Great Glass Buildings

Peter and Jennifer Hyatt - Great Glass Buildings | Images Publishing | 2005 | 228 Pages | PDF | RAR | 53 MB

In Great Glass Buildings , Peter and Jennifer Hyatt present fifty exemplary modern projects that explore a number of theories about the nature, mystique and attraction of glass in the architecture of recent years. Variously performing roles that include giftwrap, lightweight armour, transmitter and insulator, glass began its re-emergence as an architectural force during the 1990s, as a symbol of new modernism. Advances in glass-making and construction technology and the advent of structural glazing, fixing systems, glass coatings and waterproof connections have transformed the ambitious dreams of the past into reality. Including projects by Foster and Partners, Murphy Jahn, Santiago Calatrava, Shigeru Ban, Renzo Piano and many others, this book reveals the complex nature of glass in today's architecture.
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Today's Country Houses

Jacobo Kruel - Today's Country Houses | Links International | 2005 | 312 pages | PDF | RAR | 42 MB

The best projects in the design of country houses around the world are profiled including all steps from conception to construction.

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Front To Back: A Design Agenda For Urban Housing

Sally Lewis - Front To Back : A Design Agenda For Urban Housing | Architectural Press | 2005 | 193 pages | PDF | RAR | 4.3 MB

The various parts of this book constitute an excellent, well-balanced primer on contemporary housing design. One of the key messages in this excellent book is that although beautiful buildings enrich our lives they do not exist in isolation.

Contents:
Part one
Chapter 1: The urban design agenda
Martin Crookston, Llewelyn Davies
Chapter 2: The sustainability agenda
Randall Thomas, Max Fordham LLP
Chapter 3: The community agenda
Patrick Hammill, Levitt Bernstein
Chapter 4: The social agenda
Part two
Chapter 5: A design agenda
Chapter 6: Introduction to the case studies
Chapter 7: Housing at Parc de Bercy, Paris
Chapter 8: Tango Housing at Bo01, Malmo
Chapter 9: Century Court, Cheltenham
Chapter 10: Palm Housing, Coin Street, London
Chapter 11: Homes in the Calle del Carme, Barcelona
Conclusion
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Space Grid Structures

John Chilton - Space Grid Structures | Architectural Press | 2001 | 191 pages | PDF | RAR | 6.8 MB

Description
A space frame is a three-dimensional framework for enclosing spaces in which all members are interconnected and act as a single entity. A benefit of this type of structure is that very large spaces can be covered, uninterrupted by support from the ground. John Chilton's book provides an up-to-date assessment of the use of space grid structures in buildings by reviewing methods of construction, various systems available and detailed studies of the use of space grids in modern buildings. The technical level is aimed at professional and student architects and engineers worldwide and it also serves as a useful construction manual. John Chilton is an engineer, currently teaching architectural students at Nottingham University where he is a senior lecturer. He has also undertaken considerable research in this field.

Audience
Practising and student architects and engineers; university libraries with courses in architecture, building/construction and civil structural engineering.

Contents:
1 Early development of space grids
2 Space grid geometry – thinking in three dimensions
3 Materials and systems
4 Design and construction
5 Case studies
6 Deployable, foldable and retractable space grids
7 Future developments
Appendices
Appendix 1: two-way spanning structures
Appendix 2: list of manufacturers
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Courtyard Housing: Past, Present, Future

Brian Edwards - Courtyard Housing: Past, Present, Future | Spon Press | 2006 | 248 pages | PDF | RAR

Product Description:
Courtyard housing is one of the oldest forms of domestic development spanning at least 2000 years and occurring in distinctive form in many regions of the world. Traditionally associated with the Middle East where climate and culture have given shape to a particular type of courtyard housing, other examples exist in Latin America, China and in Europe where the model has been reinterpreted. This book demonstrates, through discussions on sustainability and regional identity, and via a series of case studies, that she courtyard housing form has a future as well as a past.

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Disclosing Horizons. Architecture, perspective and redemptive space

Disclosing Horizons Architecture, Perspective and Redemptive Space | Routledge | 2007 | 319 pages | PDF | RAR | 7 MB

Product Description
Disclosing Horizons examines the influence of perspective on architecture, highlighting how critical historical changes in the representation and perception of space continue to inform the way architects design.
Since its earliest formulations, perspective was conceived as a paradigmatic articulation of space that influenced the rituals of everyday experience. Temple argues that underlying the symbolic and epistemological meanings of perspective there prevailed a deeply embedded redemptive view of the world that was deemed perfectible.
Temple explores this idea through a genealogical survey of the cultural and philosophical contexts of perspective throughout history, highlighting how these developments influenced architectural thought. This broader historical enquiry is accompanied by a series of case-studies of modern or contemporary buildings, each demonstrating a particular affinity with the accompanying historical model of perspective.

Introduction 1
1 Order and chaos, or "What to leave out?" 4
Taking measures 4
Nietzsche's perspectivism 12
Being-in-the-world 14
Alterity and infinity 20
Visible and invisible 21
What to leave out? 23
2 Number, geometry and dialectic 24
The origin of geometry 24
Pythagoras and the unutterable 27
The Meno 34
The Timaeus 38
Ad triangulum versus ad quadratum 42
Triangulating perspective 44
The School of Athens 50
Louis Kahn's Yale Art Gallery 65
3 Light, memory and colour 76
Medieval transformations 76
From memory to recorded document 78
Light metaphysics 81
Optical science 84
Grosseteste's light 86
The Bishop's Eye 88
Light and perspective 96
Light and the colour of experience 101
Steven Holl's Chapel of St Ignatius 102
4 Topography, rhetoric and the vanishing point 112
Horizontal and vertical worlds 112
Convivial settings 113
Alberti's eye 122
Nicholas Cusanus 140
The Papal Window 143
Álvaro Siza's Galician Centre for Contemporary Art 150
5 Unity in multiplicity 160
Baroque and universality 160
Distentio animi and the dome 162
Athanasius Kircher 166
Leibniz and the monad 173
J. B. Fischer von Erlach 178
Hofbibliothek 184
Peter Zumthor's St Benedict's Church 191
6 Nature and immensity 199
Transgressing boundaries 199
The picturesque and the sublime 203
Chambers and oikoumene 209
Boullée's visionary perspectives 213
Casper David Friedrich's studio 216
Rem Koolhaas' EuraLille and "l'Espace Piranesien" 221
7 Disjointed views 230
Attention and perspective 230
Attention and distraction 233
Illusion of a "mastering totalisation" 237
Magnification and distortion 241
Gustave Moreau's house 245
Eric Parry's artists' studios, London 250
Conclusion: architecture that looks back at us 262
Notes 270
Index 300

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Houses Of The World

Francisco Asensio Cerver - Houses Of The World | Tandem Verlag Gmbh. | 2007 | 1000 pages | PDF | RAR | 135 MB

The Luxury Living collection is an exploration of material, color and space. Over 2,000 illustrations.
This book offers a wide range of home styles from around the globe in almost 1000 pages (999 to be exact). With more pictures than text this is definitely eye candy for anyone who loves residential architecture.

CONTENT:
Houses in the city
Houses in the suburbs
Houses by the sea
Houses in the country
Houses in the mountains

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Glass Structures: Design and Construction of Self-supporting Skins

an Wurm - Glass Structures: Design and Construction of Self-supporting Skins | Birkhauser Basel | 2007 | 255 p. | PDF | RAR | 67 MB

Flat glass opens up more possibilities for the planner than virtually any other material. Because of the technological complexity of using it, however, no specific structural forms have been developed for glass supporting frameworks as they have been for wood, concrete, and steel. This book is thus the first to present a coherent guide to the planning and design of glass supporting frameworks. The focus is on the pressure-resistant, flat supporting element as a basic building block for broad supporting structures. The spatial and constructive forms of multifunctional, self-supporting glass envelopes are vividly illustrated and systematically explained. The constructions presented exhibit new aesthetic qualities, based not on the dictum of "dematerialization” but on the poetry of gleaming and transparent planes. They ring in a new chapter in the history of glass architecture.

SHORT CONTENT:
1 INTRODUCTION
2 SPANS OF GLASS
3 FLAT GLASS AS A CONSTRUCTION MATERIAL
4 DESIGN AND CONNECTIONS
5 FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS
6 GLASS STRUCTURES
7 PROJECTS
8 OUTLOOK

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