Preface by Kenneth Frampton Moisei Iakovlevich Ginzburg, one of the founders and chief spokesmen of the Constructivist movement in Soviet architecture, combined the talents of scholar, theoretician, writer, and practicing architect. Originally published in Moscow in 1924, his book Style and Epochis considered by many to be the single most important piece of writing on architecture to come out of Russia in this century. It elucidates the aims and ideals of a Constructivist architecture, providing what is essentially an official manifesto of the Constructivist program and becoming the cornerstone of virtually all of the Constructivist writings that followed. Its translation makes available to English readers one of the seminal works of modern architectural theory. Style and Epoch has often been compared to Le Corbusier's Vers Une Architecture(published the year before Ginzburg's book) as a classic of early twentieth-century architectural thought. In it, Ginzburg expresses admiration for the products of engineering and machine technology and voices dismay at the failure to apply the means of that technology to improving architecture. By virtue of his unusually broad education; Ginzburg was able to draw upon elements of Western architecture and literature in such a way as to connect the Russian avant-garde with the simultaneously evolving network of progressive European movements. The result is a cogent analysis of architectural composition from antiquity to modern times in which Ginzburg attempts to plot those universal laws that determine any work of architecture, and proposes a systematic design method that is both rational and humane. An Oppositions Book.

Rhythm in Architecture is the first ever translation into English of a key early Modernist text, written by the celebrated Soviet Constructivist architect Moisei Ginzburg and first published in Russian as Ritm v Arkhitekture in 1923. Ginzburg is most famous for his Narkomfin Building in Moscow, completed in 1932, which he described as a "social-condenser": a radical experiment in communal living. While Ginzburg's second book Style and Epoch, published in 1924, is often seen as the manifesto for Russian Constructivism, Rhythm in Architecture--which preceded it--can be seen as his attempt to create a synthesis in thinking about architecture as a whole, seeking to show how "the true essence of all works of architecture" are "inspired by the laws of rhythm". Rhythm in Architecture is republished in cooperation with the Ginzburg Design Practice run by Moisei Ginzburg's grandson, Aleksey and his partner Natalia Shilova. It is the first of a planned series of reprints of Ginzburg's four books, Home, 1934 and Industrialising Housing Construction, 1937 as well as Style and Epoch, 1924--the only one previously available in English.

Biografie van de Duitse architect en architectuurtheoreticus (1803-1879)

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.

Hubsch's argument that the technical progress and changed living habits of the nineteenth century rendered neoclassical principles antiquated is presented here along with responses to his essay by architects, historians, and critics over two decades.

Published in 1923, Toward an Architecture had an immediate impact on architects throughout Europe and remains a foundational text for students and professionals. Le Corbusier urges readers to cease thinking of architecture as a matter of historical styles and instead open their eyes to the modern world. Simultaneously a historian, critic, and prophet, he provocatively juxtaposes views of classical Greece and Renaissance Rome with images of airplanes, cars, and ocean liners. Le Corbusier's slogans--such as "the house is a machine for living in"--and philosophy changed how his contemporaries saw the relationship between architecture, technology, and history. This edition includes a new translation of the original text, a scholarly introduction, and background notes that illuminate the text and illustrations.

Hendrik Petrus Berlage, the Dutch architect and architectural philosopher, created a series of buildings and a body of writings from 1886 to 1909 that were among the first efforts to probe the problems and possibilities of modernism. Although his Amsterdam Stock Exchange, with its rational mastery of materials and space, has long been celebrated for its seminal influence on the architecture of the 20th century, Berlage's writings are highlighted here. Bringing together Berlage's most important texts, among them "Thoughts on Style in Architecture", "Architecture's Place in Modern Aesthetics", and "Art and Society", this volume presents a chapter in the history of European modernism. In his introduction, Iain Boyd Whyte demonstrates that the substantial contribution of Berlage's designs to modern architecture cannot be fully appreciated without an understanding of the aesthetic principles first laid out in his writings.

Georges-Louis Leclerc, le comte de Buffon's The Epochs of Nature, originally published as Les Époques de la Nature in 1778, is one of the first great popular science books, a work of style and insight that was devoured by Catherine the Great of Russia and influenced Humboldt, Darwin, Lyell, Vernadsky, and many other renowned scientists. It is the first geological history of the world, stretching from the Earth’s origins to its foreseen end, and though Buffon was limited by the scientific knowledge of his era—the substance of the Earth was not, as he asserts, dragged out of the sun by a giant comet, nor is the sun’s heat generated by tidal forces—many of his deductions appear today as startling insights. And yet, The Epochs of Nature has never before been available in its entirety in English—until now. In seven epochs, Buffon reveals the main features of an evolving Earth, from its hard rock substrate to the sedimentary layers on top, from the minerals and fossils found within these layers to volcanoes, earthquakes, and rises and falls in sea level—and he even touches on age-old mysteries like why the sun shines. In one of many moments of striking scientific prescience, Buffon details evidence for species extinction a generation before Cuvier’s more famous assertion of the phenomenon. His seventh and final epoch does nothing less than offer the first geological glimpse of the idea that humans are altering the very foundations of the Earth—an idea of remarkable resonance as we debate the designation of another epoch: the Anthropocene. Also featuring Buffon’s extensive “Notes Justificatives,” in which he offers further evidence to support his assertions (and discusses vanished monstrous North American beasts—what we know as mastodons—as well as the potential existence of human giants), plus an enlightening introduction by editor and translator Jan Zalasiewicz and historians of science Sverker Sörlin, Libby Robin, and Jacques Grinevald, this extraordinary new translation revives Buffon’s quite literally groundbreaking work for a new age.