The second half of the 20th Century witnessed an outburst of theories and manifestoes that explored the possibilities of architecture: it's language, evolution and social relevance. The many 'crises in architecture' and emerging urban and ecological problems questioned the current orthodoxy: Modernism was criticised, questioned and overthrown, only to be extended, subverted and revivified. The result was a cascade of new theories, justifications and recipes for building. This anthology, first edited in 1997, brought together a coherent collection of texts that tracked these important shifts from all the major architectural thinkers and practitioners. In this new edition of the book, over twenty additional extracts are published that present an entirely new axis for architectural thinking. Whereas much of the 20th-Century thought was dominated by the 'perceived crisis' in Modernity, 'the new paradigm' or 'complexity paradigm' has been excited by the possibilities of Emergence in the Science of Complexity and Chaos theory. The reach of complexity is expressed through the primacy of Benoit Mandelbrot's theories on geometry, with an extract from his manifesto on fractals; and furthered through an outline of Emergence by Steven Johnson. It is also handled through texts that focus on the diagram and are demonstrated in its more applied form through passages dealing with the global city and culture. Essential for the student and practitioner alike, Theories and Manifestoes since its first edition has established itself as the touchstone book for architectural thought. It features seminal texts by Reyner Banham, Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Colin Rowe and Robert Venturi. This is now ejected with greater currency with extracts from: Cecil Balmond, Foreign Office Architects, Daniel Libeskind, MVRDV, Lars Spuybroek, UN Studio and West 8.

This essential compendium presents more than 150 key arguments by major architectural philosophers and gurus of today and outlines the numerous developments that have taken flace in this field since the 1950s. Each of the statements is acocmpanied by a short biography of the architect and an extract from their principal texts drawn from a variety of sources.

"Charles Jencks was the first to demonstrate that Modern architecture in the 1960s and 1970s had undergone a profound mutation into three major approaches - Post-Modernism, Late Modernism and New Modernism. He has shown how our pluralist age has oscillated between these and traditional approaches . In this title, the thinking and ideas that have informed, and continue to inform the architecture and urban design around us today, was presented as a compilation of writings by the most important architects, urbanists and theorists of the second half of the 20th century. The new edition brings thinking up to date with additional material that suggests the direction theory is taking into the 21st century." -- Web site.

In this manifesto, the author takes a leap of faith. It is a faith in Lost Causes. He asserts that today, architectonic reason has fallen into ruins. As soon as architecture leaves the limits set to it by architectonic reason, no other path is open to it but the path to aestheticism. This is the wrong path contemporary architecture has taken. In its reduction to a pure aesthetic object, architecture negatively affects the human sensorium. Capitalist consumer society creates desires by generating ‘surplus-enjoyment’ for capitalist profit and contemporary architecture has become an instrument in generating this ‘surplus-enjoyment’, with fatal consequences. This manifesto is thus both a critique and a work of theory. It is a siren, alarm, klaxon to the current status quo within architectural discourse and a timely response to the conditions of architecture today.

This essential compendium presents more than 150 key arguments by major architectural philosophers and gurus of today and outlines the numerous developments that have taken flace in this field since the 1950s. Each of the statements is acocmpanied by a short biography of the architect and an extract from their principal texts drawn from a variety of sources.

The present volume offers eloquent testimony that many of the master builders of this century have held passionate convictions regarding the philosophic and social basis of their art. Nearly every important development in the modern architectural movement began with the proclamation of these convictions in the form of a program or manifesto. The most influential of these are collected here in chronological order from 1903 to 1963. Taken together, they constitute a subjective history of modern architecture; compared with one another, their great diversity of style reveals in many cases the basic differences of attitude and temperament that produced a corresponding divergence in architectural style. In point of view, the book covers the aesthetic spectrum from right to left; from programs that rigidly generate designs down to the smallest detail to revolutionary manifestoes that call for anarchy in building form and town plan. The documents, placed in context by the editor, are also international in their range: among them are the seminal and prophetic statements of Henry van de Velde, Adolf Loos, and Bruno Taut from the early years of the century; Frank Lloyd Wright's 1910 annunciation of Organic Architecture; Gropius's original program for the Bauhaus, founded in Weimar in 1919; "Towards a New Architecture, Guiding Principles" by Le Corbusier; the formulation by Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner of the basic principles of Constructivism; and articles by R. Buckminster Fuller on universal architecture and the architect as world planner. Other pronouncements, some in flamboyant style, including those of Erich Mendelsohn, Hannes Meyer, Theo van Doesburg, OskarSchlemmer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, El Lissitzky, and Louis I. Kahn. There are also a number of collective or group statements, issued in the name of movements such as CIAM, De Stijl, ABC, the Situationists, and GEAM. Since the dramatic effectiveness of the manifesto form is usually heightened by brevity and conciseness, it has been possible to reproduce most of the documents in their entirety; only a few have been excerpted.

Pioneering manifesto by founder of "International School." Technical and aesthetic theories, views of industry, economics, relation of form to function, "mass-production split," and much more. Profusely illustrated.

Since its original publication in 1978, Delirious New York has attained mythic status. Back in print in a newly designed edition, this influential cultural, architectural, and social history of New York is even more popular, selling out its first printing on publication. Rem Koolhaas's celebration and analysis of New York depicts the city as a metaphor for the incredible variety of human behavior. At the end of the nineteenth century, population, information, and technology explosions made Manhattan a laboratory for the invention and testing of a metropolitan lifestyle -- "the culture of congestion" -- and its architecture. "Manhattan," he writes, "is the 20th century's Rosetta Stone . . . occupied by architectural mutations (Central Park, the Skyscraper), utopian fragments (Rockefeller Center, the U.N. Building), and irrational phenomena (Radio City Music Hall)." Koolhaas interprets and reinterprets the dynamic relationship between architecture and culture in a number of telling episodes of New York's history, including the imposition of the Manhattan grid, the creation of Coney Island, and the development of the skyscraper. Delirious New York is also packed with intriguing and fun facts and illustrated with witty watercolors and quirky archival drawings, photographs, postcards, and maps. The spirit of this visionary investigation of Manhattan equals the energy of the city itself.

Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: An Anthology of ArchitecturalTheory collects in a single volume the most significant essays on architectural theory of the last thirty years. A dynamic period of reexamination of the discipline, the postmodern eraproduced widely divergent and radical viewpoints on issues of making, meaning, history, and the city. Among the paradigms presented arearchitectural postmodernism, phenomenology, semiotics, poststructuralism, deconstruction, and feminism. By gathering these influential articles from a vast array of books and journals into a comprehensive anthology, Kate Nesbitt has created a resource of great value. Indispensable to professors and students of architecture and architectural theory, Theorizing a New Agenda also serves practitioners and the general public, as Nesbitt provides an overview, a thematic structure, and a critical introduction to each essay. The list of authors in Theorizing a New Agenda reads like a "Who's Who" of contemporary architectural thought: Tadao Ando, Giulio Carlo Argan, Alan Colquhoun, Jacques Derrida, Peter Eisenman, Marco Frascari, Kenneth Frampton, Diane Ghirardo, Vittorio Gregotti, Karsten Harries, Rem Koolhaas, Christian Norberg-Schulz, Aldo Rossi, Colin Rowe, Thomas Schumacher, Ignasi de Sol-Morales Rubi, Bernard Tschumi, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, and Anthony Vidler. A bibliography and notes on all the contributors are also included.

This follow-up to Kate Nesbitt's best-selling anthology Theorizing a New Agenda collects twenty-eight essays that address architecture theory from the mid-1990s, where Nesbitt left off, through the present. Kristin Sykes offers an overview of the myriad approaches and attitudes adopted by architects and architectural theorists during this era. Multiple themes—including the impact of digital technologies on processes of architectural design, production, materiality, and representation; the implications of globalization and networks of information; the growing emphasis on sustainable and green architecture; and the phenomenon of the 'starchitect' and iconic architecture—appear against a background colored by architectural theory, as it existed from the 1960s on, in a period of transition (if not crisis) that centers around the perceived abyss between theory and practice. Theory's transitional state persists today, rendering its immediate history particularly relevant to contemporary thought and practice. While other collections of recent theoretical writings exist none attempt to address the situation as a whole, providing in one place key theoretical texts of the past decade and a half. This book provides a foundation for ongoing discussions surrounding contemporary architectural thought and practice, with iconic essays by Greg Lynn, Deborah Berke, Sanford Kwinter, Samuel Mockbee, Stan Allen, Rem Koolhaas, William Mitchell, Anthony Vidler, Micahel Hays, Reinhold Martin, Reiser + Umemoto, Glenn Murcutt, William McDonough, Micahael Braungart, Michael Speaks, and many more.