Turkey

Turkey
Author: Sibel Bozdogan
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2013-02-15
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1861899793

Turkey: Modern Architectures in History offers a journey through the iconic buildings of Turkey that begins with the end of World War I, when the new Turkish Republic was born out of the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, includes its democratization in the midst of the Cold War’s competing ideologies, and concludes with the present day, in which Turkey continues to be dramatically transformed through globalization, economic integration, and a renewed appreciation for its Islamic and Ottoman heritage. Sibel Bozdogan and Esra Akcan explore modern institutional masterpieces and architect-designed buildings through the decades. Their focus includes informal residential plans, and they discuss how these have evolved from small settlements to colossal urban quarters that exist at a slippery threshold of legality. This richly informative history of Turkey’s built environment goes beyond typical surveys of Western modern architecture and is unique in tackling the issue of the modern and contemporary periods that are often omitted in studies of Islamic art and architecture. Offering a perceptive overview of modern Turkish architecture, this book places it within the larger social, political, and cultural context of the country’s development as a modern nation in the twentieth century.

Intentions in Architecture

Intentions in Architecture
Author: Christian Norberg-Schulz
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 298
Release: 1968-09-15
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780262640022

The chief focus of the book is on the symbolic and linguistic. The purpose is to develop an integrated theory of architectural description and architectural intention (and this includes the intention of the user as well as that of the designer), insofar as architecture is an art. Norberg-Schulz is a practicing architect; his buildings stand in several countries; and he elucidates the nature of architectural reality with a practiced eye and from a practical viewpoint. Although the methods and theory that his book develops are uncompromisingly rigorous and tightly formed, they are everywhere related to actual building, through specific examples and through the use of over 100 photographs. The structure that Norberg-Schulz has fashioned is surely one of the most impressive intellectual edifices that any architect has ever produced. The materials that are organically worked into it include Gestalt psychology, the mechanics of perception, information theory, modern analytic philosophy, and in particular, linguistic analysis, and the general theory of signs and symbols. The result, however, is not an eclectic hodge-podge; all these materials have their place and purpose; none is applied extraneously for "show" or purely decorative effect. And all this divergent material had to be joined according to plan within formal bounds in order to produce a theory with equally divergent applications: one that can treat not only of the aesthetics of architecture but equally well of its social, psychological, and cultural effects. The chief focus of the book is on the symbolic and linguistic. The purpose is to develop an integrated theory of architectural description and architectural intention (and this includes the intention of the user as well as that of the designer), insofar as architecture is an art.

Architectures of Life and Death

Architectures of Life and Death
Author: Andrej Radman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2021-06-17
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 153814753X

Driven by the Foucauldian attitude of subsuming architectural history into a genealogy of techne, Architectures of Life and Death advances a transdisciplinary approach rethinking subjectivity and exploring the political ramifications of these processes for the discipline of architecture and beyond. In contrast to mainstream approaches, architecture will not be seen as representative of culture, but as the mechanism of culture, the ‘collective equipment’ that rests on the reciprocal determination of social habits and technological habitats. In this sense, the idea that we shape our environments, therefore they shape us, is not to be taken as a metaphor. The animate has always been utterly dependent on the inanimate. A livable habitat is one which the inhabitant actively co-evolves with and which does not constitute a ready-made condition to which the inhabitant would simply have to passively adapt.

Architecture from the Outside

Architecture from the Outside
Author: Elizabeth Grosz
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2001-06-22
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780262265362

Essays at the intersection of philosophy and architecture explore how we understand and inhabit space. To be outside allows one a fresh perspective on the inside. In these essays, philosopher Elizabeth Grosz explores the ways in which two disciplines that are fundamentally outside each another—architecture and philosophy—can meet in a third space to interact free of their internal constraints. "Outside" also refers to those whose voices are not usually heard in architectural discourse but who inhabit its space—the destitute, the homeless, the sick, and the dying, as well as women and minorities. Grosz asks how we can understand space differently in order to structure and inhabit our living arrangements accordingly. Two themes run throughout the book: temporal flow and sexual specificity. Grosz argues that time, change, and emergence, traditionally viewed as outside the concerns of space, must become more integral to the processes of design and construction. She also argues against architecture's historical indifference to sexual specificity, asking what the existence of (at least) two sexes has to do with how we understand and experience space. Drawing on the work of such philosophers as Henri Bergson, Roger Caillois, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, and Jacques Lacan, Grosz raises abstract but nonformalistic questions about space, inhabitation, and building. All of the essays propose philosophical experiments to render space and building more mobile and dynamic.

Morningside Heights

Morningside Heights
Author: Andrew S. Dolkart
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 532
Release: 2001-03-15
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780231078511

Few aspects of American military history have been as vigorously debated as Harry Truman's decision to use atomic bombs against Japan. In this carefully crafted volume, Michael Kort describes the wartime circumstances and thinking that form the context for the decision to use these weapons, surveys the major debates related to that decision, and provides a comprehensive collection of key primary source documents that illuminate the behavior of the United States and Japan during the closing days of World War II. Kort opens with a summary of the debate over Hiroshima as it has evolved since 1945. He then provides a historical overview of thye events in question, beginning with the decision and program to build the atomic bomb. Detailing the sequence of events leading to Japan's surrender, he revisits the decisive battles of the Pacific War and the motivations of American and Japanese leaders. Finally, Kort examines ten key issues in the discussion of Hiroshima and guides readers to relevant primary source documents, scholarly books, and articles.

The History of Architecture

The History of Architecture
Author: Gaynor Aaltonen
Publisher: Arcturus Publishing
Total Pages: 710
Release: 2013-07-28
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1782127976

This book takes a bird's eye view of architecture in time, and explores the different ways architects have responded to civilizations, giving them the buildings and cities they deserve.

The Architecture of the Universe

The Architecture of the Universe
Author: Richard Blum
Publisher: CreateSpace
Total Pages: 120
Release: 2014-08-23
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9781500631208

One of the most fundamental questions asked throughout human history is, “How did the universe come into existence?” Throughout the ages spirituality has provided answers to that question through various mystical cosmologies. Today, science has an answer—the Big Bang theory. But can scientific and spiritual explanations, which are normally considered to be incompatible, co-exist? Is it possible to construct a single comprehensive vision that unites these seemingly divergent approaches to knowledge?The Architecture of the Universe attempts to do just that by extending a contemporary mystical cosmology and merging it with modern-day physics. The result is a new theory of physics, which proposes something more fundamental to the universe than time and space: existence. Emerging out of nothingness, existence serves as the basic component of time and space. Time and space are viewed not just as containers for everything in the universe, but rather as the substance out of which energy and mass arise. This radical viewpoint opens new realms of understanding, shedding light on mysterious aspects of quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of relativity. At the same time the theory creates a vision unifying science and spirituality by linking the infinite transcendent reality with the finite physical universe.Simple explanations along with illustrations make this book easily accessible and an interesting and inspiring read for a wide audience.

The Architecture of Neoliberalism

The Architecture of Neoliberalism
Author: Douglas Spencer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2016-10-20
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1472581539

The Architecture of Neoliberalism pursues an uncompromising critique of the neoliberal turn in contemporary architecture. This book reveals how a self-styled parametric and post-critical architecture serves mechanisms of control and compliance while promoting itself, at the same time, as progressive. Spencer's incisive analysis of the architecture and writings of figures such as Zaha Hadid, Patrik Schumacher, Rem Koolhaas, and Greg Lynn shows them to be in thrall to the same notions of liberty as are propounded in neoliberal thought. Analysing architectural projects in the fields of education, consumption and labour, The Architecture of Neoliberalism examines the part played by contemporary architecture in refashioning human subjects into the compliant figures - student-entrepreneurs, citizen-consumers and team-workers - requisite to the universal implementation of a form of existence devoted to market imperatives.