Building Revolutions


Book Description

The construction industry operates within a linear economy of make, use, dispose. Buildings are stripped out and torn down with astonishing regularity while new buildings are constructed from hard-won virgin materials. But raw materials are becoming scarce, and the demands for them are exploiting fragile ecosystems, even as the global demand for resources continues to rise. Policy makers and organisations are beginning to look for a more regenerative, circular economy model. The construction industry demands over half the world’s extracted materials and generates around a third of the total waste generated in the EU, making it a prime candidate for applying the circular economy. Yet there has been little focus on how construction industry professionals and their clients can contribute towards the movement. Drawing on illustrative methods and examples, Building Revolutions explains how the principles of a circular economy can be applied to the built environment where resources are kept in use and their value retained.




The Green Building Revolution


Book Description

The “green building revolution’’ is happening right now. This book is its chronicle and its manifesto. Written by industry insider Jerry Yudelson, The Green Building Revolution introduces readers to the basics of green building and to the projects and people that are advancing this movement. With interviews and case studies, it does more than simply report on the revolution; it shows readers why and how to start thinking about designing, building, and operating high performance, environmentally aware (LEED-certified) buildings on conventional budgets. Evolving quietly for more than a decade, the green building movement has found its voice. Its principles of human-centered, environmentally sensitive development have reached a critical mass of architects, engineers, builders, developers, professionals in government, and consumers. Green buildings are showing us how we can have healthier indoor environments that use far less energy and water than conventional buildings do. The federal government, eighteen states, and nearly fifty U.S. cities already require new public buildings to meet “green” standards. According to Yudelson, this is just the beginning. The Green Building Revolution describes the many “revolutions” that are taking place today: in commercial buildings, schools, universities, public buildings, health care institutions, housing, property management, and neighborhood design. In a clear, highly readable style, Yudelson outlines the broader “journey to sustainability” influenced by the green building revolution and provides a solid business case for accelerating this trend. Illustrated with more than 50 photos, tables, and charts, and filled with timely information, The Green Building Revolution is the definitive description of a major movement that’s poised to transform our world.




The Handbook to Building a Circular Economy


Book Description

This book is a call to arms to all architects, designers and built environment professionals. To avoid a climate catastrophe and achieve a regenerative built environment, the use of new materials and any excess waste in resources need to be cut out from the very beginning of the design process. This requires far-reaching change in established industry processes. How might this begin? What are the key fundamentals you need to know? How can a more effective model be applied? This book, a much-updated second edition of the author’s previous work Building Revolutions, answers all your questions. Inspiring, but never overwhelming, the Handbook to Building a Circular Economy is your must-have companion to helping create a more sustainable future. It explains in simple and practical terms how the principles of a circular economy can be applied to the built environment, thereby reducing the resources required to construct, fit-out, maintain and refurbish buildings. Case studies include: The Forge, UK, by Landsec The Bath School of Art, UK, by Grimshaw Urban Mining and Recycling Experimental Unit, Switzerland, by Werner Sobek NASA Sustainability Base, USA, by William McDonough + Partners University of East Anglia Enterprise Centre, UK, by Architype Park 20|20, The Netherlands, by William McDonough + Partners.




Building a Palestinian State


Book Description

"... an analysis that is as intricate and flawless as it is devastating... Robinson's] presentation is powerful and compelling and his scholarship impeccable." --MESA Bulletin "... an] excellent book. In just 200 pages, Glenn Robinson manages to give the clearest and most concise analysis of the changing political and social structure of the West Bank and Gaza and of current political realities that I have read." --Digest of Middle Eastern Studies "... a fair and sensitive account and contains the best available assessment of the Intifada's political aftermath among Palestinians. An added bonus is that the book is written in an accessible style with enough historical background and contextual explanation to make it ideal as a text for courses in Middle East politics or the politics of revolutions." --American Political Science Review "Well-researched, original, scholarly; deserves the attention of those interested in revolutionary theory or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." --Choice "Throughout, the book is impressively researched and very well-written.... Building a Palestinian State is a book that deserves to be widely read." --Journal of Palestine Studies "... a well-informed and tightly argued analysis of the evolution of politcal leadership in the West Bank and Gaza from the 1980s to the spring of 1996. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the historical backdrop to current political developments in the areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority." --Middle East Policy "... carefully researched and balanced study..." --Times Literary Supplement "... provides a unique analysis of the various facets of grassroots organizations and their interaction with the emerging state institutions... a major and very timely contribution." --Anne Lesch In this well informed and accessibly written book, Glenn E. Robinson traces the emergence of a new political elite in the West Bank and Gaza in the 1980s and the grassroots political and social revolution it launched during the Intifada.




Ripe for Revolution


Book Description

A historical account of ideology in the Global South as the postwar laboratory of socialism, its legacy following the Cold War, and the continuing influence of socialist ideas worldwide. In the first decades after World War II, many newly independent Asian and African countries and established Latin American states pursued a socialist development model. Jeremy Friedman traces the socialist experiment over forty years through the experience of five countries: Indonesia, Chile, Tanzania, Angola, and Iran. These states sought paths to socialism without formal adherence to the Soviet bloc or the programs that Soviets, East Germans, Cubans, Chinese, and other outsiders tried to promote. Instead, they attempted to forge new models of socialist development through their own trial and error, together with the help of existing socialist countries, demonstrating the flexibility and adaptability of socialism. All five countries would become Cold War battlegrounds and regional models, as new policies in one shaped evolving conceptions of development in another. Lessons from the collapse of democracy in Indonesia were later applied in Chile, just as the challenge of political Islam in Indonesia informed the policies of the left in Iran. Efforts to build agrarian economies in West Africa influenced TanzaniaÕs approach to socialism, which in turn influenced the trajectory of the Angolan model. Ripe for Revolution shows socialism as more adaptable and pragmatic than often supposed. When we view it through the prism of a Stalinist orthodoxy, we miss its real effects and legacies, both good and bad. To understand how socialism succeeds and fails, and to grasp its evolution and potential horizons, we must do more than read manifestos. We must attend to history.




Spatial Revolution


Book Description

Spatial Revolution is the first comparative parallel study of Soviet architecture and planning to create a narrative arc across a vast geography. The narrative binds together three critical industrial-residential projects in Baku, Magnitogorsk, and Kharkiv, built during the first fifteen years of the Soviet project and followed attentively worldwide after the collapse of capitalist markets in 1929. Among the revelations provided by Christina E. Crawford is the degree to which outside experts participated in the construction of the Soviet industrial complex, while facing difficult topographies, near-impossible deadlines, and inchoate theories of socialist space-making. Crawford describes how early Soviet architecture and planning activities were kinetic and negotiated and how questions about the proper distribution of people and industry under socialism were posed and refined through the construction of brick and mortar, steel and concrete projects, living laboratories that tested alternative spatial models. As a result, Spatial Revolution answers important questions of how the first Soviet industrialization drive was a catalyst for construction of thousands of new enterprises on remote sites across the Eurasian continent, an effort that spread to far-flung sites in other socialist states—and capitalist welfare states—for decades to follow. Thanks to generous funding from Emory University and its participation in TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem), the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.




Architecture and Revolution


Book Description

Architecture and Revolution explores the consequences of the 1989 revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe from an architectural perspective. It presents new writings from a team of renowned architects, philosophers and cultural theorists from both the East and the West. They explore the questions over the built environment that now face architects, planners and politicians in the region. They examine the problems of buildings inherited from the communist era: some are environmentally inadequate, many were designed to serve a now redundant social programme and others carry the stigma of association with previous regimes. Contributors include: Daniel Libeskind, Bernard Tschumi, Laura Mulvey, Helene Cixous, Andrew Benjamin and Frederic Jameson.




States and Social Revolutions


Book Description

State structures, international forces, and class relations: Theda Skocpol shows how all three combine to explain the origins and accomplishments of social-revolutionary transformations. Social revolutions have been rare but undeniably of enormous importance in modern world history. States and Social Revolutions provides a new frame of reference for analyzing the causes, the conflicts, and the outcomes of such revolutions. It develops a rigorous, comparative historical analysis of three major cases: the French Revolution of 1787 through the early 1800s, the Russian Revolution of 1917 through the 1930s, and the Chinese Revolution of 1911 through the 1960s. Believing that existing theories of revolution, both Marxist and non-Marxist, are inadequate to explain the actual historical patterns of revolutions, Skocpol urges us to adopt fresh perspectives. Above all, she maintains that states conceived as administrative and coercive organizations potentially autonomous from class controls and interests must be made central to explanations of revolutions.




Modernity, Frontiers and Revolutions


Book Description

The texts presented in Proportion Harmonies and Identities (PHI) - MODERNITY, FRONTIERS AND REVOLUTIONS were compiled with the intent to establish a multidisciplinary platform for the presentation, interaction and dissemination of research. It also aims to foster awareness of and discussion on the topics of Harmony and Proportion with a focus on different visions relevant to Architecture, Arts and Humanities, Design, Engineering, Social and Natural Sciences, and their importance and benefits for the sense of both individual and community identity. The idea of modernity has been a significant driver of development since the Western Early Modern Age. Its theoretical and practical foundations have become the working tools of scientists, philosophers, and artists, who seek strategies and policies to accelerate the development process in different contexts.




Theorizing Revolutions


Book Description

In Theorizing Revolutions, some of the most exciting thinkers in the study of revolutions today look critically at the many theoretical frameworks through which revolutions can be understood and apply them to specific revolutionary cases. The theoretical approaches considered in this way include state-centred perspectives, structural theory, world-system analysis, elite models, demographic theories and feminism and the revolutions covered range in time from the French Revolution to Eastern Europe in 1989 and in place from Russia to Vietnam and Nicaragua.