House numbers are small things that appear quietly on the walls, gates and porches of our homes and places of work. They seem to have come from nowhere and are now taken for granted in everyday life. But house numbers have their own history – one that is retrieved, assembled and presented here, for the first time, in vivid images from around the world.House numbers started their lives in a grey area between the military, the tax authorities and early police forces. Anton Tantner’s ...

A GLOBAL HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURENOW FEATURING ADDITIONAL COVERAGE OF CONTEMPORARY GLOBAL ARCHITECTURE AND MORE SUPERB DRAWINGS BY FRANCIS D.K. CHING!The book that forever changed the way architectural history is viewed, taught, and studied, A Global History of Architecture examines 5,000 years of the built environment.Spanning from 3,500 BCE to the present, and organized along a global timeline, this unique guide was writte...

What if the house you are about to enter was built with the confessed purpose of seducing you, of creating various sensations destined to touch your soul and make you reflect on who you are? Could architecture have such power? This was the assumption of generations of architects at the beginning of modernity.Exploring the role of theatre and fiction in defining character in architecture, Louise Pelletier examines how architecture developed to express political and social intent. Ap...

A new and massively enlarged and revised version of a much praised book first published by Umberto Allemandi in 2008 (then titled ’52 Places in Italy’)A distinguished and well-connected author with powerful and influential media and art-world friends—he is deputy chairman of Christies.A selective and authoritative guide to the art and architecture of the world’s most visited ‘foreign country’.A natural candidate for museum ...

Castle studies have been transformed in recent years with a movement away from the traditional interpretation of castles as static military structures towards a wider view of castles as aesthetic symbols of power, with a more complicated relationship with the landscape. Supported by numerous colour photographs of the most `tangible' remains of the Middle Ages, this clearly written and very accessible study makes the most current ideas about the role of the castle available to a wider and m...

From awe-inspiring Norman castles, to the skyscrapers of today, Simon Thurley explores how the architecture of this small island influenced the world.The Building of England puts into context the significance of a country’s architectural history and unearths how it is inextricably linked to the cultural past – and present.Saxon, Tudor, Georgian, Regency, even Victorian and Edwardian are all well-recognised architectural styles, displaying the influence of the events that ma...

The phase of American architectural history we call 'mid-century modernism,' 1940-1980, saw the spread of Modern Movement tenets of functionalism, social service and anonymity into mainstream practice. It also saw the spread of their seeming opposites. Temples, arcades, domes, and other traditional types occur in both modernist and traditionalist forms from the 1950s to the 1970s. Hut Pavilion Shrine examines this crossroads of modernism and the archetypal, and critiques its buildings and ...

Winner of the 2016 Antoinette Forrester Downing Award presented by the Society of Architectural Historians.In many cities across the world, particularly in Europe, old buildings form a prominent part of the built environment, and we often take it for granted that their contribution is intrinsically positive. How has that widely-shared belief come about, and is its continued general acceptance inevitable?Certainly, ancient structures have long been treated w...

The first global history of architecture to give equal attention to Western and non-Western structures and built landscapes, Architecture since 1400 is unprecedented in its range, approach, and insight. From Tenochtitlan’s Great Pyramid in Mexico City and the Duomo in Florence to Levittown’s suburban tract housing and the Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing, its coverage includes the world’s most celebrated structures and spaces along with many examples of more humble vernacular buildi...

The Victorians built tens of thousands of churches in the hundred years between 1800 and 1900. Wherever you might be in the English-speaking world, you will be close to a Victorian built or remodelled ecclesiastical building. Contemporary experience of church buildings is almost entirely down to the zeal of Victorians such as John Henry Newman, Henry Wilberforce and Augustus Pugin, and their ideas about the role of architecture in our spiritual life and well-being. In Unlocking the Chu...

Maximizing reader insights into interior design as a conceptual way of thinking, which is about ideas and how they are formulated. The major themes of this book are the seven concepts of planning, circulation, 3D, construction, materials, colour and lighting, which covers the entire spectrum of a designer’s activity. Analysing design concepts from the view of the range of possibilities that the designer can examine and eventually decide by choice and conclusive belief the appropriate cours...

On the south bank of the Thames, outside the jurisdiction of the ancient City of London, Bankside has long been known as a hotbed of creativity, dissent and loose living. With its brothels and bear-pits, its prisons and its pubs, the area has inspired the nation's greatest writers - Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Keats and Blake - and been home to its most famous theatres - the Globe, The Rose, The Old Vic and the National. These same south London streets have given sanctuary to immigrants...