This book examines the creative exchanges between architects, artists and intellectuals, from the Early Renaissance to the beginning of the Enlightenment, in the forging of relationships between architecture and emerging concepts of language in early modern Italy. The study extends across the spectrum of linguistic disputes during this time – among members of the clergy, humanists, philosophers and polymaths – on issues of grammar, rhetoric, philology, etymology and epigraphy, and how these disputes paralleled and informed important developments in architectural thinking and practice. Drawing upon a wealth of primary source material, such as humanist tracts, philosophical works, architectural/antiquarian treatises, epigraphic/philological studies, religious sermons and grammaticae, the book traces key periods when the emerging field of linguistics in early modern Italy impacted on the theory, design and symbolism of buildings.

Mixed Languages are speech varieties that arise in bilingual settings, often as markers of ethnic separateness. They combine structures inherited from different parent languages, often resulting in odd and unique splits that present a challenge to theories of contact-induced change as well as genetic classification. This collection of articles is devoted to the theoretical and empirical controversies that surround the study of Mixed Languages. Issues include definitions and prototypes, similarities and differences to other contact languages such as pidgins and creoles, the role of codeswitching in the emergence of Mixed Languages, the role of deliberate and conscious mixing, the question of the existence of a Mixed Language continuum, and the position of Mixed Languages in general models of language change and contact-induced change in particular. An introductory chapter surveys the current study of Mixed Languages. Contributors include leading historical linguists, contact linguists and typologists, among them Carol Myers-Scotton, Sarah Grey Thomason,William Croft, Thomas Stolz, Maarten Mous, Ad Backus, Evgeniy Golovko, Peter Bakker, Yaron Matras.

DIVLearning a new discipline is similar to learning a new language; in order to master the foundation of architecture, you must first master the basic building blocks of its language – the definitions, function, and usage. Language of Architecture provides students and professional architects with the basic elements of architectural design, divided into twenty-six easy-to-comprehend chapters. This visual reference includes an introductory, historical view of the elements, as well as an overview of how these elements can and have been used across multiple design disciplines./divDIV /divDIVWhether you’re new to the field or have been an architect for years, you’ll want to flip through the pages of this book throughout your career and use it as the go-to reference for inspiration, ideas, and reminders of how a strong knowledge of the basics allows for meaningful, memorable, and beautiful fashions that extend beyond trends./divDIV /divDIVThis comprehensive learning tool is the one book you’ll want as a staple in your library./divDIV /div

A PRINT magazine and Design Observer Best Book of the Year The first English translation of a famous 1972 debate between Dutch graphic designers Wim Crouwel and Jan van Toorn, a public clash of subjectivity versus objectivity at Amsterdam’s Museum Fodor that helped set the stage for bold philosophical showdowns to come in design culture. Held in response to an exhibition of Van Toorn’s work at Stedelijk Museum, including student posters protesting the Vietnam War—in an era of youth culture and increasing resistance to authority, capitalism, and the power of media—the stakes were aesthetic, ethical, and politically charged. Crouwel defended his approach of neutrality and austere rationalism, attention to typography and worksmanship, and professionalism in service of the client’s message. Van Toorn argued for his use of chaos, collage, and photographs of everyday life; that a designer’s ideas, personality, and political commitments are integral to the work. Dialogue on The Debate has reverberated in graphic design circles for the four decades since, and it is often referenced in modern design criticism as a key marker for the philosophical positions that continue to define the profession. The first English transcript of this key event in design history will allow a contemporary audience to discover the ongoing relevance of The Debate in an increasingly complex visual culture. Along with the transcript, this pocket-sized clothbound book contains a foreword by prominent design critic Rick Poynor, and essays from Dutch design historian Frederike Huygen, who discusses the historical context of the debate, and curator Dingenus van de Vrie, who looks more closely at these two giants’ different perspectives on graphic design. A color gallery juxtaposes a representative selection from the oeuvres of Crouwel and Van Toorn, including exhibition designs, calendars, posters, brochures, artist book designs, postal stamps, and fascinating works such as the script of a 1969 stage production based on a story by Jorge Luis Borges, sealed in a tin can, and a many-gatefolded catalog for Ed Ruscha’s “Dutch Details” at Groninger Museum.

Hubsch's argument that the technical progress and changed living habits of the nineteenth century rendered neoclassical principles antiquated is presented here along with responses to his essay by architects, historians, and critics over two decades.

Using language - speaking and understanding it - is a defining ability of human beings, woven into all human activity. It is therefore inevitable that it should be deeply implicated in the design, production and use of buildings. Building legislation, design guides, competition and other briefs, architectural criticism, teaching and scholarly material, and the media all produce their characteristic texts. The authors use texts about such projects as Berlin's new Reichstag, Scotland's new Parliament, and the Auschwitz concentration camp museum to clarify the interaction between texts, design, critical debate and response.

You can use this book to design a house for yourself with your family; you can use it to work with your neighbors to improve your town and neighborhood; you can use it to design an office, or a workshop, or a public building. And you can use it to guide you in the actual process of construction. After a ten-year silence, Christopher Alexander and his colleagues at the Center for Environmental Structure are now publishing a major statement in the form of three books which will, in their words, "lay the basis for an entirely new approach to architecture, building and planning, which will we hope replace existing ideas and practices entirely." The three books are The Timeless Way of Building, The Oregon Experiment, and this book, A Pattern Language. At the core of these books is the idea that people should design for themselves their own houses, streets, and communities. This idea may be radical (it implies a radical transformation of the architectural profession) but it comes simply from the observation that most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by architects but by the people. At the core of the books, too, is the point that in designing their environments people always rely on certain "languages," which, like the languages we speak, allow them to articulate and communicate an infinite variety of designs within a forma system which gives them coherence. This book provides a language of this kind. It will enable a person to make a design for almost any kind of building, or any part of the built environment. "Patterns," the units of this language, are answers to design problems (How high should a window sill be? How many stories should a building have? How much space in a neighborhood should be devoted to grass and trees?). More than 250 of the patterns in this pattern language are given: each consists of a problem statement, a discussion of the problem with an illustration, and a solution. As the authors say in their introduction, many of the patterns are archetypal, so deeply rooted in the nature of things that it seemly likely that they will be a part of human nature, and human action, as much in five hundred years as they are today.

This is the most accessible architectural theory book that exists. Korydon Smith presents each common architectural subject – such as tectonics, use, and site – as though it were a conversation across history between theorists by providing you with the original text, a reflective text, and a philosophical text. He also introduces each chapter by highlighting key ideas and asking you a set of reflective questions so that you can hone your own theory, which is essential to both your success in the studio and your adaptability in the profession. These primary source texts, which are central to your understanding of the discipline, were written by such architects as Le Corbusier, Robert Venturi, and Adrian Forty. The appendices also have guides to aid your reading comprehension; to help you write descriptively, analytically, and disputationally; and to show you citation styles and how to do library-based research. More than any other architectural theory book about the great thinkers, Introducing Architectural Theory teaches you to think as well.

Widely used in architectural circles in the heat of discussion, the recurrent use of particular words and terms has evolved into a language of design jargon. Commonly found in architectural literature and journalism, in critical design debate and especially in student project reviews, Archispeak can seem insular and perplexing to others and -- particularly to the new architectural student -- often incomprehensible. There is a need to translate architectural design concepts into spoken and written commentary -- each word in use embodying a precise and universally accepted architectural meaning. If we explore the vocabulary of this language we gain insight into good design practice and into collective understanding of what constitutes a refined architecture. This unique illustrated guide will help students understand the nuances of this specialized language and help them in communicating their own design ideas.