$51.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Between 1998 and 2005, the Structural Engineers Association of New York, along with the Museum of Modern Art's Department of Architecture and Design and the School of Architecture at both Princeton University and MIT, co-sponsored a lecture series in honor of the renowned Spanish and Mexican structural engineer Felix Candela, who led the early exploration of concrete(...)
Seven structural engineers: the Felix Candela lectures
Actions:
Price:
$51.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Between 1998 and 2005, the Structural Engineers Association of New York, along with the Museum of Modern Art's Department of Architecture and Design and the School of Architecture at both Princeton University and MIT, co-sponsored a lecture series in honor of the renowned Spanish and Mexican structural engineer Felix Candela, who led the early exploration of concrete shell structures. These lectures are now available in the format of this book: discussed is the work of the Uruguayan engineer Eladio Dieste, who pioneered the use of thin, light-filled shell structures in masonry. Cecil Balmond recounts his collaboration with architects Rem Koolhaas and Daniel Libeskind. The Swiss bridge designer Christian Menn discusses his iconic long-span prestressed concrete bridges, including the new Charles River Bridge in Boston. Leslie E. Robertson, who is especially known for his work on the structural design of the World Trade Center complex with Minoru Yamasaki, discusses this design along with many other projects. Mamoru Kawaguchi recounts his own work in fabric structures and his collaboration with architects Kenzo Tange and Arata Isozaki. Joerg Schlaich talks about his creative collaboration with Frank Gehry. Heinz Isler's contribution is in the aerea of freeform concrete shell constructions. David Billington and Maria Garlock recount the work of master builders Anton Tedesko, Pier Luigi Nervi, Felix Candela, and Heinz Isler.
Engineering Structures
Shelter cookbook
$55.00
(available in store)
Summary:
DIY architect, publisher and pioneer of the self-build movement, Lloyd Kahn (born 1935) is a legend of the American counterculture. Influenced by Buckminster Fuller, in 1968 Kahn started building geodesic domes, and was an editor for Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog. In 1970 Kahn published his first book, Domebook One, followed the next year by the bestselling Domebook(...)
Architectural Theory
December 2025
Shelter cookbook
Actions:
Price:
$55.00
(available in store)
Summary:
DIY architect, publisher and pioneer of the self-build movement, Lloyd Kahn (born 1935) is a legend of the American counterculture. Influenced by Buckminster Fuller, in 1968 Kahn started building geodesic domes, and was an editor for Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog. In 1970 Kahn published his first book, Domebook One, followed the next year by the bestselling Domebook 2. In 1971, he bought land in Bolinas and built a geodesic dome (later to be featured in Life magazine), but he soon pursued other ways to build, resulting in the classic 1973 book "Shelter." Kahn published numerous self-build books over the ensuing decades, most recently "Tiny Homes on the Move" (2014). "Shelter Cookbook" is an exploration of Kahn’s now iconic publications by the Swiss architect Leopold Banchini (born 1981) - whose practice makes emphatic use of DIY architecture culture- and the German author and curator Lukas Feireiss (born 1977). It relates Kahn’s building philosophy to contemporary practices, recording Banchini and Feireiss’ personal search for unexpected relationships between historical documents and contemporary architectural projects. The large-format volume includes interviews, photospreads and archival material on self-building, and also includes a mycological investigation. "Shelter Cookbook" will inspire architects, designers, artists and counterculture cognoscenti alike with its positive vision of the possibilities and legacy of the self-build movement.
Architectural Theory
$19.95
(available to order)
Summary:
This collection boasts four superb animated films about the universe and the evolution of comets and stars: Comet: A description of the general phenomenon of comets, and the radical transformations they undergo as they approach the sun. Superb drawings re-create the intergalactic universe with impact and accuracy. Particular attention is given to Halley's comet, which(...)
November 2009
The wonders of earth and space 2
Actions:
Price:
$19.95
(available to order)
Summary:
This collection boasts four superb animated films about the universe and the evolution of comets and stars: Comet: A description of the general phenomenon of comets, and the radical transformations they undergo as they approach the sun. Superb drawings re-create the intergalactic universe with impact and accuracy. Particular attention is given to Halley's comet, which reappears every seventy-six years (12 min. 18 sec.); Fields of Space: An exploration of the fourth state of matter, the plasma that fills the infinite void between stars and galaxies. Single atoms in space, or planets as large as the sun, are each seen to have their own magnetic fields, attracting to themselves streams of invisible particles (18 min. 38 sec.); Starlife traces the evolution of a star from its birth in the depths of a black nebula to its final extinction. Animated drawings are amplified by a dense narrative describing the differing evolutionary processes followed by stars of different masses. The film touches on the creation of elements in the core of stars, red giants, bursters, space-time relationships, and black holes (19 min. 58 sec.); and Universe: A picture of the universe as it would appear to a voyager through space. Realistic animation takes you into far regions of space past Moon, Sun, and Milky Way into galaxies yet unfathomed (28 min. 53 sec.).
$31.00
(available to order)
Summary:
As with the compass needle, so people have always been most powerfully attracted northwards; everyone carries within them their own concept of north. The Idea of North is a study, ranging widely in time and place, of some of the ways in which these ideas have found expression. Peter Davidson explores the topography of north as represented in images and literature, taking(...)
The idea of north, 2nd edition
Actions:
Price:
$31.00
(available to order)
Summary:
As with the compass needle, so people have always been most powerfully attracted northwards; everyone carries within them their own concept of north. The Idea of North is a study, ranging widely in time and place, of some of the ways in which these ideas have found expression. Peter Davidson explores the topography of north as represented in images and literature, taking in Netherlandic winter paintings of the Renaissance, German Romantic landscapes, Scandinavian Biedermeyer and twentieth-century topographical painting and printmaking. He examines a bewildering diversity of mythologies and imaginings of north, including The Snow Queen; Scandinavian Sagas; ghost-stories; Moomintrolls, Arctic exploration; the fictitious snowy kingdoms of Zembla and Naboland; Nabokov's nostalgias; Baltic midsummer; rooms in winter light; compasses and star-stones; hoar-frost; ice; and glass. The book also traces a northward journey, describing northern rural England, industrial sites, and the long emptiness of the borders, Scotland and the Highlands. He looks at the region far north of Scotland, then moves to the Northern Netherlands and Scandinavia to explore their identifiable northernness.The last visited place is Iceland, identified by W. H. Auden and Louis McNeice in 1936 as 'furthest, most remote, most distant, most northerly'. An engaging meditation on solitude, absence and stillness, The Idea of North shows north to be a goal rather than a destination, a place of revelation that is always somewhere ultimate and austere.
Architectural Theory
$37.99
(available in store)
Summary:
Digital tools have launched architecture into a dizzying new era, one in which wood, stone, metal, glass, and other traditional materials are augmented by pixels and code. In this ambitious exploration, an eminent thinker examines what, exactly, the building blocks of architecture have meant over the centuries and how technology may-or may not-be changing how we think(...)
The materiality of architecture
Actions:
Price:
$37.99
(available in store)
Summary:
Digital tools have launched architecture into a dizzying new era, one in which wood, stone, metal, glass, and other traditional materials are augmented by pixels and code. In this ambitious exploration, an eminent thinker examines what, exactly, the building blocks of architecture have meant over the centuries and how technology may-or may not-be changing how we think about them. Antoine Picon argues that materiality is not only about matter and that the silence and inscrutability-the otherness-of raw materials work against humanity's need to live in a meaningful world. He describes how people define who they are, in part, through their specific physical experience of architectural materials and spaces. Indeed, Picon asserts, the entire paradox of the architectural discipline consists in its desire to render matter expressive to human beings. Through a retrospective review of canonical moments in Western European architecture, Picon offers an original perspective on the ways materiality has varied throughout centuries, demonstrating how experiences of the physical world have changed in relation to the evolution of human subjectivity. Ultimately, Picon concludes that computer-based design methods are not an abrupt departure from previous architectural traditions but rather a new way for architects to control material resources. The result reinforces the fundamentally humanistic nature of architectural endeavor with an increasing sense of design freedom and a release from material constraint in the digital era.
Architectural Theory
$45.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Contemporary artist Roni Horn first visited Iceland in 1975 at the age of nineteen, and since then, the island’s treeless expanse has had an enduring hold on Horn’s creative work. Through a series of remarkable and poetic reflections, vignettes, episodes, and illustrated essays, ''Island zombie'' distills the artist’s lifelong experience of Iceland’s natural environment.(...)
Island zombie: Iceland writings
Actions:
Price:
$45.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Contemporary artist Roni Horn first visited Iceland in 1975 at the age of nineteen, and since then, the island’s treeless expanse has had an enduring hold on Horn’s creative work. Through a series of remarkable and poetic reflections, vignettes, episodes, and illustrated essays, ''Island zombie'' distills the artist’s lifelong experience of Iceland’s natural environment. Together, these pieces offer an unforgettable exploration of the indefinable and inescapable force of remote, elemental places, and provide a sustained look at how an island and its atmosphere can take possession of the innermost self. ''Island zombie'' is a meditation on being present. It vividly conveys Horn’s experiences, from the deeply profound to the joyful and absurd. Through powerful evocations of the changing weather and other natural phenomena- the violence of the wind, the often aggressive birds, the imposing influence of glaciers, and the ubiquitous presence of water in all its variety- we come to understand the author’s abiding need for Iceland, a place uniquely essential to Horn’s creative and spiritual life. The dramatic surroundings provoke examinations of self-sufficiency and isolation, and these ruminations summon a range of cultural companions, including El Greco, Emily Dickinson, Judy Garland, Wallace Stevens, Edgar Allan Poe, William Morris, and Rachel Carson. While brilliantly portraying nature’s sublime energy, Horn also confronts issues of consumption, destruction, and loss, as the industrial and man-made encroach on Icelandic wilderness.
$37.95
(available to order)
Summary:
People are key elements of wild places. At the same time, human entanglements with wild ecologies involve extractivism, the growth of resource-based economies, and imperial-colonial expansion, activities that are wreaking havoc on our planet. Through an ethnographic exploration of Canada’s ten UNESCO Natural World Heritage sites, ''Inhabited'' reflects on the meanings(...)
Environment and environmental theory
November 2021
Inhabited: Wildness and the vitality of the land
Actions:
Price:
$37.95
(available to order)
Summary:
People are key elements of wild places. At the same time, human entanglements with wild ecologies involve extractivism, the growth of resource-based economies, and imperial-colonial expansion, activities that are wreaking havoc on our planet. Through an ethnographic exploration of Canada’s ten UNESCO Natural World Heritage sites, ''Inhabited'' reflects on the meanings of wildness, wilderness, and natural heritage. As we are introduced to local inhabitants and their perspectives, Phillip Vannini and April Vannini ask us to reflect on the colonial and dualist assumptions behind the received meaning of wild, challenging us to reimagine wildness as relational and rooted in vitality. Over the three years they spent in and around these sites, they learned from Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples about their entanglements with each other and with non-human animals, rocks, plants, trees, sky, water, and spirits. The stories, actions, and experiences they encountered challenge conventional narratives of wild places as uninhabited by people and disconnected from culture and society. While it might be tempting to dismiss the idea of wildness as outdated in the Anthropocene era, ''Inhabited'' suggests that rethinking wildness offers a better – if messier – way forward. Part geography and anthropology, part environmental and cultural studies, and part politics and ecology, ''Inhabited'' balances a genuine love of nature’s vitality with a culturally responsible understanding of its interconnectedness with more-than-human ways of life.
Environment and environmental theory
$49.95
(available to order)
Summary:
Seduced by Modernity is the first book devoted to the life and work of Canadian-born modernist photographer Margaret Watkins. Best known for art and advertising photography executed in New York in the 1920s, Watkins was active in the Clarence White school of photography and a participant in the shift from pictorialism to modernism. Mary O'Connor and Katherine Tweedie tell(...)
Photography monographs
September 2007, Montreal Kingston London Ithica
Seduced by modernity : The photography of Margaret Watkins
Actions:
Price:
$49.95
(available to order)
Summary:
Seduced by Modernity is the first book devoted to the life and work of Canadian-born modernist photographer Margaret Watkins. Best known for art and advertising photography executed in New York in the 1920s, Watkins was active in the Clarence White school of photography and a participant in the shift from pictorialism to modernism. Mary O'Connor and Katherine Tweedie tell the story of a dedicated artist in difficult circumstances whose working life spanned a Victorian upbringing in Hamilton, Ontario, and the witnessing of the first Soviet Five-Year Plan. The authors use feminist and historical questions as well as close readings of the photographs to relate Watkins' work to questions of gender, modernity, and visual culture. Watkins' modernism, which involved experimentation and a radical focus on form, transgressed boundaries of conventional, high-art subject matter. Her focus was daily life and her photographs, whether an exploration of the objects in her New York kitchen or the public and industrial spaces of Glasgow, Paris, Cologne, Moscow, and Leningrad in the 1930s, strike a balance between abstraction and an evocation of the everyday, offering a unique gendered perspective on modernism and modernity. Seduced by Modernity makes available for the first time an extensive representation of Watkins' work in high-quality reproduction as part of an exemplary interdisciplinary study that honours an intrepid Canadian artist who refused to be confined by borders, convention, or gender.
Photography monographs
$44.95
(available to order)
Summary:
"Worldchanging : a User's guide for the 21st century " proposes innovative solutions, ideas and inventions emerging today for building a sustainable, livable, prosperous future. From consumer consciousness to a new vision for industry; non-toxic homes to refugee shelters; microfinance to effective philanthropy; socially responsible investing to starting a green business;(...)
Worldchanging : a user's guide for the 21st century
Actions:
Price:
$44.95
(available to order)
Summary:
"Worldchanging : a User's guide for the 21st century " proposes innovative solutions, ideas and inventions emerging today for building a sustainable, livable, prosperous future. From consumer consciousness to a new vision for industry; non-toxic homes to refugee shelters; microfinance to effective philanthropy; socially responsible investing to starting a green business; citizen media to human rights; ecological economics to climate change, this is a comprehensive, cutting-edge overview. The book contains 7 sections which include those topics - from eco-building to responsible shopping, political action to humanitarian relief : stuff : green design, biomimicry, sustainable food, clothing, trade and technology ; shelter : green building and landscaping, clean energy, water, disaster relief and humanitarian design ; cities : smart growth, sustainable communities, transportation, greening infrastructure, product-service systems, leapfrogging and megacity challenges ; community : education, women's rights, public health, holistic approaches to community development, South-South science, social entrepreneurship and micro-lending, and philanthropy ; business : socially responsible investment, worldchanging start-ups, ecological economics, corporate social responsibility and green business ; politics : networked politics, new media, transparency, human rights, non-violent revolution and peacemaking ; planet : big picture -- everything from placing oneself in a bioregion to climate foresight to environmental history to green space exploration. Brought together by Alex Steffen, co-founder of the web site Worldchanging.com, this team of writers includes Cameron Sinclair, founder of Architecture for Humanity, Geekcorps founder Ethan Zuckerman, sustainable food expert Anna Lappé, and many others. With foreword by Al Gore. Design by Sagmeister.
Green Architecture
$99.00
(available in store)
Summary:
''Magic Architecture'' was the architect Frederick Kiesler’s most ambitious book project, an epoch-spanning history of human housing from prehistory to the atomic era, submitted to editors after World War II but left unpublished. In its holistic view of habitation through the lens of anthropology, ecology, and the life sciences, ''Magic Architecture'' is one of the most(...)
Magic architecture: The story of human housing
Actions:
Price:
$99.00
(available in store)
Summary:
''Magic Architecture'' was the architect Frederick Kiesler’s most ambitious book project, an epoch-spanning history of human housing from prehistory to the atomic era, submitted to editors after World War II but left unpublished. In its holistic view of habitation through the lens of anthropology, ecology, and the life sciences, ''Magic Architecture'' is one of the most extraordinary texts on architecture written in the twentieth century, now at last published in the twenty-first. Kiesler’s exploration of the effects of modern technology in combination with the alternative epistemology of “magical” practices associated with cave drawings and the first artifacts of human industry reflects his profoundly interdisciplinary perspective on the development of art, architecture, and design. This critical edition preserves Kiesler’s conception of the book as a neo-Vitruvian treatise divided into ten parts that narrate an alternative history and theory of architecture. Also included are more than seventy composite plate illustrations consisting of images cut and pasted from books and popular science journals, with elaborate captions, as well as Kiesler’s own line drawings made specifically for this project. The editors have reassembled the book’s text and illustrations from archival documents, supplementing them with notes that trace the copious development of the work. Introductory essays provide an interpretation of key themes and bibliographic sources, as well as a chronological context of the architect’s research. Appendixes offer additional textual and visual material gathered by Kiesler for the project.
Architecture Monographs