This book describes the complete panorama of supporting structures and their function by describing how loads are sustained and transmitted to the ground. With a minimum of mathematics, the reader is guided through the analysis of some of the world's most famous designs and structures from a civil-engineering perspective. An intuitive approach is taken - the basics of equilibrium analysis are explained by visualizing the internal forces of specific structures with the aid of simple graphical tools. Ideal for anyone who needs an intuitive and practical approach to the design and appropriate sizing of load-bearing structures.

For anyone who needs an intuitive and practical approach to the design and appropriate sizing of load-bearing structures, this book describes the complete panorama of supporting structures and their function by describing how loads are sustained and transmitted to the ground.

"The structural designs that occur in nature - in molecules, in crystals, in living cells - appear in this fully illustrated book as a source of inspiration and study of design of man-made structures" -- BOOK JACKET.

Now in its second edition: the trailblazing introduction and textbook on construction includes a new section on translucent materials and an article on the use of glass.

"The influential artist Hedi Kyle and renowned architecture graduate Ulla Warchol shows you how to create their unique designs using folding techniques. From creating flag books and fishbones, to blizzards and nesting boxes, you'll gain an invaluable insight into the work of two skilled artists with this fun read! With the help of their thorough instructions and simple illustrations, you'll be on your way to becoming a pro paper crafter in no time at all" – Sew magazine "A wonderful insight into the work of a truly skilled artist" – PaperCrafter The renowned and influential book artist Hedi Kyle shows you step–by–step how to create her unique designs using folding techniques in The Art of the Fold. Bookbinding and paper craft projects include flag books, blizzard books, the fishbone fold, and nesting boxes. Written by the doyenne of artists' books, Hedi Kyle, The Art of the Fold is a wonderful insight into the work of a truly skilled artist. Hedi will show you how to bind a book and fold paper to create over 35 of her cut–fold book designs. The book is beautifully illustrated with Hedi's finished works of art. An excerpt from the book: 'I can still remember the thrill I experienced when my first folded book structure emerged from my fingers – how eager I was to explore its possibilities and to share it with whoever was interested. The Flag Book, as I now call it, is a simple accordion and has interlocking pages oriented in opposite directions. Little did I know that this simple structure would have legs and be the catalyst for the next forty–plus years of thinking about and making books. The common perception of the book today is fairly straightforward: a series of pages organized around a spine and protected on either side by two covers. This format allows for easy access, storage and retrieval of information. Yet what happens when the book is stripped away of centuries of preconceptions and is allowed to reveal something else: playfulness, utility, invention? Expanding the notion of the book is what the structures in the following chapters of The Art of the Fold attempt to do. Exploring its tactile, sculptural form, primarily through folding methods, the book as a structural object is celebrated while content is considered in a new and unconventional way. My range in this medium has always been broad. In part this is due to my introduction to the world of bookbinding and some chance encounters. In the 1970s in New York City, the art and craft of hand bookbinding and papermaking were experiencing an unprecedented revival. I was fortunate to arrive in the city at just this moment. With an art–school background and an impulse to make things, I was naturally drawn to pursue this new opportunity. The Center for Book Arts, the famous forerunner of so many centers yet to come, was located in a small storefront just down the street from where I lived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Under the direction of founder Richard Minsky, it had a radical mission: to push concept, materials, printing and making of artist books in a new direction. When Richard dared me to teach at the Center one evening a week, I was hooked. My career as a book conservator and a book artist has now spanned over 45 years. As head conservator at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, I've had the opportunity to handle some of the rarest volumes and manuscripts in the world. I have also dealt with decrepit books, torn maps and countless curiosities discovered in stacks and archives. All were endless sources for ideas and provided a springboard for a departure from tradition. Leading book–arts workshops around the world and a 25 year tenure teaching in the graduate program for Book Arts and Printmaking at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia have shown me, in retrospect, that the more I taught, t

Deployable structures can expand and contract due to their geometrical, material and mechanical properties – offering the potential to create truly transforming environments. This book looks at the cutting edge of the subject, examining the different types of deployable structures and numerous design approaches. Filled with photographs, models, drawings and diagrams, Deployable Structures is packed with inspirational ideas for architecture students and practitioners.

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.

From the Louvre to the Bilbao Guggenheim and Tate Modern, the museum has had a long-standing relationship with the city. Examination of the meaning of museum architecture in the urban environment, considering issues such as forms of civic representation, urban regeneration, cultural tourism and the museumification of the city itself. Ranging from the seventeenth century to the present day, case-studies are drawn from Europe, South America and Australia. Contributions written by J.Birksted, V.Fraser, H.Lewi, D.J.Meijers and others.

Understanding how gravity loads and wind and earthquake loads flow through a building is of utmost importance to all structural engineers and architects. Paradoxically, this critical idea is practically not addressed in any textbook on the market. Meant as a companion to the author’s Structures: A Geometric Approach, this textbook fills that need with qualitative techniques as well as quantitative tools that use state of the art visual representation of forces and deformations in structures. Structures: A Studio Approach reaches out to both structural engineers and designers by presenting structural engineering topics in an interdisciplinary studio environment. Using many graphical techniques, it offers a very rigorous approach, but also enables creativity. Cutting edge finite element as well as parametric modeling tools are used, and state of the art visual representations of force flow help both groups of students realize that understanding three dimensional load flow in a building is a requirement for channeling that flow in a structurally efficient and visually expressive manner. Ultimately, the reader is able to develop a unique structural sensibility; an ethos that places structural design on an equal footing with the design of program, skin, massing and site.