The Ecology of the Architectural Model


Book Description

For architectural educators, models are not only as near to a realised building as one can get but for their students they are the means by which architecture itself, its processes, concepts, strategies and tactics are learned. This book describes the environment of architectural models in an educational context.




Ecology and the Architectural Imagination


Book Description

By including ecological concerns in the design process from the outset, architecture can enhance life. Author Brook Muller understands how a designer’s predispositions and poetic judgement in dealing with complex and dynamic ecological systems impact the "greenness" of built outcomes. Ecology and the Architectural Imagination offers a series of speculations on architectural possibility when ecology is embedded from conceptual phases onward, how notions of function and structure of ecosystems can inspire ideas of architectural space making and order, and how the architect’s role and contribution can shift through this engagement. As an ecological architect working in increasingly dense urban environments, you can create diverse spaces of inhabitation and connect project scale living systems with those at the neighborhood and region scales. Equipped with ecological literacy, critical thinking and collaboration skills, you are empowered to play important roles in the remaking of our cities.




Sustainable Design


Book Description

Meeting the Challenge of Sustainable Design "Daniel Williams's Sustainable Design is . . . a thoroughly practical call for the design professions to take the next steps toward transformation of the human prospect toward a future that is sustainable and sustaining of the best in human life lived in partnership not domination." --From the Foreword by David W. Orr, the Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics and Chair of the Environmental Studies Program at Oberlin College "In this pioneering book, Daniel Williams provides the sort of intelligent, thoughtful, experienced insights that--if followed--will ensure that we make the right choices. It should be on the desk of every architect in the world." --Denis Hayes, president and CEO of the Bullitt Foundation and coordinator of the first Earth Day in 1970 Architects identify "sustainability" as the most important change in the future of their profession. Sustainable Design: Ecology, Architecture, and Planning is a practical, comprehensive guide to design and plan a built environment compatible with the region's economic, social, and ecological patterns. In this book, Daniel Williams challenges professionals to rethink architecture and to see their projects not as objects but as critical, connected pieces of the whole, essential to human health as well as to regional economy and ecology. Comprehensive in scope, Sustainable Design answers key questions such as: * How do I begin thinking and designing ecologically? * What is the difference between "green design" and "sustainable design"? * What are some examples of effective change I can make that will have the most impact for the least cost? Written for architects, planners, landscape architects, engineers, public officials, and change agent professionals, this important resource defines the issues of sustainable design, illustrates conceptual and case studies, and provides support for continued learning in this increasingly central focus of architects' and urban planners' work. Williams's book features winning projects from the first decade of the AIA's Committee on the Environment (COTE) Top Ten award program.




Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment


Book Description

Reyner Banham was a pioneer in arguing that technology, human needs, and environmental concerns must be considered an integral part of architecture. No historian before him had so systematically explored the impact of environmental engineering on the design of buildings and on the minds of architects. In this revision of his classic work, Banham has added considerable new material on the use of energy, particularly solar energy, in human environments. Included in the new material are discussions of Indian pueblos and solar architecture, the Centre Pompidou and other high-tech buildings, and the environmental wisdom of many current architectural vernaculars.




Architectural Model Building


Book Description

Advances in computer-aided design have proven to be an invaluable tool for the architect and designer, yet Frank Gehry still begins his creative process by making "simple" models out of modest materials. Drawings and video, while an essential part of the design process, are still not substitutes for the tactile sensation one receives from a scale model. Drawing on 20 years experience in art and architecture, the author has developed this book on model making as it applies to students and professionals of the built environment. More than 300 photographs illustrate a multitude of techniques and the use of a wide variety of materials, providing a solid foundation for students and professionals to create and enjoy three-dimensional model making for interior design, architecture, landscape architecture, furniture design, theatrical design, and retail merchandising.




Relational Architectural Ecologies


Book Description

Examining the complex social and material relationships between architecture and ecology which constitute modern cultures, this collection responds to the need to extend architectural thinking about ecology beyond current design literatures. This book shows how the ‘habitats’, ‘natural milieus’, ‘places’ or ‘shelters’ that construct architectural ecologies are composed of complex and dynamic material, spatial, social, political, economic and ecological concerns. With contributions from a range of leading international experts and academics in architecture, art, anthropology, philosophy, feminist theory, law, medicine and political science, this volume offers professionals and researchers engaged in the social and cultural biodiversity of built environments, new interdisciplinary perspectives on the relational and architectural ecologies which are required for dealing with the complex issues of sustainable human habitation and environmental action. The book provides: 16 essays, including two visual essays, by leading international experts and academics from the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand and Europe; including Rosi Braidotti, Lorraine Code, Verena Andermatt Conley and Elizabeth Grosz A clear structure: divided into 5 parts addressing bio-political ecologies and architectures; uncertain, anxious and damaged ecologies; economics, land and consumption; biological and medical architectural ecologies; relational ecological practices and architectures An exploration of the relations between human and political life An examination of issues such as climate change, social and environmental well-being, land and consumption, economically damaging global approaches to design, community ecologies and future architectural practice.




The Architectural Model


Book Description

An investigation of different uses for the architectural model through history—as sign, souvenir, funerary object, didactic tool, medium for design, and architect's muse. For more than five hundred years, architects have employed three-dimensional models as tools to test, refine, and illustrate their ideas. But, as Matthew Mindrup shows, the uses of physical architectural models extend beyond mere representation. An architectural model can also simulate, instruct, inspire, and generate architectural designs. It can be, among other things, sign, souvenir, toy, funerary object, didactic tool, medium, or muse. In this book, Mindrup surveys the history of architectural models by investigating their uses, both theoretical and practical. Tracing the architectural model's development from antiquity to the present, Mindrup also offers an interpretive framework for understanding each of its applications in the context of time and place. He first examines models meant to portray extant, fantastic, or proposed structures, describing their use in ancient funerary or dedicatory practices, in which models are endowed with magical power; as a medium for architectural reverie and inspiration; and as prototypes for twentieth-century experimental designs. Mindrup then considers models that exemplify certain architectural uses, exploring the influence of Leon Battista Alberti's dictum that models be simple, lest they distract from the architect's ideas; analyzing the model as a generative tool; and investigating allegorical, analogical, and anagogical interpretations of models. Mindrup's histories show how the model can be a surrogate for the architectural structure itself, or for the experience of its formal, tactile, and sensory complexity; and beyond that, that the manipulation, play, experimentation, and dreaming enabled by models allow us to imagine architecture in new ways.




Architectural Model as Machine


Book Description

This book offers an explanation of why scale models are important to the design process. Albert Smith takes the reader through the history and significance of models in architecture from the magic of the Egyptian scale model to the present day. Through this description of the relationship between architecture and the scale model, Smith demonstrates the most effective process between concept and 'machine', between the idea and the final building. The great value of this book is to reveal the nature of the scale model and to unlock the tremendous potential of this design tool as a thinking and communicative advice. His chronological analysis goes on from Egypt through Rome to the relationship between the Greek paradigm scale model and then on to Medieval and Renaissance models. It concludes with the models of the Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi, the Russian Constructivists, the American architect Louis Khan and finally looks at the role of scale models in the present day through the work of the Polish/American architect Daniel Libeskind and the American Frank Gehry.




Unless


Book Description

Dissects the construction ecology, material geographies, and world-systems of a most modern of modern architectures: the Seagram Building.0In doing so, it aims to describe how humans and nature interact with the thin crust of the planet through architecture. In particular, the immense material, energy and labor involved in building require a fresh interpretation that better situates the ecological and social potential of design.00The enhancement of a particular building should be inextricable from the enhancement of its world-system and construction ecology. A ?beautiful? building engendered through the vulgarity of uneven exchanges and processes of underdevelopment is no longer a tenable conceit in such a framework.00Unless architects begin to describe buildings as terrestrial events and artifacts, architects will?to our collective and professional peril?continue to operate outside the key environmental dynamics and key political processes of this century.




Architectural Modelmaking


Book Description

The physical model is an important communication tool for architects. Although the proliferation of CAD programs has enabled the creation of increasingly complex computer models and virtual environments, there is also a growing need to address the three-dimensional qualities of architecture that may be lost when using such media. This book focuses on the inspiring possibilities for modeling the built environment with all the different media and techniques available. In describing the use of different models in different contexts, the book provides a practical guide to how and why models are used and what they are used for. This second edition includes more detailed step-by-step exercises, expanded discussion of materials and techniques, and updated coverage of digital techniques.