Tag: Buildings

The Future of Architecture in 100 Buildings (TED Books)

Foamboards

The founder of Architizer.com and practicing architect draws on his unique position at the crossroads of architecture and social media to highlight 100 important buildings that embody the future of architecture.

We’re asking more of architecture than ever before; the response will define our future.

A pavilion made from paper. A building that eats smog. An inflatable concert hall. A research lab that can walk through snow. We’re entering a new age in architecture—one where we expect our buildings to deliver far more than just shelter. We want buildings that inspire us while helping the environment; buildings that delight our senses while serving the needs of a community; buildings made possible both by new technology and repurposed materials.

Like an architectural cabinet of wonders, this book collects the most innovative buildings of today and tomorrow. The buildings hail from all seven continents (to say nothing of other planets), offering a truly global perspective on what lies ahead. Each page captures the soaring confidence, the thoughtful intelligence, the space-age wonder, and at times the sheer whimsy of the world’s most inspired buildings—and the questions they provoke: Can a building breathe? Can a skyscraper be built in a day? Can we 3D-print a house? Can we live on the moon?

Filled with gorgeous imagery and witty insight, this book is an essential and delightful guide to the future being built around us—a future that matters more, and to more of us, than ever.

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​The 6 Least Glamorous Buildings from Big-Name Architects

Foamboards

Architects are often known for their more high-profile projects: skyscrapers, museums, chapels, destination buildings. Yet the glamorous projects aren’t the only ones that big-name architects put their stamp on. When they’re not creating the buildings that make it to the front pages, they’re working on projects that might be less suited for Instagram, but are nevertheless essential to urban infrastructures — like parking garages, wastewater treatment facilities, and power plants. Here’s our roundup of some of the least glamorous projects by starchitects. 1111 Lincoln Road by Herzog & de Meuron, Miami, FL This white beauty — a parking garage with retail space at the bottom — is conceived as “all muscle with no cloth,” leaving its exposed, sculptural structure visible with minimal guardrails and dividing walls. This also fills the garage with natural light and gives visitors unimpeded views outward to Miami Beach’s spectacular surroundings. Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant by Ennead, Brooklyn, NY This treatment plant includes sculptural forms, striking materials, and color in addition to perimeter fencing as well as aerial walkways and bridges, forming a unique visual composition. Digester eggs are the star of this show, and glass walls …

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The Elements of Modern Architecture: Understanding Contemporary Buildings

Foamboards

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.

50+ photographs in black and white and 2,500 line drawings

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The Story of Buildings: From the Pyramids to the Sydney Opera House and Beyond

Foamboards

Aspiring architects will be in their element! Explore this illustrated narrative history of buildings for young readers, an amazing construction in itself.

We spend most of our lives in buildings. We make our homes in them. We go to school in them. We work in them. But why and how did people start making buildings? How did they learn to make them stronger, bigger, and more comfortable? Why did they start to decorate them in different ways? From the pyramid erected so that an Egyptian pharaoh would last forever to the dramatic, machine-like Pompidou Center designed by two young architects, Patrick Dillon’s stories of remarkable buildings — and the remarkable people who made them — celebrates the ingenuity of human creation. Stephen Biesty’s extraordinarily detailed illustrations take us inside famous buildings throughout history and demonstrate just how these marvelous structures fit together.

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Draw 50 Buildings and Other Structures: The Step-by-Step Way to Draw Castles and Cathedrals, Skyscrapers and Bridges, and So Much More…

Foamboards

Draw 50 Buildings and Other Structures teaches aspiring artists how to draw with ease by following simple, step-by-step instructions. Celebrated author Lee J. Ames shows readers how to draw famous structures from all over the world, as well as an igloo, a barn and silo, a windmill, and even a teepee. Ames’s illustration style and renowned drawing method has made him a leader in the step-by-step drawing manual, and the 31 books in his Draw 50 series have sold more than three million copies. Ames’s instruction allows seasoned artists to refine their technique and guides amateurs to develop their own artistic abilities. Even the youngest artists can draw the tallest, grandest structures. It’s easy to construct any type of building when it’s done the Draw 50 way. 

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Discovering Architecture: How the World’s Great Buildings Were Designed and Built

Foamboards

This exceptionally produced art book with die-cut windows, overlays, and blueprints identifies, decodes, and explains the world’s architectural masterpieces. Based on the successful format of Discovering the Great Masters, this is an accessible reference for anyone interested in great spaces and spectacular buildings and for anyone keen to know more about architecture. Each of the architectural works features clever overlays and die-cut windows that allow the reader to identify and focus on specific design elements. Each featured window includes a thoughtful caption explaining the significance of the highlighted area: building materials, historical context, and insights into the planning and architectural influences. Including such works as the Tower of London, Notre-Dame de Paris, and the Taj Mahal in India, the book is organized chronologically and presents buildings from all genres, covering more than two millennia of architectural history. In addition to the clever die-cut captions, each building is featured in an essay filled with essential information on the construction, as well as the social, political, cultural, and geographical considerations of the architect. Stunning photographs allow the reader to appreciate the technical feats and aesthetic brilliance of both the buildings and architects past and present.

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13 Buildings Children Should Know

Foamboards

The world’s most iconic buildings are made accessible and exciting for young readers in this colorful introduction to architecture that changed the world.
Children’s fascination with buildings is a natural outgrowth of their curiosity about anything strange or huge or complex. This unique book brings together thirteen architectural wonders that have intrigued children for years. Through activities such as games, quizzes, drawings and other activities, it teaches them the history behind each of the buildings, and presents fascinating facts about the design, historical use, and construction techniques. This book features pyramids built by men with pulleys, a tower that leans, an opera house shaped like a sailboat, a museum built like a spiral, and the most recent example, a “bird’s nest” stadium where the 2008 summer Olympics were held. Each of these buildings and more are introduced to young readers through lively texts and illustrations that will serve to heighten their interest and knowledge about the world’s most important architecture, and perhaps inspire them to dream and build on their own.

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A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Center for Environmental Structure Series)

Foamboards

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 second of three books published by the Center for Environmental Structure to provide a “working alternative to our present ideas about architecture, building, and planning,” A Pattern Language offers a practical language for building and planning based on natural considerations. The reader is given an overview of some 250 patterns that are the units of this language, each consisting of a design problem, discussion, illustration, and solution. By understanding recurrent design problems in our environment, readers can identify extant patterns in their own design projects and use these patterns to create a language of their own. Extraordinarily thorough, coherent, and accessible, this book has become a bible for homebuilders, contractors, and developers who care about creating healthy, high-level design.

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The SketchUp Workflow for Architecture: Modeling Buildings, Visualizing Design, and Creating Construction Documents with SketchUp Pro and LayOut

Foamboards

Incorporate SketchUp into every phase of your design

If you want to go beyond the basics and start using SketchUp 3D modeling software in all phases of your design, The SketchUp Workflow for Architecture is the perfect place to start. From preliminary schematics to construction documentation and everything in between, the book sketches out a workflow that is flexible enough to use from start to finish. You’ll discover helpful techniques, smart tips, and best practices that will make your design process easier, as well as helping you easily export your models into BIM programs.

The book includes in-depth coverage of the lightly-documented LayOut toolset and video tutorials on more advanced methods.

Goes beyond the basics into intermediate and advanced techniques for architects, designers, and engineers who want to use SketchUp in all stages of designGuides you from basic schematics through design development to construction documentationIncludes best practices for organizing projects and workflows and helpful tipsProvides special coverage of the LayOut toolset, an often-underused component of SketchUp Pro

The SketchUp Workflow for Architecture is a valuable addition to your design toolkit.

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