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...

This is the hidden history of an invention that we use every day but seldom dare to speak of. In medieval China it was cutting-edge technology. For 19th-century Americans it was a newfangled alternative to dried corncobs and the Sears & Roebuck catalogue. Wits in Georgian London preferred pages of bad poetry. The sages of ancient Athens were content to wield the xylospongion instead. It's the tale of toilet paper; the biography of bumfodder.From its origins at the Imperial court of...

Modern living began with the homes of the 1950s. Casting aside the privations of the Second World War, American architects embraced the must-have mod-cons: they wrapped fitted kitchens around fridges, washing machines, dishwashers and electric ovens, gave televisions pride of place in the living room, and built integrated garages for enormous space-age cars. So why was this change so radical? In what ways did life change for people moving into these swanky new homes, and why has the legacy...

Noted painter, writer and artist Frederic Crowninshield takes us on a decorator's tour of Rome in the 1890's.

The plaza has been a defining feature of Mexican urban architecture and culture for at least 4,000 years. Ancient Mesoamericans conducted most of their communal life in outdoor public spaces, and today the plaza is still the public living room in every Mexican neighborhood, town, and city—the place where friends meet, news is shared, and personal and communal rituals and celebrations happen. The site of a community’s most important architecture—church, government buildings, and marketplace...

This study examines the influence of perspective on architecture, highlighting how critical historical changes in the representation and perception of space continue to inform the way architects design.Since its earliest developments, perspective was conceived as an exemplary form of representation that served as an ideal model of how everyday existence could be measured and ultimately judged. Temple argues that underlying the symbolic and epistemological meanings of perspective th...

Commissioned by the English East India Company to write about contemporary nineteenth-century Delhi, Mirza Sangin Beg walked around the city to capture its highly fascinating urban and suburban extravaganza. Laced with epigraphy and fascinating anecdotes, the city as ‘lived experience’ has an overwhelming presence in his work, Sair-ul Manazil. Interestingly, Beg made no attempt to ‘monumentalize’ buildings; instead, he explored them as spaces reflective of the socio-cultural milieu of the ...

Cowboy rides his big horse, Dusty, back to Atascosa after finding the answers he was seeking on that long journey. To reach the home place, he must first make amends to the one man he wronged years earlier. They meet by accident in an unexpected small town. What transpires there changes Cowboy's life for ever.In a poignant reunion, Cowboy keeps his promise to the young girl he met on the way up the trail. Her gratitude at this small gesture cements their avuncular relationship, and...

The Shefton Collection in Newcastle upon Tyne contains a fine array of Greek and Etruscan objects and takes its name from its founder Professor Brian Shefton (1919 – 2012). In spite of the importance of this collection it has not been widely published and remains something of a hidden gem. Brian Shefton was an insightful collector, as well as a distinguished scholar of Greek and Etruscan archaeology, and the 14 papers presented here reflect the broad scope of the collection; ranging across...

From the sex-free paradise of the Shakers to the worker's paradise of Marx, utopian ideas seem to have two things in common--they all are wonderfully plausible at the start and they all end up as disasters. In Visions of Utopia, three leading cultural critics--Edward Rothstein, Martin Marty, and Herbert Muschamp--look at the history of utopian thinking, exploring why they fail and why they are still worth pursuing. Edward Rothstein, New York Times cultural critic, contend...

Peter Murray's compelling and highly readable biography of the building presents both sides of the story. Using previously unpublished files and papers, Murray has managed to unravel one of the most intriguing architectural controversies of recent times - what really happened when they built Sydney Opera House...

This is a story about an American living through one of the most interesting periods of our countrys history, from the horse and buggy age to the technology, which led to the moon landing. It is about a man without any particular recognized talent, not ever a hero, whom one might say an Also Rana person who always tried not to hurt anyone. As with most of my contemporaries, I took the bitter with the sweet and the joy with the sorrow and desperately tried to cope with adversity while esche...