Showing titles in Architecture

Once America’s capitalist dream town, Detroit is our country’s greatest urban failure, having fallen the longest and the farthest. But the city’s worst crisis yet (and that’s saying something) has managed to do the unthinkable: turn the end of days into a laboratory for the future. Urban planners, land speculators, neopastoral agriculturalists, and utopian environmentalists―all have been drawn to Detroit’s baroquely decaying frontier. With an eye for both the darkly absurd and the radically new Detroit-area native Mark Binelli has chronicled this convergence.

As New York came to a halt with COVID, Michael Kimmelman composed an email to a group of architects, historians, writers, and friends, inviting them to take a walk. Wherever they liked, he wrote—preferably someplace meaningful to them, someplace that illuminated the city and what they loved about it. At first, the goal was distraction. At a scary moment when everything seemed uncertain, walking around New York served as a reminder of all the ways the city was still a rock, joy, and inspiration.

Disability critiques of architecture usually emphasize the need for modification and increased access, but The Architecture of Disability calls for a radical reorientation of this perspective by situating experiences of impairment as a new foundation for the built environment. With its provocative proposal for "the construction of disability," this book fundamentally reconsiders how we conceive of and experience disability in our world.

Two celebrated Egyptologists bring to vivid life the intriguing and controversial reign of King Tut’s parents. Combining fascinating scholarship, detective suspense, and adventurous thrills, Egypt’s Golden Couple is a journey through excavations, museums, hieroglyphic texts, and stunning artifacts. From clue to clue, renowned Egyptologists, John and Colleen Darnell, reconstruct an otherwise untold story of the magnificent reign of Akhenaten and Nefertiti.

For listeners who enjoyed Finding the Mother Tree and The Hidden Life of Trees comes the first-ever book about a movement to restore biodiversity in our cities and towns by transforming empty lots, backyards, and degraded land into mini-forests. Author Hannah Lewis is the forest maker turning asphalt into ecosystems to save the planet, and she wants everyone to know they can do it too.

It is ordinary homes, not grand public buildings or the mansions of the rich that have all the best stories. The rises and falls, the shifts in the fortunes of neighbourhoods and whole cities are here, tracing the often surprising journey one single house can take from elegant dwelling in a fashionable district to a tenement for society’s rejects. Packed with remarkable human stories, it is a phenomenal insight into living history, a history we can see every day on the streets where we live.

Across time and across the world, an ancient serpent cult once dominated mankind. Then a great battle ensued and Christianity stamped its authority on the face of the planet. Now, after years of research, the real religious history of the world can be told. In Secrets of the Serpent, Philip Gardiner for the first time reveals the secret of the Holy Grail and Elixir of Life, and how the world's most mysterious places were once sacred to the serpent cult.

In this accessible guide to the meanings of sustainability, Kent Portney describes the evolution of the idea and examines its application in a variety of contemporary contexts - from economic growth and consumption to government policy and urban planning.

The creation of the Pentagon in 17 whirlwind months during World War II is one of the great construction feats in American history, involving a tremendous mobilization of manpower, resources, and minds. The Pentagon's post-World War II history is told through its critical moments, including the troubled birth of the Department of Defense during the Cold War, the tense days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the tumultuous 1967 protest against the Vietnam War. The pivotal attack on September 11 is related with chilling new detail, as is the race to rebuild....

For almost two millennia, cathedrals have been among the most imposing, astonishing and inspiring buildings in Europe. Regardless of faith, their scale and architectural daring has never ceased to spark wonder. This guide traces the development of the cathedral from its earliest beginnings as a Bishop’s house, through the Romanesque and Gothic periods and up to the most extravagant contemporary designs around the world.

An unprecedented, intimate portrait of Frank Gehry, one of the world's most influential architects. Drawing on the most candid, revealing, and entertaining conversations she has had with Gehry over the last 20 years, Barbara Isenberg provides new and fascinating insights into the man and his work. Gehry's subjects range from his childhood - when he first built cities with wooden blocks on the floor of his grandmother's kitchen - to his relationships with clients and his definition of a "great" client.

Cities are birthplaces of civilization; centers of culture, trade, and progress; cauldrons of opportunity - and the home of 80 percent of the world's population by 2050. As the 21st century progresses, metropolitan areas will bear the brunt of global megatrends such as climate change, natural resource depletion, population growth, income inequality, mass migrations, and education and health disparities, among many others.

The green-building movement has produced hundreds of "how-to" books and websites that are filled with tips about green building and what homeowners should do to go green. While helpful and informative, when it comes to making actual purchasing and installation decisions, these books do not make it any easier for a homeowner to prioritize against a budget. Here, Melisssa Rappaport Schifman shares her knowledge and experience for others to use in their journey toward a greener way of living.

“New York is a city of things unnoticed,” a young reporter named Gay Talese wrote sixty years ago. He would spend the rest of his legendary career defying that statement by celebrating the people most reporters overlooked, understanding that it was through these minor characters that the epic story of New York and America unfolded. Inspired by Herman Melville’s great short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” Talese now revisits the unforgettable “nobodies” he has profiled in his celebrated career—from the New York Times’s anonymous obituary writer to Frank Sinatra’s entourage.

Broadway takes us on a mile-by-mile journey that traces the gradual evolution of the 17th century's Brede Wegh, a muddy cow path in a backwater Dutch settlement, to the 20th century's Great White Way. We learn why one side of the street was once considered more fashionable than the other; witness construction of the Ansonia Apartments, Trinity Church, and the Flatiron Building and the burning of P. T. Barnum's American Museum; and discover that Columbia University was built on the site of an insane asylum.

Cities define the lives of all those who call them home: where we go, how we get there, how we spend our time. But what if we rethink the ways we plan, live in, and move around our cities? What if we didn't need a car to reach the grocery store? What if we could get back the time we would have spent commuting and put it to other uses?

In this innovative audiobook, popular blogger Liz Marie Galvan shares a hundred tips and tricks, budget-friendly hints, and project how-tos to make every room in your house feel like a home you love. Each month hundreds of thousands of readers find design inspiration and DIY ideas on Liz's blog, where Liz shares stories of life with her veteran husband, their 1800s Michigan farmhouse, and the home décor boutique she co-owns.

Capturing an era - and preserving the stories they have told their daughters, their mentees, their husbands, and their friends - a dozen women Imagineers have written personal stories from their decades designing and building the Disney worldwide empire of theme parks. The book represents a broad swath of Imagineering's creative disciplines during a time of unprecedented expansion.

Against a backdrop of Islamophobia, Europeans are increasingly airbrushing from history their cultural debt to the Muslim world. But this legacy lives on in some of Europe's most recognizable buildings, from Notre-Dame Cathedral to the Houses of Parliament.

A group of notable writers - including UK poet laureate Simon Armitage, Julian Barnes, Margaret MacMillan, and Jenny Uglow - celebrate our fascination with the houses of famous literary figures, artists, composers, and politicians of the past.