Tag: Series

Mies Van Der Rohe: 1886-1969 (Taschen Basic Architecture Series)

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Less is more: finding perfection in purity Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886?1969) was one of the founding fathers of modern architecture. The creator of the Barcelona Pavilion (1929), the Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois (1945?1951) and the Seagram Building in New York (1954?1958), Mies was one of the founders of a new architectural style. Well known for his motto ?less is more, ? he sought a kind of refined purity in architectural expression that was not seen in the reduced vocabulary of other Bauhaus members. His goal was not simply building for those of modest income (Existenzminimum) but building economically in terms of sustainability, both in a technical and aesthetical way; the use of industrial materials such as steel and glass were the foundation of this approach. Though the extreme reduction of form and material in his work garnered some criticism, over the years many have tried?mostly unsuccessfully?to copy his original and elegant style. This book explores more than 20 of his projects between 1906 and 1967, from his early work around Berlin to his most important American buildings. Basic Architecture features: ? Each title contains approximately 120 images, including photographs, sketches, drawings, and floor plans ? Introductory essays explore the architect’s life and work, touching on family and background as well as collaborations with other architects ? The body presents the most important works in chronological order, with descriptions of client and/or architect wishes, construction problems (why some projects were never executed), and resolutions ? The appendix includes a list of complete or selected works, biography, bibliography and a map indicating the locations ofthe architect’s most famous buildings

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RC Aeroplanes – A Beginners Guide (The Modelers World Series)

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This book contains a wealth of information on building and flying your first radio controlled model aeroplane.

If you wish to be the builder, maintenance engineer and pilot all rolled into one, look no further as this book is the essential guide. Valuable information in the book includes finding a radio set to control it and fitting a suitable motor to power it, whether an internal combustion engine or an electric motor. The author, Malcolm Messiter, passes on his knowledge in an informative, friendly way, dipping into his own modelling past to put across the fun that can be had from participating in this all-consuming pastime.

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A New Series Featuring Laurie Olin, Acclaimed Landscape Architect

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Click here to view the embedded video.

The Cultural Landscape Foundation recently launched its newest documentary as part of the ongoing Oral History series, this time focusing on the ideas and career of Laurie Olin, a recipient of the National Medal of the Arts and one of the greatest landscape architects of our time. Olin’s influential work as a practitioner, educator and author over the past forty years has helped to guide the future of landscape architecture and shape urban life around the world.

Shot in 29 segments totaling more than 90 minutes, the documentary is multiple interviews in which Olin discusses his philosophy, life, and influences. Jumping from the OLIN studio in Philadelphia to projects at , Bryant Park, and Columbus Circle in New York City, the oral history includes Olin’s study and work at the University of Washington with Richard Haag, fellowships and travel in England and Italy, his professorship at the University of Pennsylvania and other significant milestones. The video also includes interviews with OLIN partners, from Lucinda Sanders to Susan Weiler and Dennis McGlade.

The series is an outgrowth of the Pioneers of American Landscape Design Project, formatted to examine each designer’s personal and professional history, their overall design philosophy and how that approach was carried out in their most emblematic projects. Richly edited, the video segments include never before seen archival footage, new photography, and on‐location videography.

“Laurie Olin is a towering and enormously influential figure in the landscape architecture profession and one of its most esteemed practitioners – an erudite thought leader, a terrific designer, and a compelling speaker,” said Charles A. Birnbaum, TCLF founder and president. “When Laurie discusses his work and influences we all go on an extraordinary and revelatory voyage that touches on fascinating moments in history, literature, art, music and design – there’s no one quite like him.”

A downloadable transcript of the complete interview is available here, as are reflections by Olin’s friends, family, colleagues, collaborators and co-workers about his life, career and legacy.

Laurie Olin is currently a professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and is the former chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects and the recipient of the 1998 Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Design Medal from the American Society of Landscape Architects in 2005. Olin is also the author of many books and has written extensively on the history and theory of landscape design.

Check out the video series here, and more about Laurie Olin here.

is a 15-year-old non-profit foundation that provides people with the ability to see, understand and value landscape architecture and its practitioners, in the way many people have learned to do with buildings and their designers. Through its Web site, lectures, outreach and publishing, TCLF broadens the support and understanding for cultural landscapes nationwide to help safeguard our priceless heritage for future generations.

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Enterprise Architecture at Work: Modelling, Communication and Analysis (The Enterprise Engineering Series)

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An enterprise architecture tries to describe and control an organisation’s structure, processes, applications, systems and techniques in an integrated way. The unambiguous specification and description of components and their relationships in such an architecture requires a coherent architecture modelling language.

Lankhorst and his co‑authors present such an enterprise modelling language that captures the complexity of architectural domains and their relations and allows the construction of integrated enterprise architecture models. They provide architects with concrete instruments that improve their architectural practice. As this is not enough, they additionally present techniques and heuristics for communicating with all relevant stakeholders about these architectures. Since an architecture model is useful not only for providing insight into the current or future situation but can also be used to evaluate the transition from ‘as‑is’ to ‘to‑be’, the authors also describe analysis methods for assessing both the qualitative impact of changes to an architecture and the quantitative aspects of architectures, such as performance and cost issues.

The modelling language presented has been proven in practice in many real‑life case studies and has been adopted by The Open Group as an international standard. So this book is an ideal companion for enterprise IT or business architects in industry as well as for computer or management science students studying the field of enterprise architecture.

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

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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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