Modernity and Continuity: Architecture in the Islamic World

Modernity and Continuity: Architecture in the Islamic World

2001 | English | 166 Pages | 110MB | PDF

Of all the major architectural prizes, the Aga Khan Award for Architecture is perhaps the only one that, in addition to celebrating the finest fruit that embellishes the tree of Architecture» encourages the roots that nurture the plant. 

These dual concerns place the Award in a truly unique position; for in order to make its selections, the Award must of necessity be concerned not only with product but also with process and the issues that generate that process. 

Thus, since its inception almost twenty-five years ago, the Aga Khan Award has been an extraordinarily inventive and courageous enterprise, seeking always to understand the fundamental issues of the societies it addresses and to identify those subtle but pivotal watersheds that shift our perspective and open up a world of new possibilities.

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The Portfolio and the Diagram: Architecture, Discourse, and Modernity in America

The Portfolio and the Diagram: 

Architecture, Discourse, and Modernity in America

PDF | 403 pages | 5.1 MB

The Portfolio and the Diagram is about the changing ways architects see, read, and use the words and images of architectural publications. Architects today do not use the glossy photographs of magazines in the same way that nineteenth-century architects mobilized the drawings in the grand folios. 

The images have changed, and so have the ways in which they are used. The book begins with an outline of the academic discipline and the mimetic practice of the portfolio, established in America during the late nineteenth century.

 World War I triggered a historical process that resulted in the demise of the portfolio and the emergence of the discourse of the diagram. The Beaux Arts-trained architects had fashioned their discipline through the meticulous object-centered images of the portfolio. The discourse of the diagram provided a new range of possibility in the architect’s relation to words, images, and buildings.

 More than the diagram itself, more than the province of narrow-minded functionalists, the discourse of the diagram is a complex formation of texts, concepts, and modes of representation. Concerned less with constructing a new kind of modernism than with understanding the boundaries and structures of modernity, the book is a history of modern architecture as a discursive practice and its striving to become a viable discipline.
 

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The Alphabet and the Algorithm

The Alphabet and the Algorithm

(Writing Architecture)


Digital technologies have changed architecture--the way it is taught, practiced, managed, and regulated. But if the digital has created a "paradigm shift" for architecture, which paradigm is shifting? 

In The Alphabet and the Algorithm, Mario Carpo points to one key practice of modernity: the making of identical copies.

 Carpo highlights two examples of identicality crucial to the shaping of architectural modernity: in the fifteenth century, Leon Battista Alberti's invention of architectural design, according to which a building is an identical copy of the architect's design; and, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the mass production of identical copies from mechanical master models, matrixes, imprints, or molds. 

The modern power of the identical, Carpo argues, came to an end with the rise of digital technologies. Everything digital is variable. In architecture, this means the end of notational limitations, of mechanical standardization, and of the Albertian, authorial way of building by design. 

Charting the rise and fall of the paradigm of identicality, Carpo compares new forms of postindustrial digital craftsmanship to hand-making and the cultures and technologies of variations that existed before the coming of machine-made, identical copies.

 Carpo reviews the unfolding of digitally based design and construction from the early 1990s to the present, and suggests a new agenda for architecture in an age of variable objects and of generic and participatory authorship.
 

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New Japan Architecture

New Japan Architecture

 Recent Works by the World's Leading Architects

The global changes taking place in the architectural world are crystallizing right now in Japan, with the past five years being considered one of the most innovative periods in current Japanese design history. Observed by architects and designers from around the world, these changes are illustrated and articulated in New Japan Architecture.

By documenting 48 important projects by 42 established and avant-garde architects, this book takes the reader through a journey of current trends in contemporary Japanese architecture and predicts future directions. While some buildings strive for the ultimate Zen white cube, others exemplify the search for the 'Wow' factor. 

Cutting edge modernity in some buildings is countered by a concern for sustainability in others. The selection of buildings in New Japan Architecture includes projects that are big and small, private and public, residential and commercial. 

The informative writings complement beautiful photographs that highlight the remarkable aspects of each building. A must-have book for those interested in architecture and Japan.

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Public Intimacy: Architecture and the Visual Arts

Public Intimacy: Architecture and the Visual Arts

In this thoughtful collection of essays on the relationship of architecture and the arts, Giuliana Bruno addresses the crucial role that architecture plays in the production of art and the making of public intimacy. As art melts into spatial construction and architecture mobilizes artistic vision, Bruno argues, a new moving space--a screen of vital cultural memory--has come to shape our visual culture.Taking on the central topic of museum culture, Bruno leads the reader on a series of architectural promenades from modernity to our times. 

Through these "museum walks," she demonstrates how artistic collection has become a culture of recollection, and examines the public space of the pavilion as reinvented in the moving-image art installation of Turner Prize nominees Jane and Louise Wilson. 

Investigating the intersection of science and art, Bruno looks at our cultural obsession with techniques of imaging and its effect on the privacy of bodies and space. She finds in the work of artist Rebecca Horn a notable combination of the artistic and the scientific that creates an architecture of public intimacy. 

Considering the role of architecture in contemporary art that refashions our "lived space"--and the work of contemporary artists including Rachel Whiteread, Mona Hatoum, and Guillermo Kuitca--Bruno argues that architecture is used to define the frame of memory, the border of public and private space, and the permeability of exterior and interior space. Architecture, Bruno contends, is not merely a matter of space, but an art of time.
 

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The Alphabet and the Algorithm

The Alphabet and the Algorithm

Download

The Portfolio and the Diagram

The Portfolio and the Diagram :

Architecture, Discourse, and Modernity in America.

2002 | PDF | 403 pages | 5.1 MB 

Download 

The Portfolio and the Diagram : Architecture, Discourse, and Modernity in America

The Portfolio and the Diagram : Architecture, Discourse, and Modernity in America

Hyungmin Pai, 

Publisher: The MIT Press | 2002 | | PDF | 403 pages | 5.1 MB

The Portfolio and the Diagram is about the changing ways architects see, read, and use the words and images of architectural publications. Architects today do not use the glossy photographs of magazines in the same way that nineteenth-century architects mobilized the drawings in the grand folios. The images have changed, and so have the ways in which they are used. The book begins with an outline of the academic discipline and the mimetic practice of the portfolio, established in America during the late nineteenth century. World War I triggered a historical process that resulted in the demise of the portfolio and the emergence of the discourse of the diagram. The Beaux Arts-trained architects had fashioned their discipline through the meticulous object-centered images of the portfolio. The discourse of the diagram provided a new range of possibility in the architect’s relation to words, images, and buildings. More than the diagram itself, more than the province of narrow-minded functionalists, the discourse of the diagram is a complex formation of texts, concepts, and modes of representation. Concerned less with constructing a new kind of modernism than with understanding the boundaries and structures of modernity, the book is a history of modern architecture as a discursive practice and its striving to become a viable discipline. 

Download

The Alphabet and the Algorithm (Writing Architecture)

The Alphabet and the Algorithm (Writing Architecture)

Mario Carpo

Digital technologies have changed architecture--the way it is taught, practiced, managed, and regulated. But if the digital has created a "paradigm shift" for architecture, which paradigm is shifting? In The Alphabet and the Algorithm, Mario Carpo points to one key practice of modernity: the making of identical copies. Carpo highlights two examples of identicality crucial to the shaping of architectural modernity: in the fifteenth century, Leon Battista Alberti's invention of architectural design, according to which a building is an identical copy of the architect's design; and, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the mass production of identical copies from mechanical master models, matrixes, imprints, or molds. The modern power of the identical, Carpo argues, came to an end with the rise of digital technologies. Everything digital is variable. In architecture, this means the end of notational limitations, of mechanical standardization, and of the Albertian, authorial way of building by design. Charting the rise and fall of the paradigm of identicality, Carpo compares new forms of postindustrial digital craftsmanship to hand-making and the cultures and technologies of variations that existed before the coming of machine-made, identical copies. Carpo reviews the unfolding of digitally based design and construction from the early 1990s to the present, and suggests a new agenda for architecture in an age of variable objects and of generic and participatory authorship.

Download

The Portfolio and the Diagram

"The Portfolio and the Diagram: Architecture, Discourse, and Modernity in America"
Hyungmin Pai,
Publisher: The MIT Press | 2002 | PDF | 403 pages | 5.1 MB

The Portfolio and the Diagram is about the changing ways architects see, read, and use the words and images of architectural publications. Architects today do not use the glossy photographs of magazines in the same way that nineteenth-century architects mobilized the drawings in the grand folios. The images have changed, and so have the ways in which they are used. The book begins with an outline of the academic discipline and the mimetic practice of the portfolio, established in America during the late nineteenth century. World War I triggered a historical process that resulted in the demise of the portfolio and the emergence of the discourse of the diagram. The Beaux Arts-trained architects had fashioned their discipline through the meticulous object-centered images of the portfolio. The discourse of the diagram provided a new range of possibility in the architect’s relation to words, images, and buildings. More than the diagram itself, more than the province of narrow-minded functionalists, the discourse of the diagram is a complex formation of texts, concepts, and modes of representation. Concerned less with constructing a new kind of modernism than with understanding the boundaries and structures of modernity, the book is a history of modern architecture as a discursive practice and its striving to become a viable discipline.

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Walter Benjamin and the Architecture of Modernity

Walter Benjamin and the Architecture of Modernity

Andrew Benjamin & Charles Rice

6.68 Mb

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