Three Cultural Ecologies reverses common conceptions of modern architecture. It reveals how selected works of two modern architects, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, embraced environmental and cultural conditions as reciprocal and complementary. A basic premise of this book’s arguments is that cultural patterns cannot be adequately conceptualized in the terms that typically define ecology today. Instead, studies based on the natural sciences must be complemented by descriptions and interpretations of historical narratives, cultural norms, and individual expressions. Previously unpublished images and new interpretations will allow readers to rediscover works they thought they knew; Villa Savoye, Taliesin, La Tourette, and Ocatilla; as well as projects that are less well known: by Wright, the House on the Mesa and the City Residential Plan, and by Le Corbusier, the Immeuble-villas and Ilôt Insalubre projects. More broadly, this study of cultural ecology at three scales – domestic, monastic, and urban – reconsiders the history of modern architecture. The conditions brought about by societal and technological modernization and confronted by modern architecture have not disappeared in our time, but have intensified, making the task of imagining how some measure of equilibrium between culture and ecology might be achieved even more pressing.

So much writing about architecture tends to evaluate it on the basis of its intentions: how closely it corresponds to the artistic will of the designer, the technical skills of the builder, or whether it reflects the spirit of the place and time in which it was built, making it not much more than the willful (or even subconscious) assemblage of objects that result from design and construction techniques. Renowned writer and thinker David Leatherbarrow, in this groundbreaking new book, argues for a richer and more profound, but also simpler, way of thinking about architecture, namely on the basis of how it performs. Not simply how it functions, but how it acts, "its manner of existing in the world," including its effects on the observers and inhabitants of a building as well as on the landscape that situates it. In the process, Leatherbarrow transforms our way of discussing buildings from a passive technical or programmatic assessment to a highly active and engaged examination of the lives and performances, intended and otherwise, of buildings.

This work is the ideal introduction to the work of one of Europe's most radical thinkers.

Postgrowth Imaginaries brings together environmental cultural studies and postgrowth economics to examine radical cultural shifts sparked by the global financial crisis. The globalization of an economic culture addicted to constant growth destroys the ecological planetary systems while failing to fulfil its social promises. A transition toward what Prádanos calls ‘postgrowth imaginaries’—the counterhegemonic cultural sensibilities that are challenging the growth paradigm—is well underway in the Iberian Peninsula today.

Spatial Ecologies asks why French cultural and critical theory since 1968 has turned from investigating questions of time to examining space. Verena Conley ranges over the work of Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau, Jean Baudrillard, Marc Auge, Paul Virilio, Bruno Latour, and Etienne Balibar to analyze how they reconsidered the experience of space in the midst of political and economic turmoil and to find out what writing about space can tell us about life in late capitalism. Conley links this question to Heidegger's concept of habitality and shows how this concept of space informs much of French theory.

Reimagining Political Ecology is a state-of-the-art collection of ethnographies grounded in political ecology. When political ecology first emerged as a distinct field in the early 1970s, it was rooted in the neo-Marxism of world system theory. This collection showcases second-generation political ecology, which retains the Marxist interest in capitalism as a global structure but which is also heavily influenced by poststructuralism, feminism, practice theory, and cultural studies. As these essays illustrate, contemporary political ecology moves beyond binary thinking, focusing instead on the interchanges between nature and culture, the symbolic and the material, and the local and the global. Aletta Biersack’s introduction takes stock of where political ecology has been, assesses the field’s strengths, and sets forth a bold research agenda for the future. Two essays offer wide-ranging critiques of modernist ecology, with its artificial dichotomy between nature and culture, faith in the scientific management of nature, and related tendency to dismiss local knowledge. The remaining eight essays are case studies of particular constructions and appropriations of nature and the complex politics that come into play regionally, nationally, and internationally when nature is brought within the human sphere. Written by some of the leading thinkers in environmental anthropology, these rich ethnographies are based in locales around the world: in Belize, Papua New Guinea, the Gulf of California, Iceland, Finland, the Peruvian Amazon, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Collectively, they demonstrate that political ecology speaks to concerns shared by geographers, sociologists, political scientists, historians, and anthropologists alike. And they model the kind of work that this volume identifies as the future of political ecology: place-based “ethnographies of nature” keenly attuned to the conjunctural effects of globalization. Contributors. Eeva Berglund, Aletta Biersack, J. Peter Brosius, Michael R. Dove, James B. Greenberg, Søren Hvalkof, J. Stephen Lansing, Gísli Pálsson, Joel Robbins, Vernon L. Scarborough, John W. Schoenfelder, Richard Wilk

A comprehensive, systematic account of human development which is sensitive to the needs, interests and ecologies of nonwestern cultures and individuals is provided in this unique volume. The importance and value of the sociocultural milieu in shaping the growth and development of children is emphasized, and the author asserts throughout that children do not grow and develop according to the same patterns regardless of culture. The author describes developmental psychology from the perspective of West Africa, demonstrating how the local ecology and the resulting cultural ideology lead to differing ways in which children are conceptualized and socialized, and in turn how they develop. While much of his case material is from

Ecocriticism has emerged as one of the most fascinating and rapidly growing fields of recent literary and cultural studies. From its regional origins in late-twentieth-century Anglo-American academia, it has become a worldwide phenomenon, which involves a decidedly transdisciplinary and transnational paradigm that promises to return a new sense of relevance to research and teaching in the humanities. A distinctive feature of the present handbook in comparison with other survey volumes is the combination of ecocriticism with cultural ecology, reflecting an emphasis on the cultural transformation of ecological processes and on the crucial role of literature, art, and other forms of cultural creativity for the evolution of societies towards sustainable futures. In state-of-the-art contributions by leading international scholars in the field, this handbook maps some of the most important developments in contemporary ecocritical thought. It introduces key theoretical concepts, issues, and directions of ecocriticism and cultural ecology and demonstrates their relevance for the analysis of texts and other cultural phenomena.

Structures and Architecture – Bridging the Gap and Crossing Borders contains the lectures and papers presented at the Fourth International Conference on Structures and Architecture (ICSA2019) that was held in Lisbon, Portugal, in July 2019. It also contains a multimedia device with the full texts of the lectures presented at the conference, including the 5 keynote lectures, and almost 150 selected contributions. The contributions on creative and scientific aspects in the conception and construction of structures, on advanced technologies and on complex architectural and structural applications represent a fine blend of scientific, technical and practical novelties in both fields. ICSA2019 covered all major aspects of structures and architecture, including: building envelopes/façades; comprehension of complex forms; computer and experimental methods; futuristic structures; concrete and masonry structures; educating architects and structural engineers; emerging technologies; glass structures; innovative architectural and structural design; lightweight and membrane structures; special structures; steel and composite structures; structural design challenges; tall buildings; the borderline between architecture and structural engineering; the history of the relationship between architects and structural engineers; the tectonic of architectural solutions; the use of new materials; timber structures, among others. This set of book and multimedia device is intended for a global readership of researchers and practitioners, including architects, structural and construction engineers, builders and building consultants, constructors, material suppliers and product manufacturers, and other professionals involved in the design and realization of architectural, structural and infrastructural projects.

Liberation Ecologies brings together some of the most exciting theorists in the field to explore the impact of political ecology in today's developing world. The book casts new light on the crucial interrelations of development, social movements and the environment in the South - the 'bigger' half of our planet - and raises questions and hopes about change on the global scale. The in-depth case material is drawn from across the Developing World, from Latin America, Africa and Asia. The issues raised in contemporary political, economic and social theory are illustrated through these case studies. Ultimately, Liberation Ecologies questions what we understand by 'development', be it mainstream or alternative, and seeks to renew our sense of nature's range of possibilities.