For many people, Native American architecture calls to mind the wigwam, tipi, iglu, and pueblo. Yet the richly diverse building traditions of Native Americans encompass much more, including specific structures for sleeping, working, worshipping, meditating, playing, dancing, lounging, giving birth, decision-making, cleansing, storing and preparing food, caring for animals, and honoring the dead. In effect, the architecture covers all facets of Indian life. The collaboration between an architect and an anthropologist, Native American Architecture presents the first book-length, fully illustrated exploration of North American Indian architecture to appear in over a century. Peter Nabokov and Robert Easton together examine the building traditions of the major tribes in nine regional areas of the continent from the huge plank-house villages of the Northwest Coast to the moundbuilder towns and temples of the Southeast, to the Navajo hogans and adobe pueblos of the Southwest. Going beyond a traditional survey of buildings, the book offers a broad, clear view into the Native American world, revealing a new perspective on the interaction between their buildings and culture. Looking at Native American architecture as more than buildings, villages, and camps, Nabokov and Easton also focus on their use of space, their environment, their social mores, and their religious beliefs. Each chapter concludes with an account of traditional Indian building practices undergoing a revival or in danger today. The volume also includes a wealth of historical photographs and drawings (including sixteen pages of color illustrations), architectural renderings, and specially prepared interpretive diagrams which decode the sacred cosmology of the principal house types.

"Pelli focuses on the unique position of architecture among the arts. He analyzes eight "connections" that influence both the artistic and practical aspects of architecture: time, construction, place, purpose, culture, design process, constituency, and oneself. Pelli discusses each connection, drawing on historic and contemporary examples, and then turns to first-person commentary, illustrating his experiences with his own buildings and projects, including such important buildings as Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (the world's tallest buildings), the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles, and Washington National Airport."--Jacket.

Like subsequent European visitors - Chastellux, Chateaubriand, the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, De Tocqueville, Dickens, and Anthony Trollope - Kimber's point of view remains that of an outsider.

This book is not about a folk or typical Latin American architecture. Latin America is not some faraway, isolated region, rather a huge and universal laboratory. It shows a different Latin America through its recent architecture, which flourishes in our time of global communications. It does have roots in the past; but does not appeal to nostalgia. Architecture thought for the present and designed for the near future. Total Latin American Architecture intends to communicate a targeted objective, to circumscribe a segment, a series of observations and actions in architecture.

Publisher description

America Today is a critical look at the present state of American politics and society by William Archer. Excerpt: "LETTER I The Straits of New York—When is a Ship not a Ship?—Nationality of Passengers—A Dream Realized LETTER II Fog in New York Harbor—The Customs—The Note-Taker's Hyperæsthesia—A Literary Car-Conductor—Mr. Kipling and the American Public—The City of Elevators LETTER III New York a much-maligned City—Its Charm—Mr. Steevens' Antithesis—New York compared with Other Cities—Its Slums—Advertisements—Architecture in New York and Philadelphia LETTER IV Absence of Red Tape—"Rapid Transit" in New York—The Problem and its Solution—The Whirl of Life—New York by Night—The "White Magic" of the Future LETTER V Character and Culture—American Universities—Is the American "Electric" or Phlegmatic?—Alleged Laxity of the Family Tie—Postscript: The University System."

An impassioned plea for a Roman-Style eclecticism that draws freely on all artistic forms and traditions, Piranesi's Observations anticipates the contemporary debate between devotees of a rational, minimal architecture and advocates of an architecture rich in ornament and historical references."--BOOK JACKET.