Courtyard Houses of India

Courtyard Houses of India
Author: Yatin Pandya
Publisher: Mapin Publishing Pvt
Total Pages: 452
Release: 2018-12-31
Genre: Courtyard houses
ISBN: 9789385360091

- Extensive documentation of courtyard houses, both traditional and contemporary - More than a thousand images, drawings, plans and maps - Overview according to climate, geography, philosophy and religion Indian architecture is not about an object in space; instead it integrates space within the object where the built and the unbuilt become counterpoints to vitalize each other. This engulfed void known as the courtyard lies at the genesis of urban dwellings in India. In this book the author traces the metaphysical, mythical, socio-cultural, environmental and spatial roles of the courtyard in the domestic architecture of India - from early civilization and Vedic times to Islamic and colonial influences. This book documents traditional courtyard dwelling types across India within diverse climatic, cultural as well as geographic zones such as West (Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra), South (Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Goa), East (Bihar, West Bengal), Central (Madhya Pradesh) and North (Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir). Courtyard Houses of India documents, analyzes and infers the attributes and manifestations of traditional courtyard houses and examines the diverse interpretations of those as applied in contemporary homes.

Courtyard Housing and Cultural Sustainability

Courtyard Housing and Cultural Sustainability
Author: Dr Donia Zhang
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 547
Release: 2013-05-28
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1409471586

Cultural sustainability is a very important aspect of the overall sustainability framework and is regarded as the ‘fourth pillar’ alongside the other three: environmental, economic, and social sustainability. However, the concept is neither fully explored, nor widely accepted or recognized. This book elicits the interplay of ‘nature-culture-architecture’ and theorizes the concept of ‘cultural sustainability’ and ‘culturally sustainable architecture.’ It identifies four key themes in Chinese philosophy: Harmony with Heaven, Harmony with Earth, Harmony with Humans, and Harmony with Self, along with Greek philosopher Aristotle’s physics: form, space, matter, and time, it sets them as criteria to evaluate the renewed and new courtyard housing projects constructed in China since the 1990s. Using an innovative architectural and social science approach, this book examines the political, economic, social, and spatial factors that affect cultural sustainability. Supported by a multiplicity of data including: field surveys, interviews with residents, architects, and planners, time diaries, drawings, photos, planning documents, observation notes, and real estate brochures, the book proposes new courtyard garden house design strategies that promote healthy communities and human care for one another, a concept that is universally applicable. The volume is a first opportunity to take a holistic view, to encompass eastern and western, tangible and intangible, cultures in the theorization of ‘cultural sustainability’ and ‘culturally sustainable architecture.’ It is a comprehensive contribution to architectural theory.

New Approaches in Contemporary Architecture and Urbanism

New Approaches in Contemporary Architecture and Urbanism
Author: Edited by Dr. Hourakhsh Ahmad Nia
Publisher: Cinius Yayınları
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2020-07-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 6257170990

This book is an intellectual discourse and a concise compendium of current research in architecture and urbanism. Primarily, it is a book of readings of 16 chapters. The book brings together theories, manifestos and methodologies on contemporary architecture and urbanism to raise the understanding for the future architecture and urban planning. Overall, the book aimed to establish a bridge between theory and practice in built environment. Thus, it reports on the latest research findings and innovative approaches, methodologies for creating, assessing and understanding of contemporary built environment.

Dwelling in the World

Dwelling in the World
Author: Elizabeth LaCouture
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2021-08-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0231543794

By the early twentieth century, Chinese residents of the northern treaty-port city of Tianjin were dwelling in the world. Divided by nine foreign concessions, Tianjin was one of the world’s most colonized and cosmopolitan cities. Residents could circle the globe in an afternoon, strolling from a Chinese courtyard house through a Japanese garden past a French Beaux-Arts bank to dine at a German café and fall asleep in a British garden city-style semi-attached brick house. Dwelling in the World considers family, house, and home in Tianjin to explore how tempos and structures of everyday life changed with the fall of the Qing Empire and the rise of a colonized city. Elizabeth LaCouture argues that the intimate ideas and practices of the modern home were more important in shaping the gender and status identities of Tianjin’s urban elites than the new public ideology of the nation. Placing the Chinese home in a global context, she challenges Euro-American historical notions that the private sphere emerged from industrialization. She argues that concepts of individual property rights that emerged during the Republican era became foundational to state-society relations in early Communist housing reforms and in today’s middle-class real estate boom. Drawing on diverse sources from municipal archives, women’s magazines, and architectural field work to social surveys and colonial records, Dwelling in the World recasts Chinese social and cultural history, offering new perspectives on gender and class, colonialism and empire, visual and material culture, and technology and everyday life.

Introduction to Indian Architecture

Introduction to Indian Architecture
Author: Bindia Thapar
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
Total Pages: 549
Release: 2012-06-26
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1462906427

Take a journey through Indian architecture from the dawn of civilization to the present with this colorful, attractive survey. The architecture of India reflects both the cultural diversity of the subcontinent and its rich political and historical inheritance. In this guide, the various strands of this rich architectural history, from the dawn of civilization to modern times, are beautifully presented in word and picture. Readers are taken on a fascinating tour of Indus Valley civilization, early Vedic traditions, Hindu, Jain, Mughal, regional, colonial and post-independence architectural styles. Themes such as water architecture and the architecture of science also figure prominently, giving many westerners their first glimpse of these styles. The informative text, complemented by 400 photographs, watercolors, maps and plans, provide compelling evidence of India's influence on building design throughout history.

Living House

Living House
Author: Roxana Waterson
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
Total Pages: 624
Release: 2012-05-22
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 146290601X

The Living House is a pioneering work by respected anthropologist Roxana Waterson that has become a classic in its field. It is first book of its kind to present a detailed picture of houses within the complex social and symbolic fabric of indigenous South-East Asian peoples. The main focus of the book is on Indonesia, but in tracing historical links between architectural forms across the region, it reveals a much wider field of inquiry--covering all of the Austronesian peoples and cultures extending as far afield as Madagascar, Japan and the Pacific islands to New Zealand and Hawaii. As it probes the centrally significant role of houses within South-East Asian social systems, The Living House reveals new insights into the kinship systems, gender symbolism and cosmological principles of the peoples who build them, ultimately uncovering fundamental themes concerning the concepts of life force and life processes inherent in all of these cultures. A vivid picture is produced of how people shape buildings and buildings shape people--how rules about layout and spatial usage impact social relationships. The book concludes with a consideration of present-day changes affecting the fates of indigenous cultures and architectures throughout the region. This book will be of tremendous interest to architects and historians, and anyone interested in the indigenous art and cultures of South-East Asia.

Urban India

Urban India
Author: Renate Bornberg
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2023-03-03
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3031237374

This book discusses the importance of socio-spatial patterns in cities that are embedded in the cultural heritage and self-understanding of a society, showing that Indian cities follow different urban concepts. In nine episodes (nine is a sacred figure), it highlights the principal influences and social impacts on cities from ancient times to contemporary city developments. As such, it provides planners and architects with insights that can easily be applied in contemporary cities and towns and help foster India’s cultural heritage—a much-needed, but little-discussed approach. Indian cities are the result of various factors, some imposed, others following local traditions that shaped them. They were founded around social needs, landscape conditions and production routines, as well as the religious influences of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Islam, Christianity and animism. However, Western town-planning models are often implemented, blurring the traditional way of life in cities. For sustainable town development, it is of key importance to find solutions that deal with Indian city models.

Rural Urban Framework

Rural Urban Framework
Author: Joshua Bolchover
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2013-10-24
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 3038210609

While most attention is given to the booming mega-cities in China and the associated problems of over-population, the rural areas in China are being largely ignored. Yet, a sustainable development of the rural areas is precisely that, which will be decisive for China’s future. Through its rapid development into an industrial country, China now needs to tackle far-reaching problems such as increasing population, growing income gap between the poor and the rich, rural exodus, decreased agricultural production, and environmental pollution. Rural Urban Framework is a work group at the University of Hong Kong that not only researches the far-reaching changes of the last thirty years in China’s rural areas, but has also realized concrete projects aimed at improving supply and infrastructure on site. In this publication, the authors present for the first time the results of their research as well as their built projects in the Chinese backlands, and question whether China’s only future model lies in cities.

The Inner Courtyard

The Inner Courtyard
Author: Lakshmi Holmstrom
Publisher: Virago Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 1990
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781853810442