In the tradition of the bestselling Where Chefs Eat: the definitive global hotel guide by the real experts who know - architects No one appreciates a building quite like an architect - and now, for the first time, more than 250 of the world's leading architects share insider tips on where to stay, revealing everything from renowned destinations to undiscovered gems. With 1,200 listings in more than 100 countries, this unique guide has readers covered, whether planning a business trip or a vacation, a city break or a remote getaway, a wedding or a corporate event. It's the ideal resource, gift, and gateway to design-conscious journeys worldwide.

"Should appeal to all rugged individualists who dream of escape to the forest."—The New York Times Book Review Sam Gribley is terribly unhappy living in New York City with his family, so he runs away to the Catskill Mountains to live in the woods—all by himself. With only a penknife, a ball of cord, forty dollars, and some flint and steel, he intends to survive on his own. Sam learns about courage, danger, and independence during his year in the wilderness, a year that changes his life forever. “An extraordinary book . . . It will be read year after year.” —The Horn Book

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.

The combination of architecture and vacations is highly inspiring. It promises relaxation and pleasure, beauty and style, all in one. Each of the vacation domiciles presented here can fulfill even the most discerning demands of a traveling architect. All lodgings are unique architectural jewels with a wellbeing guarantee and a personal touch that are (design-)visions come true. From the archaic forest hut in the mountain, the luxuriously decorated loft in a major metropolis, or the romantic idyllic house by the lake - these part-time dream houses allow visitors to forget the hustle and bustle of everyday life and they are the perfect place for a short escape or a longer time out.

A crash course in designing and constructing buildings Too often, textbooks turn the noteworthy details of architecture into tedious discourse that would put even Frank Gehry to sleep. Architecture 101 cuts out the boring explanations, and instead provides a hands-on lesson that keeps you engaged as you explore the world's greatest structures. Featuring only the most important facts, building styles, and architects, you'll enjoy uncovering the remarkable world of architecture with this book. Inside, you'll also find fascinating elements like: Illustrations of popular building styles, such as Georgian and Greek Revival Drawings of the essential parts of different buildings Unique profiles of the most inspirational figures in architecture From Norman Foster and Frank Lloyd Wright to the Beauvais Cathedral and the Empire State Building, Architecture 101 is packed with hundreds of entertaining architecture tidbits that you can't get anywhere else!

A "smoothly written and fair-minded" (Wall Street Journal) biography of architect Philip Johnson -- a finalist for the National Book Critic's Circle Award. When Philip Johnson died in 2005 at the age of 98, he was still one of the most recognizable and influential figures on the American cultural landscape. The first recipient of the Pritzker Prize and MoMA's founding architectural curator, Johnson made his mark as one of America's leading architects with his famous Glass House in New Caanan, CT, and his controversial AT&T Building in NYC, among many others in nearly every city in the country -- but his most natural role was as a consummate power broker and shaper of public opinion. Johnson introduced European modernism -- the sleek, glass-and-steel architecture that now dominates our cities -- to America, and mentored generations of architects, designers, and artists to follow. He defined the era of "starchitecture" with its flamboyant buildings and celebrity designers who esteemed aesthetics and style above all other concerns. But Johnson was also a man of deep paradoxes: he was a Nazi sympathizer, a designer of synagogues, an enfant terrible into his old age, a populist, and a snob. His clients ranged from the Rockefellers to televangelists to Donald Trump. Award-winning architectural critic and biographer Mark Lamster's The Man in the Glass House lifts the veil on Johnson's controversial and endlessly contradictory life to tell the story of a charming yet deeply flawed man. A rollercoaster tale of the perils of wealth, privilege, and ambition, this book probes the dynamics of American culture that made him so powerful, and tells the story of the built environment in modern America.

Living and working in extra-terrestrial habitats means being potentially vulnerable to very harsh environmental, social, and psychological conditions. With the stringent technical specifications for launch vehicles and transport into space, a very tight framework for the creation of habitable space is set. These constraints result in a very demanding “partnership” between the habitat and the inhabitant. This book is the result of researching the interface between people, space and objects in an extra-terrestrial environment. The evaluation of extra-terrestrial habitats in comparison to the user’s perspective leads to a new framework, comparing these buildings from the viewpoint of human activity. It can be used as reference or as conceptual framework for the purpose of evaluation. It also summarizes relevant human-related design directions. The work is addressed to architects and designers as well as engineers.

Bestselling author Alain de Botton considers how our private homes and public edifices influence how we feel, and how we could build dwellings in which we would stand a better chance of happiness. In this witty, erudite look at how we shape, and are shaped by, our surroundings, Alain de Botton applies Stendhal’s motto that “Beauty is the promise of happiness” to the spaces we inhabit daily. Why should we pay attention to what architecture has to say to us? de Botton asks provocatively. With his trademark lucidity and humour, de Botton traces how human needs and desires have been served by styles of architecture, from stately Classical to minimalist Modern, arguing that the stylistic choices of a society can represent both its cherished ideals and the qualities it desperately lacks. On an individual level, de Botton has deep sympathy for our need to see our selves reflected in our surroundings; he demonstrates with great wisdom how buildings — just like friends — can serve as guardians of our identity. Worrying about the shape of our sofa or the colour of our walls might seem self-indulgent, but de Botton considers the hopes and fears we have for our homes at a new level of depth and insight. When shopping for furniture or remodelling the kitchen, we don’t just consider functionality but also the major questions of aesthetics and the philosophy of art: What is beauty? Can beautiful surroundings make us good? Can beauty bring happiness? The buildings we find beautiful, de Botton concludes, are those that represent our ideas of a meaningful life. The Architecture of Happiness marks a return to what Alain does best — taking on a subject whose allure is at once tantalizing and a little forbidding and offering to readers a completely beguiling and original exploration of the subject. As he did with Proust, philosophy, and travel, now he does with architecture.