This innovative edited collection charts the rise, fall and possible futures of the word primitive.The word primitive is fundamental to the discipline of architecture in the west, providing a convenient starting point for the many myths of architecture's origins. Since the almost legendary 1970s conference on the Primitive, with the advent of post-modernism and, in particular, post-colonialism, the word has fallen from favour in many disciplines. Despite this, architects continue t...

A Financial Times Best Book of the YearA Guardian Best Architecture Book of the Year“Sharp, revealing, funny.”—The Guardian“An original and even occasionally hilarious book about losing ideals and finding them again… [De Graaf] deftly shows that architecture cannot be better or more pure than the flawed humans who make it.”—The EconomistArchitecture, we like to believe, is an elevated art form...

We don't just look at buildings: their facades, beautiful or ugly, conceal the spaces where we live. We are born, work, love, and die in architecture. We buy and sell it, rent and squat it, create and destroy it. All of these aspects of buildings-economic, erotic, political, and psychological-are crucial if we are to understand architecture properly. And because architecture molds us just as much as we mold it, understanding architecture helps us to understand our lives and our world....

The City Rehearsed offers an entirely new perspective on printed architecture in early modern Europe through the lens of Hans Vredeman de Vries. It probes the geographical encounters of dozens of engravings with contemporary texts on architecture, theatre, urbanism, art collecting, even ethnography.The Netherlandish polymath Hans Vredeman de Vries (1526-1609) devoted his entire career to the production of imaginary architecture. Painter, architect, rhetorician, perspective...

This book brings to light central topics that are neglected in current histories and theories of architecture and urbanism. These include the role of imitation in earlier centuries and its potential role in present practice; the necessary relationship between architecture, urbanism and the rural districts; and their counterpart in the civil order that builds and uses what is built. The narrative traces two models for the practice of architecture. One follows the ancient model in which the ...

The redesign of Potsdamer Platz depicts the struggle to revive Berlin, Germany. This central and highly visible square has undergone a series of strategic revisions to restore its vitality and so to meet place-enhancing objectives. Specifically, the book critically addresses the challenging tasks of restoring Potsdamer Platz from a state of disintegration to a condition worthy of a world-class city, although the questions remain unanswered as to how far the objectives have been achieved. T...

In his landmark volume Space, Time and Architecture, Sigfried Giedion paired images of two iconic spirals: Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International and Borromini’s dome for Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza. The values shared between the baroque age and the modern were thus encapsulated on a single page spread. As Giedion put it, writing of Sant’Ivo, Borromini accomplished 'the movement of the whole pattern [...] from the ground to the lantern, without entirely ending even there.' And yet he mere...

Continuing the themes that have been addressed in The Humanities in Architectural Design and The Cultural Role of Architecture, this book illustrates the important role that a contradiction between form and function plays in compositional strategies in architecture. The contradiction between form and function is seen as a device for poetic expression, for the expression of ideas, in architecture.Here the role of the terms "form" and "function" are analyzed through...

This book looks at causative reasons behind creative acts and stylistic expressions. It explores how creativity is initiated by design cognition and explains relationships between style and creativity. The book establishes a new cognitive theory of style and creativity in design and provides designers with insights into their own cognitive processes and styles of thinking, supporting a better understanding of the qualities present in their own design.An explanation of the nature of...

The story of how the concept of a pantheon, a building honouring great individuals, spread across Revolutionary Europe and interacted with socio-political and cultural changes. Analysing the canon and iconography of each pantheon, Bouwers shows how the commemoration of war and celebration of nationhood gave way to the protection of elite interests.

The making of shadows is an act as old as architecture itself. From the gloom of the medieval hearth through to the masterworks of modernism, shadows have been an essential yet neglected presence in architectural history.Shadow-Makers tells for the first time the history of shadows in architecture. It weaves together a rich narrative – combining close readings of significant buildings both ancient and modern with architectural theory and art history – to reveal the key pla...

The Living Tradition of Architectureexplores the depth of architecture as it takes flesh in the living tradition of building, dwelling and thinking. This is a timely appraisal of the field by some of its foremost contributors. Beyond modern misconceptions about tradition only relating to things past and conducive to a historicist vision, the essays in this volume reveal tradition as a living continuity and common ground of reference for architecture. This collection of essays brin...