Loose-Fit Architecture


Book Description

Loose-Fit Architecture: Designing Buildings for Change September/October 2017 Profile 249 Volume 87 No 5 ISBN 978 1119 152644 Guest-Edited by Alex Lifschutz The idea that a building is 'finished' or 'complete' on the day it opens its doors is hardwired into existing thinking about design, planning and construction. But this ignores the unprecedented rate of social and technological change. A building only begins its life when the contractors leave. With resources at a premium and a greater need for a sustainable use of building materials, can we still afford to construct new housing or indeed any buildings that ignore the need for flexibility or the ability to evolve over time? Our design culture needs to move beyond the idealisation of a creative individual designer generating highly specific forms with fixed uses. The possibilities of adaptation and flexibility have often been overlooked, but they create hugely exciting 'loose-fit' architectures that emancipate users to create their own versatile and vibrant environments. Contributors include: Stewart Brand, Renee Chow, Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson, John Habraken, Edwin Heathcote, Despina Katsakakis, Stephen Kendall, Ian Lambot, Giorgio Macchi, Alexi Marmot, Andrea Martin, Kazunobu Minami, Peter Murray, Brett Steele, and Simon Sturgis.




Loose-Fit Architecture


Book Description

Loose-Fit Architecture: Designing Buildings for Change September/October 2017 Profile 249 Volume 87 No 5 ISBN 978 1119 152644 Guest-Edited by Alex Lifschutz The idea that a building is 'finished' or 'complete' on the day it opens its doors is hardwired into existing thinking about design, planning and construction. But this ignores the unprecedented rate of social and technological change. A building only begins its life when the contractors leave. With resources at a premium and a greater need for a sustainable use of building materials, can we still afford to construct new housing or indeed any buildings that ignore the need for flexibility or the ability to evolve over time? Our design culture needs to move beyond the idealisation of a creative individual designer generating highly specific forms with fixed uses. The possibilities of adaptation and flexibility have often been overlooked, but they create hugely exciting 'loose-fit' architectures that emancipate users to create their own versatile and vibrant environments. Contributors include: Stewart Brand, Renee Chow, Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson, John Habraken, Edwin Heathcote, Despina Katsakakis, Stephen Kendall, Ian Lambot, Giorgio Macchi, Alexi Marmot, Andrea Martin, Kazunobu Minami, Peter Murray, Brett Steele, and Simon Sturgis.




Loose Fit City


Book Description

Drawn from a lifetime’s experience of shared city-making from the bottom up, within rapidly expanding urban metabolisms in Delhi, Mumbai, Agra, Kathmandu, West Africa and London, Loose Fit City is about the ways in which city residents can learn through making to engage with the dynamic process of creating their own city. It looks at the nature and processes involved in loosely fitting together elements made by different people at different scales and times, with different intentions, into a civic entity which is greater than the sum of its parts. It shows how bottom-up learning through making can create a more vibrant and democratic city than the more flattened, top-down, centrally planned, factory made version. Loose Fit City provides a new take on the subject of architecture, defined as the study and practice of fitting together physical and cultural topography. It provides a comprehensive view of how the fourth dimension of time fits loosely together with the three spatial dimensions at different scales within the human horizon, so as to layer meaning and depth within the places and metabolism of the city fabric.




How Buildings Learn


Book Description

A captivating exploration of the ever-evolving world of architecture and the untold stories buildings tell. When a building is finished being built, that isn’t the end of its story. More than any other human artifacts, buildings improve with time—if they’re allowed to. Buildings adapt by being constantly refined and reshaped by their occupants, and in that way, architects can become artists of time rather than simply artists of space. From the connected farmhouses of New England to I.M. Pei’s Media Lab, from the evolution of bungalows to the invention of Santa Fe Style, from Low Road military surplus buildings to a High Road English classic like Chatsworth—this is a far-ranging survey of unexplored essential territory. Discover how structures become living organisms, shaped by the people who inhabit them, and learn how architects can harness the power of time to create enduring works of art through the interconnected worlds of design, function, and human ingenuity.




Building Evolutionary Architectures


Book Description

The software development ecosystem is constantly changing, providing a constant stream of new tools, frameworks, techniques, and paradigms. Over the past few years, incremental developments in core engineering practices for software development have created the foundations for rethinking how architecture changes over time, along with ways to protect important architectural characteristics as it evolves. This practical guide ties those parts together with a new way to think about architecture and time.




Loose-fit Architecture


Book Description

The idea that a building is "finished' or "complete" on the day it opens its doors is hardwired into existing thinking about design, construction and planning. But this ignores the unprecedented rate of social and technological change. A building only begins its life when the contractors leave. With resources at a premium and a greater need for a sustainable use of building materials, can we still afford to construct new housing or indeed any buildings that ignore the need for flexibility or the ability to evolve over time? Our design culture needs to move beyond the idealisation of a creative individual designer generating highly specific forms with fixed uses. The possibilities of adaptation and flexibility have often been overlooked, but they create hugely exciting 'loose-fit' architecture that emancipate users to shape their own versatile and vibrant environments.




Flexible


Book Description

Flexible architecture adapts to new uses, responds to change rather than stagnating, and is motive rather than static. Understanding how it has been conceived, designed, made, and used helps us understand its potential in solving current and future problems associated with technological, social, and economic change. This book explores the whole genre of fl exible architecturebuildings that are intended to respond to evolving situations in their form, operation, or location. Crossing the boundaries between architecture, interior design, product design, and furniture design, this innovative book is the first to deal with the entire scope of the topic.




Experiencing Architecture, second edition


Book Description

A classic examination of superb design through the centuries. Widely regarded as a classic in the field, Experiencing Architecture explores the history and promise of good design. Generously illustrated with historical examples of designing excellence—ranging from teacups, riding boots, and golf balls to the villas of Palladio and the fish-feeding pavilion of Beijing's Winter Palace—Rasmussen's accessible guide invites us to appreciate architecture not only as a profession, but as an art that shapes everyday experience. In the past, Rasmussen argues, architecture was not just an individual pursuit, but a community undertaking. Dwellings were built with a natural feeling for place, materials and use, resulting in “a remarkably suitable comeliness.” While we cannot return to a former age, Rasmussen notes, we can still design spaces that are beautiful and useful by seeking to understand architecture as an art form that must be experienced. An understanding of good design comes not only from one's professional experience of architecture as an abstract, individual pursuit, but also from one's shared, everyday experience of architecture in real time—its particular use of light, color, shape, scale, texture, rhythm and sound. Experiencing Architecture reminds us of what good architectural design has accomplished over time, what it can accomplish still, and why it is worth pursuing. Wide-ranging and approachable, it is for anyone who has ever wondered “what instrument the architect plays on.”




Adaptable Architecture


Book Description

Adaptable Architecture provides thought-provoking and inquisitive insights into how we can prolong the useful life of buildings by designing them to be more adaptable, and hence create a more sustainable built environment. The book provides a theoretical foundation counterpointed by the experiences and ideas of those involved in the design and use of buildings. It explains many approaches to designing for change, with lessons from history, and case studies including The Cedar Rapids Public Library, Kentish Town Health Centre and Folkestone Performing Arts Centre, which stretch our thinking beyond the conventional notions of adaptability. The authors reveal the many conditions that make it a complex design phenomenon, by considering the purpose, design and business case of buildings as well as the physical product. Full of summaries, diagrams, reference charts, tables, and photos of exemplar solutions for use as conversational tools or working aids, this book is for any professional or student who wants to research, question, imagine, illustrate - and ultimately design for - adaptation. In addition, further information and resources are available through the Adaptable Futures website www.adaptablefutures.com which includes additional case studies, videos, information about industry events and up-to-the-minute developments.




Clean Architecture


Book Description

Practical Software Architecture Solutions from the Legendary Robert C. Martin (“Uncle Bob”) By applying universal rules of software architecture, you can dramatically improve developer productivity throughout the life of any software system. Now, building upon the success of his best-selling books Clean Code and The Clean Coder, legendary software craftsman Robert C. Martin (“Uncle Bob”) reveals those rules and helps you apply them. Martin’s Clean Architecture doesn’t merely present options. Drawing on over a half-century of experience in software environments of every imaginable type, Martin tells you what choices to make and why they are critical to your success. As you’ve come to expect from Uncle Bob, this book is packed with direct, no-nonsense solutions for the real challenges you’ll face–the ones that will make or break your projects. Learn what software architects need to achieve–and core disciplines and practices for achieving it Master essential software design principles for addressing function, component separation, and data management See how programming paradigms impose discipline by restricting what developers can do Understand what’s critically important and what’s merely a “detail” Implement optimal, high-level structures for web, database, thick-client, console, and embedded applications Define appropriate boundaries and layers, and organize components and services See why designs and architectures go wrong, and how to prevent (or fix) these failures Clean Architecture is essential reading for every current or aspiring software architect, systems analyst, system designer, and software manager–and for every programmer who must execute someone else’s designs. Register your product for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available.