front cover of Architecture as a Way of Seeing and Learning
Architecture as a Way of Seeing and Learning
The Built Environment as an Added Educator in East African Refugee Camps
Nerea Amorós Elorduy
University College London, 2021
How built environments impact early childhood education in East African refugee camps.
 
Displaced before they were born, children living in long-term refugee camps along the East African Rift grow and learn surrounded by ready-made structures. Architecture as a Way of Seeing and Learning explores what these built environments teach us about both childhood development and refugee assistance. With an eye toward architecture, Nerea Amorós Elorduy models how a more empathetic approach to refugee relief might both decolonize humanitarian aid and nurture the learning of young children.
 
[more]

front cover of Design for London
Design for London
Experiments in Urban Thinking
Edited by Peter Bishop and Lesley Williams
University College London, 2020
Design for London is the product of a unique experiment in urban planning, design and strategic thinking. Set up in 2006 by then-Mayor Ken Livingstone and his Architectural Advisor Richard Rogers, the brief for the team was “to think about London, what made London unique and how it could be made better.” At the time, large-scale state investment was often not an option, and political consensus was fragmented. In addition, cities, by their nature, are fashioned through complex negotiation and deal making that involves many different stakeholders with different agendas. All of these factors complicated the assignment—and made the resulting projects and ideas more interesting. This book aims to provide an engaging account of the strategic approaches and work of Design for London. It outlines how key projects such as the London Olympics, public space programmes, high street regeneration and greening programs were managed.
 
[more]

front cover of Designing for Diversity
Designing for Diversity
Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Architectural Profession
Kathryn H. Anthony
University of Illinois Press, 2000

A powerful statement about the repercussions of discrimination and the benefits of diversity in architecture

Providing hard data for trends that many perceive only vaguely and some deny altogether, Designing for Diversity reveals a profession rife with gender and racial discrimination and examines the aspects of architectural practice that hinder or support the full participation of women and persons of color.
Drawing on interviews and surveys of hundreds of architects, Kathryn H. Anthony outlines some of the forms of discrimination that recur most frequently in architecture: being offered added responsibility without a commensurate rise in position, salary, or credit; not being allowed to engage in client contact, field experience, or construction supervision; and being confined to certain kinds of positions, typically interior design for women, government work for African Americans, and computer-aided design for Asian American architects.

Anthony discusses the profession's attitude toward flexible schedules, part-time contracts, and the demands of family and identifies strategies that have helped underrepresented individuals advance in the profession, especially establishing a strong relationship with a mentor. She also observes a strong tendency for underrepresented architects to leave mainstream practice, either establishing their own firms, going into government or corporate work, or abandoning the field altogether.

Given the traditional mismatch between diverse consumers and predominantly white male producers of the built environment, plus the shifting population balance toward communities of color, Anthony contends that the architectural profession staves off true diversity at its own peril. Designing for Diversity argues convincingly that improving the climate for nontraditional architects will do much to strengthen architecture as a profession. Practicing architects, managers of firms, and educators will learn how to create conditions more welcoming to a diversity of users as well as designers of the built environment.

[more]

front cover of Empathic Design
Empathic Design
Perspectives on Creating Inclusive Spaces
Edited by Elgin Cleckley
Island Press, 2024
How do you experience a public space? Do you feel safe? Seen? Represented? The response to these questions may differ based on factors including your race, age, ethnicity, or gender identity. In the architecture and design professions, decisions about the articulation of public spaces and who may be honored in them have often been made by white men. How do designers rethink design processes to produce works that hold space for the diversity of people using them?
 
In Empathic Design, designer and architecture professor Elgin Cleckley brings together leaders and visionary practitioners in architecture, urban design, planning, and design activism to help explore these questions. Cleckley explains that empathic designers need to approach design as iterative, changing, and shifting to say, “we see you”, “we hear you”. Part of an emerging design framework, empathic designers work with and in the communities affected. They acknowledge the full history of a place and approach the lived experience and memories of those in the community with respect.
 
Early chapters explore broader conceptual approaches, proposing definitions of empathy in the context of design, disrupting colonial narratives, and making space for grief. Other chapters highlight specific design projects, including the Harriet Tubman Memorial in Newark, The Camp Barker Memorial in Washington, D.C.,  the Freedom Center in Oklahoma City, and the Charlottesville Memorial for Peace and Justice.
 
Empathic Design provides essential approaches and methods from multiple perspectives, meeting the needs of our time and holding space for readers to find themselves. 
 
 
[more]

front cover of Exactitude
Exactitude
On Precision and Play in Contemporary Architecture
Edited by Pari Riahi, Laure Katsaros, and Michael T. Davis
University of Massachusetts Press, 2022

Precision is necessary in the field of architecture, and new technologies have increased demands for accuracy, particularly when the smallest errors can have outsized consequences. However, the importance of precision, or exactitude, has not received the consideration it merits. While themes of sustainability, performance, and formal innovation have been at the forefront of architectural scholarship for the past twenty years, this book moves beyond these concerns to explore the theoretical and practical demands exactitude makes on architecture as a field.

The eleven essays collected here investigate the possibilities and shortcomings of exactitude and delve into current debates about the state of contemporary architecture as both a technological craft and artistic creation. Featuring new work by leading theorists, historians, editors, architects, and scholars, this volume brings theory and practice into insightful and productive conversations. In addition to the editors, contributors include Mark Wigley, Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Eric Höweler, Christopher Benfey, Sunil Bald, Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano with Thomas de Monchaux, Alicia Imperiale, Francesca Hughes, Teresa Stoppani, and Cynthia Davidson.

[more]

front cover of Four Walls and a Roof
Four Walls and a Roof
The Complex Nature of a Simple Profession
Reinier de Graaf
Harvard University Press, 2017

A Financial Times Best Book of the Year
A Guardian Best Architecture Book of the Year


“Sharp, revealing, funny.”
The Guardian

“An original and even occasionally hilarious book about losing ideals and finding them again… [De Graaf] deftly shows that architecture cannot be better or more pure than the flawed humans who make it.”
The Economist

Architecture, we like to believe, is an elevated art form that shapes the world as it pleases. Four Walls and a Roof turns this fiction on its head, offering a candid account of what it’s really like to work as an architect. Drawing on his own tragicomic experiences in the field, Reinier de Graaf reveals the world of contemporary architecture in vivid snapshots: from the corridors of wealth in London, Moscow, and Dubai to the demolished hopes of postwar social housing in New York and St. Louis. We meet ambitious oligarchs, developers for whom architecture is nothing more than an investment, and layers of bureaucrats, consultants, and mysterious hangers-on who lie between any architect’s idea and the chance of its execution.

“This is a book about power, money and influence, and architecture’s complete lack of any of them… Witty, insightful and funny, it is a (sometimes painful) dissection of a profession that thinks it is still in control.”
Financial Times

“This is the most stimulating book on architecture and its practice that I have read for years.”
Architects’ Journal

[more]

front cover of Greening Our Built World
Greening Our Built World
Costs, Benefits, and Strategies
Greg Kats
Island Press, 2009
“Green” buildings—buildings that use fewer resources to build and to sustain—are commonly thought to be too expensive to attract builders and buyers. But are they? The answer to this question has enormous consequences, since residential and commercial buildings together account for nearly 50% of American energy consumption—including at least 75% of electricity usage—according to recent government statistics.
 
This eye-opening book reports the results of a large-scale study based on extensive financial and technical analyses of more than 150 green buildings in the U.S. and ten other countries. It provides detailed findings on the costs and financial benefits of building green. According to the study, green buildings cost roughly 2% more to build than conventional buildings—far less than previously assumed—and provide a wide range of financial, health and social benefits. In addition, green buildings reduce energy use by an average of 33%, resulting in significant cost savings.
 
Greening Our Built World also evaluates the cost effectiveness of “green community development” and presents the results of the first-ever survey of green buildings constructed by faith-based organizations. Throughout the book, leading practitioners in green design—including architects, developers, and property owners—share their own experiences in building green. A compelling combination of rock-solid facts and specific examples, this book proves that green design is both cost-effective and earth-friendly.
[more]

front cover of Islamically Integrated Psychotherapy
Islamically Integrated Psychotherapy
Uniting Faith and Professional Practice
Carrie York Al-Karam
Templeton Press, 2018

Integrating the Islamic faith with modern psychotherapy is at the forefront of the spiritually integrated psychotherapy movement. To bring this work to wider attention and to promote its continuation, Dr. Carrie York Al-Karam has brought together the present volume of nine essays, each of which is written by a Muslim clinician who practices Islamically integrated psychotherapy (IIP)—a modern approach that unites the teachings, principles, and interventions of the faith with Western therapeutic approaches.

As delineated in the Introduction, IIP has emerged from a variety of domains including the psychology of religion and spirituality, multicultural psychology and counseling, transpersonal psychology, Muslim Mental Health, and Islamic Psychology. The individual chapters then describe a variety of ways IIP is practiced by Muslim clinicians in their service provision with Muslim clients.

The contributors discuss a wide range of topics, such as how Islam can be viewed as a system for psychological wellbeing, or a “science of the soul”; what marital counseling can look like from an Islamically-integrated perspective; Prophet Mohammed as a psycho-spiritual exemplar in a new approach called The HEART Method; the use of Quranic stories in family therapy; as well as using Islamic teachings when working with Muslim children and adolescents.

A description of the various approaches is supplemented with discussions of their theoretical underpinnings as well as research-based recommendations for advancing clinical application. What emerges is a vital resource for Muslim and non-Muslim clinicians alike as well as the lay Muslim reader wanting to know more about how the Islamic faith and psychotherapy are engaging with each other in a modern clinical context.

[more]

front cover of Louis I. Kahn
Louis I. Kahn
The Nordic Latitudes
Per Olaf Fjeld
University of Arkansas Press, 2019
Louis I. Kahn: The Nordic Latitudes is a new and personal reading of the architecture, teachings, and legacy of Louis I. Kahn from Per Olaf Fjeld’s perspective as a former student. The book explores Kahn’s life and work, offering a unique take on one of the twentieth century’s most important architects.

Kahn’s Nordic and European ties are emphasized in this study that also covers his early childhood in Estonia, his travels, and his relationships with other architects, including the Norwegian architect Arne Korsmo.

The authors have gathered personal reflections, archival material, and other student work to offer insight into the wisdom that Kahn imparted to his students in his famous masterclass. Louis I. Kahn: The Nordic Latitudes addresses Kahn’s legacy both personally and in terms of the profession, documents a research trip the University of Pennsylvania’s Louis I. Kahn Collection, and confronts the affiliation of Kahn’s work with postmodernism.

 
[more]

front cover of Multiplicity
Multiplicity
On Constraint and Agency in Contemporary Architecture
Edited by Pari Riahi, Laure Katsaros, and Michael T. Davis
University of Massachusetts Press, 2024

Today, the field of architecture faces a reckoning. While there is no longer consensus on what defines an architectural work, theorists, historians, and practitioners are grappling with urgent issues—among them the impact of climate change, the dynamics of power and race in relation with the built environment, and the technological, practical, and ethical dimensions of architecture. As established practices, academic objectives, and professional expectations come under scrutiny, architecture is in search of new definitions, identities, and voices.

Inspired by Italo Calvino’s memos about literature in the twenty-first century, this volume—the second in a series— situates architecture within a broad framework, exploring its complex interactions with environmental, cultural, political, social, artistic, and technological forces. The editors’ objective is to spur conversation across the boundaries that divide architecture’s theorists and historians from practitioners. In addition to the editors, the contributors include Sanford Kwinter, Aleksandra Jaeschke, Jennifer Mack, Rahul Mehrotra, Charles Waldheim, Kristi Cheramie, Jesse Reiser, Julian Harake, Jenny E. Sabin, Charles Davis, Esra Akcan, and David Karmon.

[more]

front cover of Profession of Medicine
Profession of Medicine
A Study of the Sociology of Applied Knowledge
Eliot Freidson
University of Chicago Press, 1988
"Must be judged as a landmark in medical sociology."—Norman Denzin, Journal of Health and Social Behavior

"Profession of Medicine is a challenging monograph; the ideas presented are stimulating and thought provoking. . . . Given the expanding domain of what illness is and the contentions of physicians about their rights as professionals, Freidson wonders aloud whether expertise is becoming a mask for privilege and power. . . . Profession of Medicine is a landmark in the sociological analysis of the professions in modern society."—Ron Miller, Sociological Quarterly

"This is the first book that I know of to go to the root of the matter by laying open to view the fundamental nature of the professional claim, and the structure of professional institutions."—Everett C. Hughes, Science
[more]

front cover of Proportional Systems in the History of Architecture
Proportional Systems in the History of Architecture
A Critical Consideration
Edited by Matthew A. Cohen and Maarten Delbeke
Leiden University Press, 2019
Prior to the advent of modern structural engineering, architects and builders used proportional systems to imbue their works with a general condition of order that was integral to notions of beauty and structural stability. These mostly invisible intellectual frameworks ranged from simple grids and symbolic numbers, to sly manipulations of geometry and numbers that required privileged knowledge and arithmetical calculations to access. Since the origins of architectural history, proportional systems have served as objects of belief and modes of iconographical communication. Whether they are capable of fulfilling more tangible functions remains a matter of debate today, but as the contributors to this volume show, these ancient and diverse belief systems continue to infiltrate architectural thinking in subtle and sometimes surprising ways today.
 
[more]

front cover of Sociology and Architectural Design
Sociology and Architectural Design
John Zeisel
Russell Sage Foundation, 1975
This book, encouraging more effective collaboration between professional architects and social scientists, outlines how social science research can aid the design process, detailing how physical environment relates to behavior. With a foreword by Hugh F. Cline.
[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter