In the past two decades economic bubbles inflated and architectural spending around the globe reached fever pitch. In both well-established centers of capital accumulation and far--flung locales, audacious building projects sprang up, while the skyscraper, heretofore more commonly associated with American capitalism, seemed as if it might pack up and relocate to Dubai and Shanghai. Of course, much has changed in the past couple of years. In formerly free-spending Dubai, the tallest building in the world is now is named after the president of Abu Dhabi after he stepped in with last--minute debt financing. In cities across the United States, housing prices have nose-dived and cleared lots sit ready for commercial redevelopment that likely won't take place for another decade. Similar stories are not hard to find in many other nations. Architecture firms that swelled in flush days are jettisoning employees at a startling rate. In the context of economic instability (and its attendant social and political consequences), this edited volume brings together scholars, critics, and architects to discuss the present state of uncertainty in the practice and discipline of architecture. The chapters are organized into three main areas of inquiry: economics, practice, and technology. Within this larger framework, authors explore issues of security, ecological design, disaster architecture, the future of architectural practice, and the ethical obligations of the social practice of design. In doing so, it argues that this period has actually afforded architecture a valuable moment of self-reflection, where alternative directions for both the theory and practice of architecture might be explored rather than continuing with an approach which was so nurtured by capitalist prosperity and affluence.

After two decades which saw the construction industry flourish, has come a sudden period of instability, where architecture firms have been jettisoning employees at an unprecedented rate as building projects dry up. This edited volume brings together scholars, critics, and architects to discuss the present state of uncertainty in the practice and discipline of architecture. The chapters are organized into three main areas of inquiry: economics, practice, and technology. Within this larger framework, authors explore issues of security, ecological design, disaster architecture, the future of architectural practice, and the ethical obligations of the social practice of design.

This polemic is essential reading for anyone converned with the state and direction of architecture and urban planning today and will provake wide-ranging discussion.

In the last two hundred years, the earth has increasingly become the private property of a few classes, races, transnational corporations, and nations. Repeated claims about the "tragedy of the commons" and the "crisis of capitalism" have done little to explain this concentration of land, encourage solution-building to solve resource depletion, or address our current socio-ecological crisis. The Commons in an Age of Uncertainty presents a new explanation, vision, and action plan based on the idea of commoning the land. The book argues that by commoning the land, rather than privatising it, we can develop the foundation for prosperity without destructive growth and address both local and global challenges. Making the land the most fundamental priority of all commons does not only give hope, it also opens the doors to a new world in which economy, environment, and society are decolonised and liberated.

Sir Kenneth Clark wrote in the Architectural Review, that the first result of this book was "to dispose, once and for all, of the hedonist, or purely aesthetic, theory of Renaissance architecture, ' and this defines Wittkower's intention in a nutshell.

The Death of Drawing explores the causes and effects of the epochal shift from drawing to computation as the chief design and communication medium in architecture. Drawing both framed the thinking of architects and organized the design and construction process to place architects at its center. Its displacement by building information modeling (BIM) and computational design recasts both the terms in which architects think and their role in building production. Author David Ross Scheer explains that, whereas drawing allowed architects to represent ideas in form, BIM and computational design simulate experience, making building behavior or performance the primary object of design. The author explores many ways in which this displacement is affecting architecture: the dominance of performance criteria in the evaluation of design decisions; the blurring of the separation of design and construction; the undermining of architects’ authority over their projects by automated information sharing; the elimination of the human body as the common foundation of design and experience; the transformation of the meaning of geometry when it is performed by computers; the changing nature of design when it requires computation or is done by a digitally-enabled collaboration. Throughout the book, Scheer examines both the theoretical bases and the practical consequences of these changes. The Death of Drawing is a clear-eyed account of the reasons for and consequences of the displacement of drawing by computational media in architecture. Its aim is to give architects the ability to assess the impact of digital media on their own work and to see both the challenges and opportunities of this historic moment in the history of their discipline.

Architects, however, tend to deny this, fearing contingency and preferring to pursue perfection.

Adept at moving between the examination of modern and contemporary architecture, art, literature and music, Robert Maxwell is a respected scholar whose critical writings articulate the role architecture plays in contemporary culture. In Ancient Wisdom And Modern Knowhow, Maxwell considers the notion of 'doubt' encountered by the modern architect. In ten chapters that draw upon writers and topics as diverse and engaging as Andre Malraux and his concept of the Musée Imaginaire, Colin Rowe and his exploration of "Mannerism in Modern Architecture" as well as Rowe's book with Fred Koetter, Collage City, and examining works by artists including Albrecht Du?rer, Picasso and Duchamp and architects including James Stirling, Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry and Daniel Libeskind, Maxwell steps effortlessly through a range of ideas and concepts, to create an engaging and provocative thesis. Ancient Wisdom and Modern Knowhow is the second of two new books to be published by Artifice books on architecture by Professor Robert Maxwell, Emeritus Professor of Architecture at Princeton University. The first, A Few Years of Writing Interspersed with some Facts of Life, was published in autumn 2012.

Academic architectural education started with the inauguration of the Académie d'Architecture on 3 December 1671 in France. It was the first institution to be devoted solely to the study of architecture, and its school was the first dedicated to the explicit training of architectural students. The Académie was abolished in 1793, during the revolutionary turmoil that besieged France at the end of the eighteenth century, although the architectural educational tradition that arose from it was resurrected with the formation of the École des Beaux-Arts and prevails in the ideologies and activities of schools of architecture throughout the world today. This book traces the previously neglected history of the Académie’s development and its enduring influence on subsequent architectural schools throughout the following centuries to the present day. Providing a valuable context for current discussions in architectural education, The Rise of Academic Architectural Education is a useful resource for students and researchers interested in the history and theory of art and architecture.

The Routledge Research Companion to Landscape Architecture considers landscape architecture’s increasingly important cultural, aesthetic, and ecological role. The volume reflects topical concerns in theoretical, historical, philosophical, and practice-related research in landscape architecture – research that reflects our relationship with what has traditionally been called ‘nature’. It does so at a time when questions about the use of global resources and understanding the links between human and non-human worlds are more crucial than ever. The twenty-five chapters of this edited collection bring together significant positions in current landscape architecture research under five broad themes – History, Sites and Heritage, City and Nature, Ethics and Sustainability, Knowledge and Practice – supplemented with a discussion of landscape architecture education. Prominent as well as up-and-coming contributors from landscape architecture and adjacent fields including Tom Avermaete, Peter Carl, Gareth Doherty, Ottmar Ette, Matthew Gandy, Christophe Girot, Anne Whiston Spirn, Ian H. Thompson and Jane Wolff seek to widen, fuel, and frame critical discussion in this growing area. A significant contribution to landscape architecture research, this book will be beneficial not only to students and academics in landscape architecture, but also to scholars in related fields such as history, architecture, and social studies.