Here is a verbal and pictorial illustration of the credo that has guided one of the world's most distinguished architects throughout his career. "Architecture is, and must be, a synthesis of technology and art."

Using nearly 200 drawings and photographs, including plans, interesting details, various stages of construction, and both interior and exterior views of some of his major works, Mr. Nervi shows how his philosophy is put into practice. Referring to most of his important projects, he discusses solutions to various functional and construction requirements where he used precast and cast-in-place concrete, emphasizing the richness of this material. Mr. Nervi stresses the advantages of reinforced concrete, which, he says, allows greater flexibility and makes it easier to satisfy his triple demand of economy, technical correctness, and aesthetic satisfaction.

In predicting the future of architecture he stresses the necessity of architectural solutions that are functionally and technically sound. His final remarks concern his ideas about the proper course of study for architecture students, training that will produce architects with a "far greater technical sense than in the past, a technical sense which results in a constant search for economic efficiency."

This authoritative compendium of newly translated primary sources reveals ancient Roman attitudes on every aspect of villas, from selection of place and construction activities to day-to-day management and lived experiences.

While the term villa is generic today, its meaning extended across the entirety of ancient Roman life: villas supplied food, oil, and wine to towns and cities and produced raw materials for craft industries and building construction. Villas were also venues for pleasure, relaxation, and the cultivation of friendships and the mind. Many were known for their spectacular sites, architecture, decoration, and furnishings. They came to be ubiquitous throughout ancient Rome's European and Mediterranean rural hegemony.

This volume compiles a wealth of newly translated Latin and ancient Greek sources—treatises, letters, poems, histories, biographies, and other works of literary art—to vividly convey the architectural, economic, social, political, and cultural significance of ancient Roman villas, from their Greek antecedents through the early Christian period. Thematic chapters reveal ancient Roman attitudes on villa architecture, agricultural operations, and the practices of buying, building, and decorating villas as well as entertaining and pursuing leisure there. References to family, gender relations, and the lives of enslaved persons aim to situate, if only indirectly, a broad range of experiences within villas. Supplemented by generous commentaries, copious annotation, a comprehensive bibliography, and a glossary, this definitive sourcebook equips scholars and students alike for further research and makes for fascinating reading.

William A. Coles has assembled many hitherto overlooked essays of Henry Van Brunt (1832–1903), one of the most scholarly and distinguished architects of the late nineteenth century. The editor presents the first full-scale introduction to Van Brunt's life and thought, developing particularly his theory that the classical tradition was much more forceful than was felt by contemporaries such as Louis Sullivan and Montgomery Schuyler. More than two hundred photographs and drawings illustrate buildings and designs mentioned in the monograph and in the twenty-two essays, providing a rich panorama of the architecture of the period.

As architect and Boston selectman, Bulfinch (1763–1844) was responsible for the great development of Old Boston. Later he was appointed architect for the final stages of the Capitol in Washington. In this fully illustrated record of commissions, Kirker chronicles the career of America’s first native-born architect.

Charles Bulfinch (1763-1844), son of a wealthy and cultivated Boston family, exerted a wide influence on architecture in New England. As architect and Boston selectman, he was responsible for the great development of Old Boston. Later he was appointed architect for the final stages of the Capitol in Washington. In this fully illustrated record of commissions, Harold Kirker sets forth the fascinating career of America's first native-born architect.

Francesco Borromini is one of the great geniuses of Baroque architecture, perhaps the greatest in inventiveness and in use of spatial effects. Here is the first book in English to survey the whole work of the master. The author, former Director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, is known internationally for his many works on French and Italian architecture and painting.

In this lucid and fully illustrated account, Anthony Blunt charts Borromini’s career and analyzes and assesses his art. Mr. Blunt tells of Borromini’s training, relating his style to that of Bernini, under whom he worked, and to the architecture from which he learned, for example Michelangelo’s. Borromini’s patrons allowed him freedom to evolve his own ideas, and his originality and imagination in inventing new architectural forms become apparent as the author studies individual commissions. His imagination was apparently limitless, but his inventions evolved in terms of rigidly controlled geometry. It is this combination of revolutionary inventiveness and intellectual control that gives Borromini’s work particular appeal in the twentieth century.

This small book, the last work of a world-renowned scholar, has established itself as a classic. It provides a superb overview of the vast historical process by which Christianity was Hellenized and Hellenic civilization became Christianized.

Werner Jaeger shows that without the large postclassical expansion of Greek culture the rise of a Christian world religion would have been impossible. He explains why the Hellenization of Christianity was necessary in apostolic and postapostalic times; points out similarities between Greek philosophy and Christian belief; discuss such key figures as Clement, Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa; and touches on the controversies that led to the ultimate complex synthesis of Greek and Christian thought.

A nation's buildings are a record of the character and aspirations of its people. In a rich blend of social and architectural history, Abbott Lowell Cummings reconstructs, through text and pictures, the framed houses of Massachusetts Bay that reflect the straightforward honesty of our earliest northern settlers and their profound love of craftsmanship.

A substantial number of the nation's seventeenth-century houses have been preserved in Massachusetts, and Cummings provides illustrations for a majority of them. He describes the dwellings in detail, and includes architectural drawings that were especially commissioned for this book. He demonstrates that the builders were far more sophisticated than previously imagined and that, while maintaining their English timber-building traditions, they were astonishingly adaptable to their new environment.

Beyond the houses themselves, Cummings discusses evolutions in pioneer life. The most simple kinds of changes in architecture, Cummings shows, indicated singular changes in family living. Such additions as kitchens and parlors, or the moving of the master bedroom to a second floor, suggest shifts in the private and social lives of families.

The Framed Houses of Massachusetts Bay is a splendid story of innovations— of restless, migratory people and their architectural and social responses to the heavily forested New World. It is the first chapter in the long saga of America's preoccupation with technology as it affected the early American home.

Celebrating Harvard’s Houghton Library’s twenty-fifth anniversary, this large and sumptuous volume highlights the diversity and value of the Houghton’s collections. It contains reproductions ranging from ancient and medieval manuscripts to the earliest printed books to the works of some of the twentieth-century’s most important and interesting authors, artists, and designers. This work is intended not merely to celebrate the achievement of the past, but also to suggest the exciting vistas of the future.

There is no doubt about Le Corbusier's dominating stature in twentieth century architecture. Here, for the first time, is a richly illustrated portrait of the way he worked out a design from inception to completion; it is an examination of the creative process that looks over the architect's shoulder, seeing his governing principles and typical strategies as well as his working habits and personality.

The book recounts the story of a building that for its creator had a special significance. The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard was one of his last buildings. Le Corbusier was aware that it would be his only one in the United States and thus his only chance to teach an object lesson in a country about which he had very strong feelings. William Curtis describes the Carpenter Center and traces, step by step, the development of its design. Eduard Sekler assesses the building's aesthetics, especially in relation to Le Corbusier's total oeuvre. Rudolph Arnheim and Barbara Norfleet contribute chapters that look at the Carpenter Center as an exercise in creativity and assess its psychological effect and its ability to meet the changing needs of its users.

Leonardo da Vinci spent the last three years of his life as a guest of the king of France in Amboise, and the last masterpiece he produced was the project for a royal residence at Romorantin. It was to be a vast complex of buildings and gardens crossed by the Saudre River, and was to incorporate the old chateau of the ancestors of Francis I. "The eve of St. Anthony's Day I returned from Romorantin to Amboise, and the king had left Romorantin two days before," wrote Leonardo in January 1517. In 1518 a canal project at Romorantin was financed. But in the year of Leonardo's death, 1519, the project for the palace was abandoned and the king decided to build the castle of Chambord instead. The loss of the Romorantin Palace is comparable in magnitude to that of Leonardo's wall paintin of the Battle of Anghiari--perhaps even more tragic, for little influence could come from an abandoned work of architecture, the conception of which was soon forgotten. The remains of the portion that was built stood ten feet high until the time of the French Revolution. Mr. Pedretti has traced the records of their existence, brought together all possible references to the project in Leonardo's manuscripts, and identified the site of the proposed construction. The style and sources of the project are shown through a wealth of illustrations which bring to life the image of Leonardo's last dream.

Allan Jacobs has written a city planning book for everyone with a passion for urban environments. His message--conveyed in word and vivid image--is that the people who make changes in cities base their decisions upon what they see, and that their visions and actions, which affect the lives of millions, have too often been faulty. This book is about how to look at and understand urban environments.

In order to plan sensitively, the city and regional planner must walk in, look at, wonder about, and simply enjoy cities. Careful observation is a crucial tool for the kind of analysis and questioning necessary to achieve good planning. Through observation the city planner and urban activist can learn when an area was built, for whom it was built, who lives there now, how it has changed, and how it might be improved for present and future inhabitants.

Jacobs shows us how to read cities by identifying and discussing the many visual clues and their various meanings in different environments. Case studies of American and European cities--San Jose, San Francisco, Cincinnati, Bologna, Rome--and over two hundred striking photographs, drawings, and maps by the author present ways to read the environment that will prove indispensable for urban planners and will delight all city watchers.

The design of housing has commanded the attention of the greatest architects of the twentieth century. In this stunning volume, Roger Sherwood presents thirty-two notable examples of multi-family housing from many countries and four continents, selected for their importance as prototypes. Designed by such masters as Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and Alvar Aalto, they range from single-house clusters to row-houses, terrace houses, party-wall and large-courtyard housing, to urban high-rise towers and slabs.

The thirty-two buildings or housing complexes are illustrated with photographs, site plans, floor plans, elevations, and marvelous axonometric drawings. In each case Mr. Sherwood gives background information on the project, mention, factors the architect had to take into consideration (social, environmental, financial), points out creative solutions to particular problems, and comments on special features of the design. Laymen as well as professionals will find his presentations enlightening.

In the Introduction, Mr. Sherwood sets forth the basic principles of organization that apply to housing. He analyzes first the limited number of ways in which individual apartments or living units can be laid out (each type or plan lending itself to variations and permutations) and then the ways in which different units can be vertically and horizontally organized within a single building. Drawings and plans of more than eighty housing complexes in twenty countries accompany his analysis.

Mr. Sherwood offers his book in the belief that there is no excuse for shoddy architecture; that no branch of architecture is more important than the design of human habitations; and that much is to be learned from the study of significant buildings of the recent past.

“These notes are about the process of design: the process of inventing things which display new physical order, organization, form, in response to function.” This book, opening with these words, presents an entirely new theory of the process of design.

In the first part of the book, Christopher Alexander discusses the process by which a form is adapted to the context of human needs and demands that has called it into being. He shows that such an adaptive process will be successful only if it proceeds piecemeal instead of all at once. It is for this reason that forms from traditional un-self-conscious cultures, molded not by designers but by the slow pattern of changes within tradition, are so beautifully organized and adapted. When the designer, in our own self-conscious culture, is called on to create a form that is adapted to its context he is unsuccessful, because the preconceived categories out of which he builds his picture of the problem do not correspond to the inherent components of the problem, and therefore lead only to the arbitrariness, willfulness, and lack of understanding which plague the design of modern buildings and modern cities.

In the second part, Mr. Alexander presents a method by which the designer may bring his full creative imagination into play, and yet avoid the traps of irrelevant preconception. He shows that, whenever a problem is stated, it is possible to ignore existing concepts and to create new concepts, out of the structure of the problem itself, which do correspond correctly to what he calls the subsystems of the adaptive process. By treating each of these subsystems as a separate subproblem, the designer can translate the new concepts into form. The form, because of the process, will be well-adapted to its context, non-arbitrary, and correct.

The mathematics underlying this method, based mainly on set theory, is fully developed in a long appendix. Another appendix demonstrates the application of the method to the design of an Indian village.

The Renaissance man avant la lettre.

Vitruvius (Marcus V. Pollio), Roman architect and engineer, studied Greek philosophy and science and gained experience in the course of professional work. He was one of those appointed to be overseers of imperial artillery or military engines, and was architect of at least one unit of buildings for Augustus in the reconstruction of Rome. Late in life and in ill health he completed, sometime before 27 BC, De Architectura which, after its rediscovery in the fifteenth century, was influential enough to be studied by architects from the early Renaissance to recent times.

In On Architecture Vitruvius adds to the tradition of Greek theory and practice the results of his own experience. The contents of this treatise in ten books are as follows. Book 1: Requirements for an architect; town planning; design, cities, aspects; temples. 2: Materials and their treatment. Greek systems. 3: Styles. Forms of Greek temples. Ionic. 4: Styles. Corinthian, Ionic, Doric; Tuscan; altars. 5: Other public buildings (fora, basilicae, theaters, colonnades, baths, harbors). 6: Sites and planning, especially of houses. 7: Construction of pavements, roads, mosaic floors, vaults. Decoration (stucco, wall painting, colors). 8: Hydraulic engineering; water supply; aqueducts. 9: Astronomy. Greek and Roman discoveries; signs of the zodiac, planets, moon phases, constellations, astrology, gnomon, sundials. 10: Machines for war and other purposes.

The Renaissance man avant la lettre.

Vitruvius (Marcus V. Pollio), Roman architect and engineer, studied Greek philosophy and science and gained experience in the course of professional work. He was one of those appointed to be overseers of imperial artillery or military engines, and was architect of at least one unit of buildings for Augustus in the reconstruction of Rome. Late in life and in ill health he completed, sometime before 27 BC, De Architectura which, after its rediscovery in the fifteenth century, was influential enough to be studied by architects from the early Renaissance to recent times.

In On Architecture Vitruvius adds to the tradition of Greek theory and practice the results of his own experience. The contents of this treatise in ten books are as follows. Book 1: Requirements for an architect; town planning; design, cities, aspects; temples. 2: Materials and their treatment. Greek systems. 3: Styles. Forms of Greek temples. Ionic. 4: Styles. Corinthian, Ionic, Doric; Tuscan; altars. 5: Other public buildings (fora, basilicae, theaters, colonnades, baths, harbors). 6: Sites and planning, especially of houses. 7: Construction of pavements, roads, mosaic floors, vaults. Decoration (stucco, wall painting, colors). 8: Hydraulic engineering; water supply; aqueducts. 9: Astronomy. Greek and Roman discoveries; signs of the zodiac, planets, moon phases, constellations, astrology, gnomon, sundials. 10: Machines for war and other purposes.

The Pantheon in Rome is one of the grand architectural statements of all ages. This richly illustrated book isolates the reasons for its extraordinary impact on Western architecture, discussing the Pantheon as a building in its time but also as a building for all time.

Mr. MacDonald traces the history of the structure since its completion and examines its progeny--domed rotundas with temple-fronted porches built from the second century to the twentieth--relating them to the original. He analyzes the Pantheon's design and the details of its technology and construction, and explores the meaning of the building on the basis of ancient texts, formal symbolism, and architectural analogy. He sees the immense unobstructed interior, with its disk of light that marks the sun's passage through the day, as an architectural metaphor for the ecumenical pretensions of the Roman Empire.

Past discussions of the Pantheon have tended to center on design and structure. These are but the starting point for Mr. MacDonald, who goes on to show why it ranks--along with Cheops's pyramid, the Parthenon, Wren's churches, Mansard's palaces-as an architectural archetype.

Paris is the most personal of cities. There is a Paris for the medievalist, and another for the modernist—a Paris for expatriates, philosophers, artists, romantics, and revolutionaries of every stripe. James H. S. McGregor brings these multiple perspectives into focus throughout this concise, unique history of the City of Light.

His panorama begins with an ancient Gallic fortress on the Seine, burned to the ground by its own defenders in a vain effort to starve out Caesar’s legions. After ninth-century raids by the Vikings ended, Parisians expanded the walls of their tiny sanctuary on the Ile de la Cité, turning the river’s right bank into a thriving commercial district and the Rive Gauche into a college town. Gothic spires expressed a taste for architectural novelty, matched only by the palaces and pleasure gardens of successive monarchs whose ingenuity made Paris the epitome of everything French. The fires of Revolution threatened all that had come before, but Baron Haussmann saw opportunity in the wreckage. No planned city in the world is more famous than his.

Paris from the Ground Up allows readers to trace the city’s evolution in its architecture and art—from the Roman arena to the Musée d’Orsay, from the Louvre’s defensive foundations to I. M. Pei’s transparent pyramids. Color maps, along with identifying illustrations, make the city accessible to visitors by foot, Metro, or riverboat.

The Ionian city of Priene, the most extensively excavated Hellenistic city in western Asia Minor, was in its day a model of town planning. It was sited according to principles corresponding to Aristotle's description in the Politics of the ideal city of 5,000, laid out on a grid of the type developed by the famous Hippodamus of the nearby city of Miletus, and ornamented with buildings designed by Pythius, who was known for his holistic approach to architecture. Priene provides the researcher with an unusually clear and complete picture of life in an ancient Greek city of the late Classical and Hellenistic period.

This study, a collaboration of Greek scholars under the scientific direction of Nikos A. Dontas at the Foundation of the Hellenic World and Professor Wolfram Hoepfner of the University of Berlin, first published in 2000 and now appearing in its Second Edition, presents for the first time a comprehensive look at the architecture of the city, combining material from both the first excavation of 1894 and more recent work at the site. It is lavishly illustrated with specially redrawn architectural plans and reconstructions of the major public buildings and spaces as well as residential and commercial structures.

The accompanying text is aimed at both specialist and non-specialist and explores in detail the function and context of these buildings as well as their place in the development of architecture in Asia Minor and the place of Priene in the history of the region.

"The standard work on the development of modern architecture."—Walter Gropius

"Giedion’s accomplishment remains unmatched."—José Luis Sert

Sigfried Giedion was an unlikely candidate for the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship in Poetry at Harvard. Trained as a mechanical engineer and an art historian, the Swiss polymath had a tenuous command of English and little name recognition when he accepted the prestigious yearlong post in 1938, narrowly edging out the novelist Thomas Mann. After his twelve Norton Lectures were published in 1941, however, they quickly captured the imagination of a generation of artists, architects, and students.

Revised and expanded four times since its initial publication and translated into half a dozen languages, Space, Time and Architecture remains an unsurpassed classic in its field—a veritable bible of architectural modernism. Giedion delves deeply into the techniques that have made modern architecture possible, from the development of structural engineering to the increasingly sophisticated uses of concrete, glass, and steel. Yet he never loses sight of the human feelings and activities that bring structures to life. Starting with the one-point perspective that defined the Renaissance città ideale and moving through the stark geometries of Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, he vividly illustrates how evolving conceptions of space, time, and motion have molded both the contours of our built environment and our daily lives.

Weaving a rich visual tapestry, Space, Time and Architecture juxtaposes over five hundred architectural drawings and photographs with painting, sculpture, and industrial design to make surprising connections across scale and medium. Throughout, Giedion remains tenaciously convinced that architecture offers hope for a grand unification: of reason and emotion, of science and art, and even of human civilization itself.

Featuring a global compendium of sites, buildings, urban settlements, and cultural landscapes, this volume combines recent research with practical approaches to conservation of earthen architectural heritage.

Earthen architecture is one of the oldest forms of construction and is evidenced around the globe. This volume gathers the research and presentations from Terra 2022: 13th World Congress on Earthen Architectural Heritage, which brought together in Santa Fe, New Mexico, 350 conservation professionals and practitioners from fifty-two countries.

Seventy richly illustrated papers, fifty-seven in English and thirteen in Spanish, address a range of conservation issues. Abstracts are provided in both English and Spanish for each paper. Themes covered include advances in research, strategies for archaeological sites, community-based care and decision-making, cultural landscapes, decorated surfaces, education, historic and modern buildings, conservation history, risks and vulnerabilities, and traditional materials and practices. Sections that draw on symposia held at the congress spotlight two recent architectural heritage initiatives: the rehabilitation of an urban settlement by the AlUla Old Town and Oasis Conservation Project in Saudi Arabia, and the conservation and management of eight monumental enclosure complexes at the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks in Ohio.

Reflecting Getty's commitment to open content, Terra 2022 is available as a free PDF download at: https://www.getty.edu/publications/virtuallibrary/9781606069158.html. This paperback edition is available for sale for readers who wish to have a bound reference copy.