How to Read Modern Buildings is an indispensable pocket-sized guide to understanding the architecture of the modern era. It takes the reader on a guided tour of modern architecture through its most iconic and significant buildings, showing how to read the hallmarks of each architectural style and how to recognize them in the buildings all around. From Art Deco and Arts and Crafts, through the International Style and Modernism to today's environmental architecture and the rise and fall of the icon, all the major architectural movements from the 1900s to the present day are traced through their classic buildings. Examining the key architectural elements and hidden details of each style, we learn what to look out for and where to look for it. Packed with detailed drawings, plans, and photographs, this is both a fascinating architectural history and an effective I-spy guide - a must-read for anyone with an interest in modern design and architecture.

How to Read Buildings is a practical primer to looking at architecture and all the elements that are included in buildings, from cornices and friezes to columns and porticos - all facets of buildings are included. Each chapter takes an architectural element and looks at its variety across various historical periods and geographical locations. Examples are shown through dozens of fine engravings with extended captions, creating a dip-in read and an effective I-Spy guide. Additional sections look at the clues offerred by history, geography and religion (with a timeline showing how and where architectural elements have been introduced), and at the significance of the ornaments.

Throughout history, the story of the skyscraper has been defined by our desire for ascendance--politically, militarily, economically, religiously, culturally, and, of course, physically. These spectacular superstructures epitomise more than architectural aspiration, they excite the imagination and inspire awe. The scope of the book is deliberately broad with a thematic first section and a geographical second section. Conceptual chapters, introduce the origins of our desire to build high and explore the skyscraper's role in fuelling our imaginations through different modes of cultural expression. How To Read Skyscrapers offers a deep and rich understanding of the skyscraper by providing a comprehensive account of this unique and captivating building-type, from its origins in myth and legend to its future potential in satisfying humankind's needs and aspirations.

Available again, a wholly original study of the complex relationship between architecture and language that has changed and enriched the way we think and talk about architecture.The words we use when we talk and write about architecture describe more than just bricks and mortar they direct the ways we think of and live with buildings. This groundbreaking book is the first thorough examination of the complex relationship between architecture and language as intricate social practices. Six rigorously argued chapters investigate the language of modernism, language and drawing, masculine and feminine architecture, language metaphors, science in architecture, and the social properties of architecture. There follows a vocabulary of key words such as Character, Form, History and Space, locating each words modern meaning within an historical and theoretical framework, and setting out clearly its development and relevance for architects, historians, philosophers, critics and the users of the buildings themselves. Architects should be made to read Words and Buildings Architecture Today Unusually clear and accessible Students of all kinds will love this book The Architectural Review A forceful, clear and sophisticated exposition of the role of conceptual thought in architectural discourse The Architects Journal

This is an important book, written by one of the top lighting designers in the country. Written at the end of a career as an architect and lighting designer, the book draws on the experience gained while living through a period of intense lighting development, from 1956 up to the millenium. It bridges the gap between the present day architect and lighting engineer, from the viewpoint of the 'independent lighting designer'. 'Lighting Modern Buildings' documents the part played by the independent lighting designer, leading to a greater understanding by architects and lighting engineers of the importance of lighting in architectural design. The book starts with an exploration of the basic human needs of vision and the perception of our exterior world...the intellectual and the physical...since this is what lighting is all about. To do this, it is necessary to trace the development of daylight from earliest times up to the present day; the starting point for any lighting design is the 'natural' source. Whilst an essential understanding of the role of daylight is the beginning, a knowledge of the various forms and properties of artificial light is essential; not only at night but during the day. In early buildings, there was one form of light - daylight - during the day and another - artificial - at night. No attempt was made to integrate the two. The situation today is different; there are many reasons for this, not least in the possibilities of modern structure. The book therefore has extensive coverage of day and night lighting and how it is designed to provide optimum solutions in building design. A major portion of Derek Phillips' book is devoted to 'design'. Sufficient technical detail is provided in the book to permit an understanding of the design principles of each scheme. Schemes illustrated vary from small domestic buildings, churches and workplace, to those devoted to leisure and sport. At the end of each section a series of conclusions are drawn leading to a philosophy of lighting design.

The Modern movement began in the 1920s when a small group of young architects felt all that had gone before should be rejected and that architectural design should start afresh. This fresh start, they declared, should be based on modern technology and a new, modern approach to life. Their innovations became the 20th century's dominant movement in architecture, crystallizing into the international style of the 1920s and '30s. In "Exploding the Myths of Modern Architecture, " Malcolm Millais explores the forces and factors that led to the emergence of the Modern movement, arguing that it was based on completely false premises. Millais offers a rarely heard perspective on the Modern movement, explaining its failures and how the well-meaning "revolutionaries" behind it gained and maintained power.

"The first definitive biography of the now-famous architect, Hugh Morrison's Louis Sullivan: Prophet of Modern Architecture is still the best introduction to his work. This reissue provides Morrison's original text and illustrations in a larger, more modern format. It also offers an assessment of Morrison's ground-breaking research, in Timothy J. Samuelson's Introduction, and, most important, an authoritative revision of the chronological List of Buildings, including corrections of the data in light of six decades of research. Working from Morrison's original notes, Samuelson has restored a number of photographic images intended for the original edition and has replaced some photographs with alternate images that more accurately represent the buildings. He has also added a selected bibliography of important works about Sullivan"--Page 4 of cover

Fifty of the world's greatest modern buildings, from 1950 to the present, dissected and analyzed through specially commissioned freehand drawings After a period in which computation-derived architecture—driven by digital design tools, data analysis, and new formal expression—has thrived, students and their teachers have returned to age-old techniques before employing the digital tools that are a part of every architect’s studio. Tired of the perfectly rendered screen image, architects are making presentations that are clearly the work of the hand and the mind, not the computer. This ambitious publication, organized chronologically, is aimed at a new generation of architects who take technology for granted, but seek to further understand the principles of what makes a building meaningful and enduring. Each of the fifty works of architecture is presented through detailed consideration of its site, topology, and surroundings; natural light, volumes, and massing; program and circulation; details, fenestration, and ornamentation. Over 2,500 painstakingly hand-drawn images of the buildings of the past seven decades help readers return to the core values of understanding site and creating buildings: looking with the eyes, engaging through direct physical experience, and constructing by hand.

A penetrating analysis of the modern architectural tradition and its origins. Since its first publication in 1982, Modern Architecture Since 1900 has become established as a contemporary classic. Worldwide in scope, it combines a clear historical outline with masterly analysis and interpretation. Technical, economic, social and intellectual developments are brought together in a comprehensive narrative which provides a setting for the detailed examination of buildings. Throughout the book the author's focus is on the individual architect, and on the qualities that give outstanding buildings their lasting value.For the third edition, the text has been radically revised and expanded, incorporating much new material and a fresh appreciation of regional identity and variety. Seven chapters are entirely new, including expanded coverage of recent world architecture.Described by James Ackerman of Harvard University as "immeasurably the finest work covering this field in existence", this book presents a penetrating analysis of the modern tradition and its origins, tracing the creative interaction between old and new that has generated such an astonishing richness of architectural forms across the world and throughout the century.