$50.95
(available to order)
Summary:
In this sweeping chronicle of guaraná—a glossy-leaved Amazonian vine packed with more caffeine than any other plant—Seth Garfield develops a wide-ranging approach to the history of Brazil itself. The story begins with guaraná as the pre-Columbian cultivar of the Sateré-Mawé people in the Lower Amazon region, where it figured centrally in the Indigenous nation's origin(...)
Guaraná: How Brazil Embraced the World's Most Caffeine-Rich Plant
Actions:
Price:
$50.95
(available to order)
Summary:
In this sweeping chronicle of guaraná—a glossy-leaved Amazonian vine packed with more caffeine than any other plant—Seth Garfield develops a wide-ranging approach to the history of Brazil itself. The story begins with guaraná as the pre-Columbian cultivar of the Sateré-Mawé people in the Lower Amazon region, where it figured centrally in the Indigenous nation's origin stories, dietary regimes, and communal ceremonies. During subsequent centuries of Portuguese colonialism and Brazilian rule, guaraná was reformulated by settlers, scientists, folklorists, food technologists, and marketers. Whether in search of pleasure, profits, professional distinction, or patriotic markers, promoters imparted new meanings to guaraná and found new uses for it. Today, it is the namesake ingredient of a multibillion-dollar soft drink industry and a beloved national symbol. Guaraná’s journey elucidates human impacts on Amazonian ecosystems; the circulation of knowledge, goods, and power; and the promise of modernity in Latin America's largest nation. For Garfield, the beverage's history reveals not only the structuring of inequalities in Brazil but also the mythmaking and ordering of social practices that constitute so-called traditional and modern societies.
Food
$48.95
(available in store)
Summary:
With steps leading down to the water’s edge, stepwells are inverted buildings that descend several stories below ground. Often, they are as monumental and ornate as a church, and this is intentional. They are a source of water, a gathering space, and a temple all at once. Stepwells create a visual and spatial experience unlike any other, in which the below-ground remains(...)
To reach the source: The stepwells of India
Actions:
Price:
$48.95
(available in store)
Summary:
With steps leading down to the water’s edge, stepwells are inverted buildings that descend several stories below ground. Often, they are as monumental and ornate as a church, and this is intentional. They are a source of water, a gathering space, and a temple all at once. Stepwells create a visual and spatial experience unlike any other, in which the below-ground remains connected to the sun and sky above. There are thousands of stepwells across the Indian Subcontinent, many of them 500-1,000 years old, each one different from the other. Most lie abandoned and overlooked, in varying states of preservation or, more often, disrepair, but they remain beautiful and compelling. The 48 photographs in this book were made across India to convey the beauty and diversity of these structures and the striking ambiances they elicit. A brief text accompanies the images to provide history and context, interspersed with several architectural drawings by Tanvi Jain. The images seek to give readers a sense of what it feels like to immerse oneself in such a unique, meditative space, and to be impelled towards the very source of life: water.
Photography monographs
Baldness and modernism
$63.00
(available in store)
Summary:
The original bald and unconvincing narrative that triggered this book is that put about by Alison and Peter Smithson in their 1981 Heroic Period of Modern Architecture, limiting modernism to 1915–1929. This fiction is re-contextualized with studies of iconic Bauhaus bald heads – Schlemmer, Itten, etc., such Literal Baldness is the subject of Part 1. Part 2 of Phenomenal(...)
Baldness and modernism
Actions:
Price:
$63.00
(available in store)
Summary:
The original bald and unconvincing narrative that triggered this book is that put about by Alison and Peter Smithson in their 1981 Heroic Period of Modern Architecture, limiting modernism to 1915–1929. This fiction is re-contextualized with studies of iconic Bauhaus bald heads – Schlemmer, Itten, etc., such Literal Baldness is the subject of Part 1. Part 2 of Phenomenal Baldness unwinds the Bauhaus narrative put about by Walter Gropius, one that has held water for 100 years. Spin doctor Gropius manipulated his Bauhaus successes into a cornerstone of post WW2 modernism. Cracks in this story are now emerging along with the fact that Gropius was in hindsight, not a very good architect. Attacks on the Bauhaus like those by Rudolph Schwartz or Tom Wolf as well as a comprehensive list of Gropius hand-holders, and those edited out of his narrative are here explored. To conclude Gropius is compared to his contemporary Bruno Taut, a far more interesting and talented architect. This book like Peter Wilson’s previous "Bedtime Stories for Architects" or "Some Reasons for Traveling to Italy" is written in his unique anecdotal style, savoring Shandyisms and the quirks of history.
Architectural Theory
$50.00
(available in store)
Summary:
Mass housing in post-war socialist countries was a quick and effective way to provide homes for the expanding city populations after WWII, but after the collapse of the Soviet Bloc the fate of these constructions became uncertain. While modernist estates are being renovated or prematurely demolished, their tenants remain undaunted. They have lived through the buildings’(...)
The tenants: Concrete portraits of the former Eastern Bloc
Actions:
Price:
$50.00
(available in store)
Summary:
Mass housing in post-war socialist countries was a quick and effective way to provide homes for the expanding city populations after WWII, but after the collapse of the Soviet Bloc the fate of these constructions became uncertain. While modernist estates are being renovated or prematurely demolished, their tenants remain undaunted. They have lived through the buildings’ golden years and darker times. For the last decade, Zupagrafika has documented the housing estates erected in Central and Eastern Europe, still perceived by many as ‘eyesores,’ through photographs and illustrated paper models. The Tenants features over 40 housing projects in 37 different cities of the former Eastern Bloc and ex-Yugoslavia. From Berlin to Norilsk, and all the way through Kyiv to Tallinn, the album portrays the inhabitants of those complexes holding models of their homes, while sharing the stories of lives lived in the prefab panel blocks. Includes a foreword by the sociologist and urban researcher Maciej Frackowiak and an index of the featured housing estates, providing an insight into their history. The portraits were taken by David Navarro and Martyna Sobecka, with contributions by local photographers.
Modernism
Theory of water
$22.00
(available in store)
Summary:
For many years, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson has found refuge in skiing—in all kinds of weather across different forms of terrain, often following the trail beside a beloved creek near her home. Recently, as she skimmed along this path and meditated on our world's uncertainty—including environmental devastation, the rise of authoritarianism, and the effects of ongoing(...)
Theory of water
Actions:
Price:
$22.00
(available in store)
Summary:
For many years, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson has found refuge in skiing—in all kinds of weather across different forms of terrain, often following the trail beside a beloved creek near her home. Recently, as she skimmed along this path and meditated on our world's uncertainty—including environmental devastation, the rise of authoritarianism, and the effects of ongoing social injustice—her mind turned to the ice beside her, and the snow beneath her feet. And she asked herself: What might it mean to truly listen to water? To know not only the land on which we live, but the water that surrounds and inhabits us? To coexist with and alongside water? So begins this renowned writer's quest to discover, understand, and trace the historical and cultural interactions of Indigenous peoples with water in all its forms. On her journey, she reflects on the teachings, traditions, stories, and creative work of others in her community—particularly those of her longtime friend Doug Williams, an Elder whose presence suffuses these pages; reads deeply the words of thinkers from other communities whose writing expands her own; and begins to shape a "Theory of Water" that reimagines relationships among all beings and life-forces.
indigenous
$65.00
(available to order)
Summary:
In ''Tbilisi Interiors'', photographer Anna Tsitsishvili returns to the subject that defined her acclaimed debut, Tbilisi, with a renewed and intimate focus. This follow-up photobook shifts the lens inward—literally—inviting us beyond the façades of the Georgian capital to explore the layered and often surprising worlds within. Where her first book captured the(...)
Anna Tsitsishvili: Tbilisi interiors
Actions:
Price:
$65.00
(available to order)
Summary:
In ''Tbilisi Interiors'', photographer Anna Tsitsishvili returns to the subject that defined her acclaimed debut, Tbilisi, with a renewed and intimate focus. This follow-up photobook shifts the lens inward—literally—inviting us beyond the façades of the Georgian capital to explore the layered and often surprising worlds within. Where her first book captured the textured urban landscapes of Tbilisi’s streets and architecture, ''Tbilisi Interiors'' reveals the hidden lives behind closed doors: eclectic rooms filled with faded grandeur, modest apartments shaped by decades of personal history, and spaces that quietly tell stories of resilience, creativity, and cultural continuity. Through Tsitsishvili’s eye, interiors become portraits—of individuals, families, and the city itself. This collection is not merely about design or decor; it is an emotional and aesthetic mapping of Tbilisi’s soul. With sensitivity and an artist’s sense of composition, Tsitsishvili documents spaces both curated and chaotic, refined and improvised, capturing the poetry of everyday life in Georgia’s capital.Tbilisi Interiors is a love letter to a city in transition, seen from within.With sensitivity and an artist’s sense of composition, Tsitsishvili documents spaces both curated and chaotic, refined and improvised, capturing the poetry of everyday life in Georgia’s capital.
Photography monographs
$85.00
(available to order)
Summary:
From Egypt and Classical Greece and Rome through the building booms of the Gothic era and the Renaissance, and from the Industrial Revolution to the present era of digital modeling, "Building : 3,000 Years of Design, Engineering, and Construction", charts centuries of innovations in engineering and building construction. This comprehensive and heavily illustrated volume,(...)
Building : 3000 years of design engineering and construction
Actions:
Price:
$85.00
(available to order)
Summary:
From Egypt and Classical Greece and Rome through the building booms of the Gothic era and the Renaissance, and from the Industrial Revolution to the present era of digital modeling, "Building : 3,000 Years of Design, Engineering, and Construction", charts centuries of innovations in engineering and building construction. This comprehensive and heavily illustrated volume, aimed at students and young professionals as well as general readers, explores the materials, classic texts, instruments, and theories that have propelled modern engineering, and the famous and not-so-famous buildings designed through the ages, from the Parthenon to Chartes Cathedral and the dome of St. Peter's, from eighteenth-century silk mills in England to the Crystal Palace, and on to the first Chicago high-rises, the Sydney Opera House, and the latest "green" skyscrapers. The book concentrates on developments since the industrial and scientific revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Incorporated within the continuous narrative are sidebars with short biographies of eminent engineers, excerpts from classic texts, stories of individual projects of major importance, and brief histories of key concepts such as calculus. Also included are extensive reference materials: appendices, a glossary, bibliography, and index.
Engineering Structures
$32.95
(available to order)
Summary:
In "Enduring innocence", Keller Easterling tells the stories of outlaw "spatial products" -resorts, information technology campuses, retail chains, golf courses, ports, and other hybrid spaces that exist outside normal constituencies and jurisdictions, in difficult political situations around the world. These spaces -familiar commercial formulas of retail, business, and(...)
Architectural Theory
October 2007, Cambridge (MA), London
Enduring innocence : global archtitecture and its political masquerades
Actions:
Price:
$32.95
(available to order)
Summary:
In "Enduring innocence", Keller Easterling tells the stories of outlaw "spatial products" -resorts, information technology campuses, retail chains, golf courses, ports, and other hybrid spaces that exist outside normal constituencies and jurisdictions, in difficult political situations around the world. These spaces -familiar commercial formulas of retail, business, and trade - aspire to be worlds unto themselves, self-reflexive and innocent of politics. But as Easterling shows, these enclaves can become political pawns and objects of contention. Jurisdictionally ambiguous, they are imbued with myths, desires, and symbolic capital. Their hilarious and dangerous masquerades often mix quite easily with the cunning of political platforms. Easterling argues that the study of such "real estate cocktails" provides vivid evidence of the market's weakness, resilience, or violence. These regimes of nonnational sovereignty, she writes, "move around the world like weather fronts"; Easterling focuses not on their blending - their global connectivity - but on their segregation and the cultural collisions that ensue. "Enduring innocence" resists the dream of one globally legible world found in many architectural discourses on globalization. Instead, Easterling's consideration of these segregated worlds provides new tools for practitioners sensitive to the political composition of urban landscapes.
Architectural Theory
books
$60.00
(available to order)
Summary:
After the Bauhaus's closing in 1933, many of its protagonists moved to the United States, where their acceptance had to be cultivated. The key to understanding the American reception of the Bauhaus is to be found not in the émigré success stories or the famous(...)
Architecture since 1900, Europe
June 1999, Cambridge
The Bauhaus and America : first contacts 1919-1936
Actions:
Price:
$60.00
(available to order)
Summary:
After the Bauhaus's closing in 1933, many of its protagonists moved to the United States, where their acceptance had to be cultivated. The key to understanding the American reception of the Bauhaus is to be found not in the émigré success stories or the famous 1938 Bauhaus exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, but in the course of America's early contact with the Bauhaus. In this book Margret Kentgens-Craig shows that the fame of the Bauhaus in America was the result not only of the inherent qualities of its concepts and products, but also of a unique congruence of cultural supply and demand, of a consistent flow of information, and of fine-tuned marketing. Thus the history of the American reception of the Bauhaus in the 1920s and 1930s foreshadows the patterns of fame-making that became typical of the post-World War II art world. The transfer of artistic, intellectual, and pedagogical concepts from one cultural context to another is a process of transformation and integration. In presenting a case study of this process, the book also provides fresh insights into the German-American cultural history of the period from 1919 to 1936.
books
June 1999, Cambridge
Architecture since 1900, Europe
books
$74.95
(available to order)
Summary:
The Unknown City takes its place in the emerging architectural literature that looks beyond design process and buildings to discover new ways of looking at the urban experience. A multistranded contemplation of the notion of "knowing a place," it is about both the existence and the possibilities of architecture and the city. An important inspiration for the book is the(...)
Urban Theory
June 2000, Cambridge, Mass.
The unknown city : contesting architecture and social space
Actions:
Price:
$74.95
(available to order)
Summary:
The Unknown City takes its place in the emerging architectural literature that looks beyond design process and buildings to discover new ways of looking at the urban experience. A multistranded contemplation of the notion of "knowing a place," it is about both the existence and the possibilities of architecture and the city. An important inspiration for the book is the work of Henri Lefebvre, in particular his ideas on space as a historical production. Many of the essays also draw on the social critique and tactics of the Situationist movement. The international gathering of contributors includes art, architectural, and urban historians and theorists; urban geographers; architects, artists, and filmmakers; and literary and cultural theorists. The essays range from abstract considerations of spatial production and representation to such concrete examples of urban domination as video surveillance and Regency London as the site of male pleasure. Although many of the essays are driven by social, cultural, and urban theory, they also tell real stories about real places. Each piece is in some way a critique of capitalism and a thought experiment about how designers and city dwellers working together can shape the cities of tomorrow.
books
June 2000, Cambridge, Mass.
Urban Theory