(Part 2) Best architecture history books according to redditors
We found 201 Reddit comments discussing the best architecture history books. We ranked the 136 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
Equating quality and realism is actually quite problematic. Modern works of art normally don't stand out by how lifelike they are either. But that doesn't mean that there has been a dramatic decline in artstic quality since the 19th century.
In fact I would say roughly the same amount of skill went into producing the portrait of Augustus and of Constantine. Realism on the other hand isn't really the right word to describe any one of those two. The statue of Augustus is highly idealized and more influenced by standards of beauty inherited from classical Greece than by the emperor's actual appearance. Portraits of the man looking like this were still produced when he was more than sixty years old after all. By imitating the style of the Classical period the artist could showcase the emperor's conservative values, his decorum and his auctoritas.^1
Now Constantine is shown to be a larger than life figure with an unblinking gaze fixed on the horizon. The emperors of Late Antiquity were portrayed as charismatic rulers that were totally different from any mortal man.
On the hole it is true that Late Antique art often rejected the aesthetics that had been established in earlier ages and by doing so could get quite abstract or even comical at times. Even so those older aesthetics were not totally forgotten. The same goes for medieval art. Only with the beginning of the Renaissance Classical Greek art was again seen as the single gold standard to imitate.
Why it came to such a dramatic stylistic change is not easy to answer. Late Antiquity was in many ways a time of cultural upheaval. Rome ceased to be the centre of the empire and its old elites had to contend with new men coming from the provinces. Christianity was on the rise. After centuries maybe now Roman artists were ready to try something radically new.
Well, here's one :
The popular book I, Claudius, and the BBC series based on it, posit that Livia, the wife of first Roman "emperor" Augustus, killed off a series of Augustus's friends and closer family members to ensure that her son from a previous marriage, Tiberius, would be the only choice for Augustus's heir.
Of course there is no evidence for any such conspiracy. The only evidence for it at all, at least that I'm aware of, is in the form of "motive." And that is, the Southern Frieze of the Ara Pacis ("Altar of the Augustan Peace") depicts Augustus's friend and trustworthy general, Agrippa, in a prominent place relative to Augustus's family in a religious procession.
Some academics have speculated -- I think Zanker in a book on Augustan art -- that this implied that, at one time, Augustus may have considered Agrippa, the architect of his victory over Antony, his natural successor.
If Livia expected her child to succeed instead, that may have provided motive. But this is scant evidence indeed, however interesting .
Yes it was. Here is the 1929 plan. A station shell was built at South 4th Street (this is why the IND station in Greenwich Village is known as West 4th Street), and there are traces of space for other stations at proposed transfer points, such as 2nd Avenue, East Broadway, and Utica Avenue.
If anyone wants to learn more about the numerous routes that were once planned to expand the subway system, I highly recommend checking out The Routes Not Taken: A Trip Through New York City's Unbuilt Subway System by Joseph Raskin. Reading everything on nycsubway.org, of course, is another great option.
The first text that springs to my mind is the Renaissance text Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (typically translated as "The Strife of Love in a Dream").
It was, and remains, a remarkable text for many reasons--its use of Italian, Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew, sometimes fused together to form new words; its many elaborate and detailed woodcut illustrations; its cloaking of the (for its time) familiar themes of courtly love in arcane (and sometimes less than discernible) references; its latent eroticism and, at times, outright sexual obsession; and most prolifically, a mystery has surrounded the proper attribution of its authorship.
It is typically ascribed to Francesco Colonna, a friar of late fifteenth-century Italy; some have also attributed the Hypnerotomachia to Aldus Manutius, the owner of the Venetian printing house which published the work in 1499; yet another popular school of thought assigns credit to that epitome of "Renaissance men," Leon Battista Alberti.
Some say that the author's identity (the text was published anonymously) is revealed by a puzzle within the book: an acrostic of the first letters of the chapters ("POLIAM FRATER FRANCISCUS COLUMNA PERAMAVIT") reads "Friar Francesco Colonna Passionately Loved Polia". Subsequent discoveries and investigations, capped off by Casella & Pozzi's 1959 study, seemed to confirm Colonna as the author.
Others continue to plump for other authors (Liane Lefaivre's Leon Battista Alberti's Hypnerotomachia Poliphilia: Re-Cognizing the Architectural Body in the Early Italian Renaissance says it all right there in the title).
It is easy for the debate over its authorship to obscure the truly remarkable nature of this text, which can truly be said to be the world's first stream-of-consciousness novel. As with Shakespeare (whose authorship has also been unfairly maligned by some due to his station in life), the true mystery and wonder of the Hypnerotomachia lies in its remarkable complexity, the deliberate obscurity and inventiveness of its text, and its ability to yield new meanings and interpretations centuries after its publication.
Someone got permission to be creative. Nice spot!
A lot of the principles in play in that tower also apply to the Eiffel Tower (it was also designed to be a communications structure). The Tower and the Bridge is a pretty accessible introduction to those principles.
The streets are designed this way as well. For anyone interested, check out this book written by a modern day Mason.
Architectural Theory might be good:
>This book brings together all of the most important and influential essays about architecture written since the Renaissance, copiously illustrated and neatly organized chronologically by country. From Alberti and Palladio to Le Corbusier and Koolhaas, the best treatises by architecture’s greatest masters are gathered here, each accompanied by an essay discussing its historical context and significance. This is the all-in-one, must-have book for anyone interested in what architects have to say about their craft.
I've skimmed through in the bookstore, and it seems to be written for the non-architect (i.e., no archi-babble). It could be something useful as it gives a general overview the theory that has shaped practice, which can be further studied in a University.
You really can compared UAE and Kuwait. Dubai development started in the 80s while the other city states developed much later. Kuwait has had its share of peaks valley in development due to both internal and external forces.
I am not a historian to explain it well enough but luckily there is a book.
Kuwait Transformed: A History of Oil and Urban Life
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01C9ET9HY/
Goddamn I wish that Daibutsu hall was still there.
If this sort of map turns you on, check out Kyoto: An Urban History by Stavros. Really excellent book, but not for everyone. Very textbookish.
Philosophy and Architecture
Tritessa by Jack Kerouac
Architectural History Study Guide
Right now I'm just reading through books that I'm not sure if I want to keep or donate for my big move.
Well, there could be a lot of factors determining sub-par mass transit in an urban area. At the most basic level it could be lack of funding. In WA state we dealt with this over ten years ago with Tim Eyman's I-695 which in my area cut mass transit funding 50%. When you have a group of voters who say "fuck it" to funding bus/light rail you're going to have progressively worse service.
Another aspect is urban congestion. If you are running a bus line without dedicated lanes in a dense downtown region (or the center of an auto-centric sprawl city like Atlanta) it's going to back up and cause delayed routes, more gas consumption, and longer rides. Light rail, commuter rail, and BRT can move faster in most locations but require a larger investment (more money per mile of service, which won't happen if voters turn down taxes and bonds for it). Also factor in the continued sprawling out of cities like Phoenix, which requires more money to service fewer riders due to low density.
It's funny now because many cities are opting to re-implement the trolley lines they so quickly tore up in the 40's/50's/60's, albeit at a cost. When you had cities growing organically with an urban core that included housing followed by streetcar neighborhoods, the transportation system was integrated into the environment (you walked in downtown, took a streetcar to home/visit in the peripheral neighborhoods). The streetcars were tracked and had the right of way. When the cities tore the tracks up and placed their buses within the street traffic, which would become more congested than we could have ever imagined, in many cases we see them giving up a dedicated right of way for transit and forcing their vehicles right into the shark tank, so to say.
The post-war boom that fueled auto production/purchase coupled with the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 swelled the streets with cars and kicked off the suburban sprawl that still persists today (although the numbers have lowered significantly since the 1990's and took a sharp decline since 2008). A few good books on these subjects include: Suburban Nation, The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000, and How Cities Work : Suburbs, Sprawl, and the Roads Not Taken Here are a few about specific cities with high amounts of sprawl that go into what factors caused this and the problems faced today: The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles and Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World's Least Sustainable City (which I am reading right now and can say so far is a really interesting history of the city).
Thanks, /u/kiwimac! My list looks like this:
The Classical Language of Architecture, by John Summerson,
An Outline of European Architecture, by Nikolaus Pevsner, and
The Story of Western Architecture by Bill Risebero.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Center-Composition-Visual/dp/0520261267
and http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Composition-Techniques-Principles-Dramatically/dp/1581809247
While the latter is explicitly a painting instructional book IME that actually improves photography students' ability to see the forest and not just the trees.
Glad to be of help. :)
Whilst erring very much on the design side of things, Taschen have reprinted old decorative art / architecture journals at very reasonable prices. 'Decorative Art 50s' and 'Domus 50s' are full of period photography. Taschen also have a few books on 1950s advertising, but I think it's mostly American.
No, I think “her owner” would be in the accusative (dominum suum). The vocative (domine) is what you use to address people when talking to them, as in “I will, oh dear lord”.
A shame your class environment was hostile. Way before I thought I’d ever try BDSM, I had a literary theory teacher who was very much an S&M pig, and he’d often use examples from such scenarios; the discomfort of the class was amusing :)
Learning a language to fluency is hard, but if all you want to do is to sprinkle a few words for effect, the Internet is there to help. I actually don’t know Latin myself; I looked it all up on wiktionary, the wikibook, and Perseus. You might also be interested in this (light fun reading) or this one (dry, academic, but full of interesting words).
For concrete, Paulay and Priestley Seismic Design of Reinforced Concrete Buildings (I also think it does a bit of CMU). Paulay I think did a book before this one on more general concrete design (maybe with Park).
Link
This book is the basis for seismic design of concrete... and even if you don't do seismic design generally, it really helps with understanding the behavior of the material.
For steel I always end up using the AISC design guides.
Not really a technical guide, but the book The Tower and The Bridge I thought was brilliant when I read it a few years ago. It touches on the art of structural design.
I think a subscription to some of the top engineering magazines is pretty key to keep up on things as well (although I've been bad about keeping up with them myself). The technical gurus in my office though are always reading them.
http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Type-2nd-revised-expanded/dp/1568989695/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1320103677&sr=8-3
http://www.amazon.com/Interaction-Color-Expanded-Josef-Albers/dp/0300115954/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320104020&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Power-Center-Composition-Visual-Anniversary/dp/0520261267/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320103713&sr=8-1 (this one can be a bit esoteric but if you stick with it, its good)
There are also roughly 6 elements to keep in mind when making compositions and you will have to read more about them and seek out examples. they vary depending on where you look but this has some: http://www.wiu.edu/art/courses/handouts/princdesign.html
This also has some good material: http://photoinf.com/General/Robert_Berdan/Composition_and_the_Elements_of_Visual_Design.htm
None of those links are perfect, and they are not quite the way I learned it either, but you should just do exercises to work on them. For example, In a 5x5 square, do compositions using just 10 dots of the same size. Make each composition represent a word such as unity, variety, movement, stillness, and others like that. Thats just a quick example.
add this to your holiday wish list. its a great book called "deep history and the brain". it pulls from the study of history, biology, and neuroscience, but the dude is a compelling writer, so you won't feel swamped by fact after fact. its actually a bit of an assault on the practice of history. traditionally, historians only start with written language, and leave pre-literate civilization to anthropology or archeology. he wants to challenge that (first part of the book) and then tie that into modern history (second part of the book) by showing that instead of focusing on the written word for creating a historical narrative, we can start with biology and the brain to construct one that goes much deeper (i.e. "deep history") and therefore can be more illuminating in ways a traditional account of historical unfolding cannot.
so you've got your science/STEM in there, and your history. I think you'd dig it.
On Deep History and the Brain was quite simply mind-expanding. Harvard history professor Daniel Lord Smail's topic is freeing history from the traditional Judeo-Christian time frame and fully integrating it with recent work in things like the neurosciences or evolutionary theory, thus abandoning once and for all the idea of "prehistory".
As an example, the author posits that the usage of caffeine in Europe beginning in the 1600's effected a kind of massively parallel change in brain chemistries, altering the track of history. Check it out! This is history of the most cutting-edge variety.
Good books to read about the origins of Suburban Sprawl...
Both give a good history of the forces behind the development of the American suburb.
Hey there
Last September I went on a tour around the Somme to find the resting place of my Great Uncle (killed on his 21st birthday) - so many cemeteries, but no US cemeteries, the reason being that the decision was taken by US authorities for all the bodies of the dead were to be returned home.
I guess in your case, the policy is that if you do it for one then you set a precedent that can create a headache for a lot of people (not saying it's right, but that I can understand the brick headed thinking).
If you've any interest in finding out a bit more, the British and Commonwealth approach to WW1 war cememteries is well documented and you can read about it - Empire of the Dead by David Crane gets pretty good reviews. Perhaps using that as a reference point might help you find out more about the US policies at the time.
I did find one US serviceman's grave, however - a Colonel Christian who was buried somewhere in a cemetery on the edge of Ypres. Just the one, but it's nice that he was a senior officer and had a name, a bit like he was representing all those who weren't buried in the earth they fought over.
http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Architecture-Francis-D-Ching/dp/1118142063/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1376420308&sr=1-1&keywords=intro+to+architecture
http://www.amazon.com/Design-Cities-Edmund-N-Bacon/dp/050027133X/ref=cm_cr_dp_asin_lnk
http://www.amazon.com/World-History-Architecture-Michael-Fazio/dp/0071544798/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1376420763&sr=1-1&keywords=history+of+architecture
Those would be my 3 intro books
The reviews say to get this one instead:
http://www.amazon.com/World-History-Architecture-Michael-Fazio/dp/0071544798/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317943630&sr=1-1
I just linked to one of the books I had during undergrad. =) I think it'd make a heck of a coffee table book.
There are treatises like, "James Gibbs' ~ Rules for Drawing the Several Parts of Architecture..." which go into detail with all the particular relationships and proportions of his orders. But this is but only one set of many sets of the orders who are all trying to arrive at the most harmonious method. Some use the column diameter as a measure, some use divisions of height, or other fractional measures (e.g. 100 or 96 part-systems). Some architects prefer one method over another, think some are just plain erroneous, or supplement their own methods and are free to develop their own treatise. The variability of proportion has historically been wildly varied.
The traditions of architecture are not handed down to us to be taken verbatim, rather they are OUR tradition and subject to our own rationality and convictions. Further more, these rules that are described respect an overarching grammar and syntax of form. Treatises of those like Gibbs take for granted that architects understand this language and are only giving the details of particular elements and some arrangements. They are much more like descriptions of keys on a piano and basic chords, not illustrating how to compose particular songs, or even the theory of music in general. Likewise, the classical orders are systems of organization like music theory provides a framework for creating good music.
For an attempt at understanding the language of classical architecture you will have to invest time and reading as it is a huge topic. A great start would be reading Classical Architecture: An Introduction to Its Vocabulary and Essentials, with a Select Glossary of Terms as well as The Classical Language of Architecture by Summerson. The question you pose is a bit like asking for a good book to read on the topic of creating good music, or becoming a great chef. Architecture, like the others, is an art after all, and most learning comes from doing.