Search

Title:
Mapping the silk road and beyond : 2000 years of exploring the east

Actions:

• Buy book

Price:
$75.00
(available to order)

Summary:
Today the world is focusing unprecedented attention on Asia and the Middle East, rediscovering a cultural, political, and geographical landscape that has fascinated and frustrated Westerners since the time of Alexander the Great. "Mapping the Silk Road and Beyond", traces the history of the European age of exploration and its lasting effects on these regions through beautifully rendered and imaginative maps drawn by explorers, merchants, and colonial administrators of the time. The book focuses on both maritime exploration and overland discovery via the ancient Silk Road, a network of trading posts that encompassed China, Tibet, Pakistan, India, Kurdistan, Iraq, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and dozens of other places known in ancient times by fabled names, including Abyssinia, Malacca, Macassar, Siam, and Cathay. The maps provide visual keys to the fascinating history of Asia and the Middle East; illuminating a cast of historical figures ranging from great leaders (the Queen of Sheba, Mohammed the prophet, King Charles V) to legendary explorers (Marco Polo, Columbus, Magellan, Sir Francis Drake, Capt. James Cook) and influential cartographers. "Mapping the Silk Road and Beyond", depicts over eighty maps organized chronologically, from Alexander the Great’s map of the world, first created in 323 BC and reproduced in a sixteenth-century atlas, to maps from the nineteenth century by French and Dutch explorers that detail the growing interaction between Europeans and Eastern cultures. The maps represent the finest examples in existence in museums, libraries, and archives around the world, chosen because they depict the most important milestones in the mapping of Asia.

Title:
Architectural drawings: Hidden masterpieces From Sir John Soane's museum

Actions:

• Buy book

Price:
$65.00
(available in store)

Summary:
''Architectural Drawings'' casts light on the magnificent architectural drawings of neo-classical architect, teacher and collector, Sir John Soane that are otherwise concealed in archives. This book, featuring artworks handpicked from what was probably the first comprehensive collection of architectural drawings in the world, numbering 30,000 at the time of his death in 1837, celebrates a life spent procuring curiosities.

Title:
Orsay : l'architecture

Actions:

• Buy book

Price:
$29.50
(available to order)

Summary:
Moins connus que les collections de peinture ou de sculpture, les dessins d'architecture du musée d'Orsay comptent plus de dix-huit mille pièces parmi lesquelles on peut distinguer deux ensembles exceptionnels le fonds Eiffel et le fonds Guimard. L'idée de constituer une "galerie de dessins d'architecture" avait germé dès 1890, mais, malgré différents dons et la collecte de quelques dizaines dé dessins, cette galerie permanente ne vit jamais le jour. Ce n'est qu'un siècle plus tard, avec la création du musée d'Orsay, que l'architecture trouva sa place dans un musée pluridisciplinaire consacré à cette période si riche de la deuxième moitié du XIXe siècle et du début du XXe siècle. Sous le Second Empire et plus encore sous la Troisième République, la société industrielle en plein essor réclame toujours plus de nouveaux bâtiments publics, d'églises, de prisons, de théâtres et d'immeubles. Parallèlement, les Expositions universelles sont un creuset d'imaginations fertiles : la tour Eiffel reste l'exemple le plus emblématique. Enfin, au tournant du siècle, l'Art nouveau fait souffler un vent d'émancipation et d'innovation. Cet ouvrage fait enfin connaître ce fonds aux richesses insoupçonnées, à travers quatre-vingts œuvres choisies et présentées par leur conservateur.

Title:
Hand-drawn worlds

Actions:

• Buy book

Price:
$66.50
(available to order)

Summary:
Not all architectural renderings are done by straight edge or CAD program; not all spaces are visually related through blueprints. Impressive architectural spaces, spaces of atmospheric density, are also, and often to highly suggestive effect, created by hand. "Hand-Drawn Worlds" presents exemplary architectural drawings by 20 internationally-recognized contemporary architects and artists, among them Ken Adam, Alexander Brodskij, Lee Dunnette, Richard Ferrier, Zaha Hadid, Willem van den Hoed, Steven Holl, Syd Mead, Gottfried Müller, and Michael Sorkin. Flanked by related essays, fantastic rooms of great perfection and unmistakable character rise in more than 140 large-format illustrations. An essay on the history of architectural drawings completes the volume.

Title:
Apollo's eye : a cartographic genealogy of the earth in the Western imagination

Actions:

• Buy book

Price:
$34.95
(available to order)

Summary:
In "Apollo's Eye", geographer Denis Cosgrove examines the historical implications for the West of conceiving and representing the earth as a globe: a unified, spherical body. Cosgrove traces how ideas of globalism and globalization have shifted historically in relation to changing images of the earth, from antiquity to the Space Age. He connects the evolving image of a unified globe to politically powerful conceptions of human unity. Cosgrove constructs a genealogy of global images from classical Greece and Rome to the present, giving special attention to the early sixteenth century, when Europeans circumnavigated the earth, relocated it within their understanding of the cosmos, and revolutionized its representation in models and maps. Each chapter focuses on specific images of the globe or whole earth, reproduced in a wealth of illustrations. Cosgrove's analysis traces a pattern of associations between global images and the formation of Western identities, paying tribute to the complex cosmographic tradition out of which today's geographical imagination has emerged.

Title:
Maps and politics

Actions:

• Buy book

Price:
$22.00
(available to order)

Summary:
Do maps accurately and objectively present the information we expect them to portray, or are they instead colored by the political purposes of their makers? In this lively and well-illustrated book, Jeremy Black investigates this dangerous territory, arguing persuasively that the supposed "objectivity" of the map-making and map-using process cannot be divorced from aspects of the politics of representation.

Title:
Drawing in architecture, education and research: Lucerne talks

Actions:

• Buy book

Price:
$75.00
(available to order)

Summary:
What role does drawing play in architectural education? How is drawing used as an instrument for communication, investigation, and representation in architecture and the construction industry? This book assembles contributions to the 2021 edition of the Lucerne Talks, the bi-annual Symposium on Pedagogy in Architecture at the Lucerne School of Engineering and Architecture. ''Drawing in architecture education and research'' offers a closer look at the importance of drawing culture in the curricula of Swiss schools of architecture and in the practice of architecture firms. Conceived as a compendium and reference book for students, teachers, and practitioners alike, this book explores the potential of drawing as a universal tool for communication and understanding among different societies, language groups, and professional communities. It considers drawing in its dual function as an object and a method for theory and practice in architecture and features strategies for a future transdisciplinary language of drawing that enables narrations and representations of new spatial concepts.

Title:
Begin again, fail better: Preliminary drawings in architecture and art

Actions:

• Buy book

Price:
$95.00
(available to order)

Summary:
"Begin again, fail better: preliminary drawings in architecture" engages with one of the principal activities of the architect in the process of design: drawing by hand, and more specifically, the act of beginning those drawings. Architects try, fail, try again, fail better until they start to move in the direction that ultimately becomes a building . . . or not. This book brings together some 180 preliminary architecture drawings. More than fifty contemporary Swiss architecture firms each contributed two pieces that reveal something of their individual approach and understanding of architecture. This selection is enhanced by historical works from four significant British and Swiss archival collections dating back to the sixteenth century and up to the twentieth. The illustrations are complemented by essays providing a critical and historical framework, as well as a conversation engaging with the conditions and importance of failure within the design process. Brief interludes by international architects, archivists, and teachers, introducing a range of perspectives, round out this beautiful volume.

Title:
Dessiner la Grèce : L'oeil et la main de Carl Haller von Hallerstein

Actions:

• Buy book

Price:
$66.95
(available in store)

Summary:
Architecte et dessinateur, voyageur infatigable, savant précis et scrupuleux, Carl Haller von Hallerstein (1774-1817) occupe une place centrale parmi les précurseurs de l’archéologie classique, bien que sa disparition prématurée l’ait privé d’une plus large renommé, notamment en France. S’appuyant sur l’exploration du fonds d’archives conservé à la bibliothèque nationale et universitaire de Strasbourg, cet ouvrage croise les perspectives d’historiens de l’art, d’historiens du livre et d’archéologues et permet ainsi de mieux appréhender le regard porté par Haller von Hallerstein, non seulement sur les vestiges archéologiques de la Grèce ancienne, mais également sur les paysages et les populations qrecques, albanaises et turques qui, au début du XIXe siècle, peuplent la Grèce à la veille de son indépendance.

Title:
Infinite perspectives : two thousand years of three-dimensional mapmaking

Actions:

• Buy book

Price:
$120.00
(available to order)

Summary:
Whether from military necessity or unbridled curiosity, mapmakers since early antiquity have attempted to represent the configuration of the land about them. The Greeks paid homage to the landscape and struck its image on their coins. Medieval scholars viewed the highest elevations as a boundary between the physical and the spiritual; the images they created of their sacred shrines and historic sites were drawn atop simple caricatures of mountains. Leonardo da Vinci's maps of Tuscany and other more realistic representations of landforms appeared during the Renaissance, thanks to a wealth of scientific study and new artistic methods. In the modern era, new techniques were invented as attempts to portray the three-dimensional world on a flat surface became more sophisticated. Hachuring, a system that involves shading with fine parallel or crossed lines, was developed with the use of copper plates; contour lines slowly replaced this technique in the nineteenth century. Lithography allowed for the introduction of color to the printing process, and multi-color tints were used to impart a sense of elevation. Aerial and satellite photography and the dawn of the digital era have yielded maps of unprecedented realism; today's computer technology allows planetary surfaces to be portrayed in three dimensions with a precision unimaginable to previous generations of mapmakers. "Infinite Perspectives" traces the artistic and scientific evolution of topographic representation from its origins to the present. Over 80 colour plates of some of the most significant maps ever made detail important advances in the portrayal of three dimensions in map form. The final section of the book contains 20 plates presenting a revolutionary cartographic technique that allows viewers wearing ordinary 3D glasses to view planetary surfaces without distortion. This invention, developed by the authors with Dr. Russell Ambroziak and named Infinite Perspective Projection, is currently in use by NASA and the Department of Defense. Included are maps of Mars, the Grand Canyon, and Mount McKinley, as well as one large fold-out map, suitable for framing; two pairs of the necessary 3D viewing glasses are also provided.