possible. The book follows the trail of scientists who prove the technology's viability and documents design explorations, prototypes and entire buildings that are demonstrating their readiness for the commercial market.
A fully-revised and updated new edition of a concise and insightful socio-historical analysis of the Cuban revolution, and the course it took over five and a half decades. Now available in a fully-revised second edition, including new material to add to the book’s coverage of Cuba over the past decade under Raul Castro All of the existing chapters have been updated to reflect recent scholarship Balances social and historical insight into the revolution with economic and political analysis extending into the twenty-first century Juxtaposes U.S. and Cuban perspectives on the historical impact of the revolution, engaging and debunking the myths and preconceptions surrounding one of the most formative political events of the twentieth century Incorporates more student-friendly features such as a timeline and glossary