A timely look at the ways in which glass is utilized in some of today's most beautiful and experimental building designs For centuries, glass has provoked fascination with its properties as a versatile material that permits light to enter buildings in spectacular ways. Much of modern architecture has been conceived by using glass to create increasingly minimal structures, to promote the notion of lightweight construction solutions, and to allow maximum daylight into buildings. New Glass Architecture showcases the changing ways that aesthetics and methods for using glass have been developing since the 1990s. The book begins with an introduction that traces the history of key moments in glass architecture--from the stained glass windows of Chartres Cathedral to the Crystal Palace of 1851, and early constructions by John Soane, Bruno Taut, Le Corbusier, and Mies van der Rohe. Author Brent Richards explains the importance of glass artists in the second half of the 20th century and describes developments in glass technology over the last twenty years. Beautifully illustrated with newly commissioned photographs by Dennis Gilbert, the book features twenty-five case studies of recent glass constructions from around the world by such leading architects as Foster and Partners, Frank Gehry, Herzog & de Meuron, Steven Holl, Toyo Ito & Associates, Jean Nouvel, Raphael Viñoly, and Peter Zumthor. Each building is illustrated in full color and accompanied by detailed drawings. New Glass Architecture features these buildings and more: - Chapel of Ignatius, Seattle - Condé Nast Café, New York - DZ Bank, Berlin - Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia - Kunsthaus, Graz, Austria - Laban Dance Centre, London - Torre Agbar, Barcelona

A wide-ranging illustrated history of transparency as told through the evolution of the glass window Transparency is a mantra of our day. It is key to the Western understanding of a liberal society. We expect transparency from, for instance, political institutions, corporations, and the media. But how did it become such a powerful--and global--idea? From ancient glass to Apple's corporate headquarters, this book is the first to probe how Western people have experienced, conceptualized, and evaluated transparency. Daniel Jütte argues that the experience of transparency has been inextricably linked to one element of Western architecture: the glass window. Windows are meant to be unnoticed. Yet a historical perspective reveals the role that glass has played in shaping how we see and interpret the world. A seemingly "pure" material, glass has been endowed, throughout history, with political, social, and cultural meaning, in manifold and sometimes conflicting ways. At the same time, Jütte raises questions about the future of vitreous transparency--its costs in terms of visual privacy but also its ecological price tag in an age of accelerating climate change.

"In Contemporary Curtain Wall Architecture, building-technology historian and architect Scott Murray traces the evolution of the curtain wall, from early skeleton-frame structures of the past to today's complex and technologically advanced configurations. Presenting twenty-four detailed case studies of exemplary structures completed in the last decade, he reveals the curtain wall as one of the most enduring and malleable concepts of contemporary architecture, capable of adapting intelligently to site constraints, utilizing resources efficiently, and offering unprecedented opportunities for innovations in digital design and fabrication, material detailing, and aesthetic expression." --Book Jacket.

The idea of Utopia springs from a natural desire of transformation, of evolution pertaining to humankind and, therefore, one can find expressions of “utopian” desire in every civilization. Having to do explicitly with human condition, Utopia accompanies closely cultural evolution, almost as a symbiotic organism. Maintaining its roots deeply attached to ancient myths, utopian expression followed, and sometimes preceded cultural transformation. Through the next almost five hundred pages (virtually one for each year since Utopia was published) researchers in the fields of Architecture and Urbanism, Arts and Humanities present the results of their studies within the different areas of expertise under the umbrella of Utopia. Past, present, and future come together in one book. They do not offer their readers any golden key. Many questions will remain unanswered, as they should. The texts presented in Proportion Harmonies and Identities - UTOPIA(S) WORLDS AND FRONTIERS OF THE IMAGINARY were compiled with the intent to establish a platform for the presentation, interaction and dissemination of researches. It aims also to foster the awareness and discussion on the topics of Harmony and Proportion with a focus on different utopian visions and readings relevant to the arts, sciences and humanities and their importance and benefits for the community at large.

A History of Interior Design tells the story of 6,000 years of domestic and public space. It’s an essential resource for students, professionals, and anyone interested in interior design, the decorative arts, architecture, and art history. It explores a broad range of styles and movements, weaving together a fascinating narrative from cave dwellings and temple architecture, through Gothic cathedrals and Islamic palaces, to modern skyscrapers and the retail spaces of the 21st-century. This fully updated fifth edition includes: More on the contributions of women designers and architects Additional coverage of furniture, product design, and decoration Numerous new examples of diverse modern styles from around the world Over 700 images, more than 300 of which are new or color replacements for black and white photos An extra final chapter focusing on the influence of the latest technology and current thinking on the importance of conservation and ethical sourcing

This book is a cultural history of post-Wall urban, social, political, and cultural transformations in Berlin. Branding Berlin: From Division to the Cultural Capital of Europe presents a cultural analysis of Berlin’s cultural production, including literature, film, memoirs and non-fiction works, art, media, urban branding campaigns, and cultural diversity initiatives put forth by the Berlin Senate, and allows readers to understand the various changes that transformed the formerly divided city of voids into a hip cultural capital. The book examines Berlin’s branding, urban-economic development, and its search for a post-Wall identity by focusing on manifestations of nostalgic longing in documentary films and other cultural products. Building on the sociological research of urban branding and linking it with an interpretive analysis of cultural products generated in Berlin during that time, the author examines the intersections and tensions between the nostalgic views of the past and the branded images of Berlin’s present and future. This insightful and innovative work will interest scholars and students of cultural and media studies, branding and advertising, urban communication, film studies, visual culture, tourism, and cultural memory.

Informed by the analytical practices of the interdisciplinary 'material turn' and social historical studies of childhood, Childhood By Design: Toys and the Material Culture of Childhood offers new approaches to the material world of childhood and design culture for children. This volume situates toys and design culture for children within broader narratives on history, art, design and the decorative arts, where toy design has traditionally been viewed as an aberration from more serious pursuits. The essays included treat toys not merely as unproblematic reflections of socio-cultural constructions of childhood but consider how design culture actively shaped, commodified and materialized shifting discursive constellations surrounding childhood and children. Focusing on the new array of material objects designed in response to the modern 'invention' of childhood-what we might refer to as objects for a childhood by design-Childhood by Design explores dynamic tensions between theory and practice, discursive constructions and lived experience as embodied in the material culture of childhood. Contributions from and between a variety of disciplinary perspectives (including history, art history, material cultural studies, decorative arts, design history, and childhood studies) are represented – critically linking historical discourses of childhood with close study of material objects and design culture. Chronologically, the volume spans the 18th century, which witnessed the invention of the toy as an educational plaything and a proliferation of new material artifacts designed expressly for children's use; through the 19th-century expansion of factory-based methods of toy production facilitating accuracy in miniaturization and a new vocabulary of design objects coinciding with the recognition of childhood innocence and physical separation within the household; towards the intersection of early 20th-century child-centered pedagogy and modernist approaches to nursery and furniture design; through the changing consumption and sales practices of the postwar period marketing directly to children through television, film and other digital media; and into the present, where the line between the material culture of childhood and adulthood is increasingly blurred.

Captures key developments in the field of sustainable hospital architecture.

From the Renaissance idea of the painting as an open window to the nested windows and multiple images on today's cinema, television, and computer screens: a cultural history of the metaphoric, literal, and virtual window. As we spend more and more of our time staring at the screens of movies, televisions, computers, and handheld devices—"windows" full of moving images, texts, and icons—how the world is framed has become as important as what is in the frame. In The Virtual Window, Anne Friedberg examines the window as metaphor, as architectural component, and as an opening to the dematerialized reality we see on the screen. In De pictura (1435), Leon Battista Alberti famously instructed painters to consider the frame of the painting as an open window. Taking Alberti's metaphor as her starting point, Friedberg tracks shifts in the perspectival paradigm as she gives us histories of the architectural window, developments in glass and transparency, and the emerging apparatuses of photography, cinema, television, and digital imaging. Single-point perspective—Alberti's metaphorical window—has long been challenged by modern painting, modern architecture, and moving-image technologies. And yet, notes Friedberg, for most of the twentieth century the dominant form of the moving image was a single image in a single frame. The fractured modernism exemplified by cubist painting, for example, remained largely confined to experimental, avant-garde work. On the computer screen, however, where multiple 'windows' coexist and overlap, perspective may have met its end. In this wide-ranging book, Friedberg considers such topics as the framed view of the camera obscura, Le Corbusier's mandates for the architectural window, Eisenstein's opinions on the shape of the movie screen, and the multiple images and nested windows commonly displayed on screens today. The Virtual Window proposes a new logic of visuality, framed and virtual: an architecture not only of space but of time.

Notions of crisis have long charged the study of the European avant-garde and modernism, reflecting the often turbulent nature of their development. Throughout their history, the avant-garde and modernists have both confronted and instigated crises, be they economic or political, aesthetic or philosophical, collective or individual, local or global, short or perennial. The seventh volume in the series European Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies addresses the myriad ways in which the avant-garde and modernism have responded and related to crisis from the late nineteenth to the twenty-first century. How have Europe’s avant-garde and modernist movements given aesthetic shape to their crisis-laden trajectory? Given the many different watershed moments the avant-garde and modernism have faced over the centuries, what common threads link the critical points of their development? Alternatively, what kinds of crises have their experimental practices and critical modes yielded? The volume assembles case studies reflecting upon these questions and more from across all areas of avant-garde and modernist activity, including visual art, literature, music, architecture, photography, theatre, performance, curatorial practice, fashion and design.