Book #013 - Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa

Akutagawa Ryunosuke, short-story writer, poet, and essayist, one of the first Japanese modernists translated into English. He was born in Tokyo in 1892, and began writing for student publications at the age of ten. He graduated from Tokyo University in 1916 with an English Literature degree and worked as a teacher before becoming a full time writer in 1919. His mother had gone mad suddenly just months after his birth and he was plagued by fear of inherited insanity all his life. He killed himself in 1927. Haruki Murakami (Introducer) has written eleven novels, eight volumes of short stories and numerous works of non-fiction, as well as translating much American literature into Japanese. His most famous novels are Norwegian Wood, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, and Kafka on the Shore. Jay Rubin (Translator) has translated several of Murakami's works into English and is also the author of Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words. He has been professor of Japanese Literature at the Universities of Washington and Harvard.

Book #012 - The Eyes of the Skin (Polemics) (by Juhani Pallasmaa

Architecture has the capacity to be inspiring, engaging and life-enhancing. But why is it that architectural schemes which look good on the drawing board or the computer screen can be so disappointing ‘in the flesh’?

The answer, argues Juhani Pallasmaa, lies in the dominance of the visual realm in today’s technological and consumer culture, which has pervaded architectural practice and education. Whilst our experience of the world is formulated by a combination of five senses, much architecture is produced under consideration of only one – sight. The suppression of the other sensory realms has led to an impoverishment of our environment, causing a feeling of detachment and alienation.

First published in 1996, The Eyes of the Skin has become a classic of architectural theory and is required reading on courses in schools of architecture around the world. It consists of two extended essays. The first surveys the historical development of the ocularcentric paradigm in western culture since the Greeks, and its impact on the experience of the world and the nature of architecture. The second examines the role of the other senses in authentic architectural experiences, and points the way towards a multi-sensory architecture which facilitates a sense of belonging and integration.

Since the book’s first publication, interest in the role of the body and the senses has been emerging in both architectural philosophy and teaching. This new, revised and extended edition of this seminal work will not only inspire architects and students to design more holistic architecture, but will enrich the general reader’s perception of the world around them.

‘Not since the Danish architect Steen Eiler Rasmussen’s Experiencing Architecture (1959) has there been such a succinct and clear text which could serve students and architects at this critical time in the development of 21st-century architecture.’ Steven Holl

Book #011 - Blade Runner by Ridley Scott

In a cyberpunk vision of the future, man has developed the technology to create replicants, human clones used to serve in the colonies outside Earth but with fixed lifespans. In Los Angeles, 2019, Deckard is a Blade Runner, a cop who specialises in terminating replicants. Originally in retirement, he is forced to re-enter the force when six replicants escape from an offworld colony to Earth. Written by Graeme Roy

Los Angeles, 2019: Rick Deckard of the LAPD's Blade Runner unit prowls the steel & micro-chip jungle of the 21st century for assumed humanoids known as 'replicants'. Replicants were declared illegal after a bloody mutiny on an Off-World Colony, and are to be terminated upon detection. Man's obsession with creating a being equal to himself has back-fired. Written by Matt McQuillan

Deckard is a Blade Runner, a police man of the future who hunts down and terminates replicants, artificially created humans. He wants to get out of the force, but is drawn back in when 4 "skin jobs", a slang term for replicants, hijack a ship back to Earth. The city that Deckard must search for his prey is a huge, sprawling, bleak vision of the future. This film questions what it is to be human, and why life is so precious. Written by Greg Bole

Book #010 - A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction

Christopher Alexander, an architect and author, coined the term pattern language. He used it to refer to common problems of civil and architectural design, from how cities should be laid out to where windows should be placed in a room. The idea was initially popularized in his book A Pattern Language.

Alexander's book The Timeless Way of Building describes what he means by pattern language and how it applies to the design and construction of buildings and towns. Patterns thinking has been applied to other fields, ranging from software design, to user interface design, to designing a classroom curriculum.



Simple example of a pattern

Name: ChocolateChipRatio
Context: You are baking chocolate chip cookies in small batches for family and friends
Consider these patterns first: SugarRatio, FlourRatio, EggRatio
Problem: Determine the optimum ratio of chocolate chips to cookie dough
Solution: Observe that most people consider chocolate to be the best part of the chocolate chip cookie. Also observe that too much chocolate may prevent the cookie from holding together, decreasing its appeal. Since you are cooking in small batches, cost is not a consideration. Therefore, use the maximum amount of chocolate chips that results in a really sturdy cookie.
Consider next: NutRatio or CookingTime or FreezingMethod

Book #010 - Field Notes from a Catastrophe : Man, Nature, and Climate change

Editor's Reviews from Amazon.com

From Publishers Weekly

On the burgeoning shelf of cautionary but occasionally alarmist books warning about the consequences of dramatic climate change, Kolbert's calmly persuasive reporting stands out for its sobering clarity. Expanding on a three-part series for the New Yorker, Kolbert (The Prophet of Love) lets facts rather than polemics tell the story: in essence, it's that Earth is now nearly as warm as it has been at any time in the last 420,000 years and is on the precipice of an unprecedented "climate regime, one with which modern humans have had no prior experience." An inexorable increase in the world's average temperature means that butterflies, which typically restrict themselves to well-defined climate zones, are now flitting where they've never been found before; that nearly every major glacier in the world is melting rapidly; and that the prescient Dutch are already preparing to let rising oceans reclaim some of their land. In her most pointed chapter, Kolbert chides the U.S. for refusing to sign on to the Kyoto Accord. In her most upbeat chapter, Kolbert singles out Burlington, Vt., for its impressive energy-saving campaign, which ought to be a model for the rest of the nation—just as this unbiased overview is a model for writing about an urgent environmental crisis. (Mar. 14)

From Scientific American

In the 1990s the inhabitants of Shishmaref, an Inupiat village on the Alaskan island of Sarichef, noticed that sea ice was forming later and melting earlier. The change meant that they could not safely hunt seal as they had traditionally and that a protective skirt of ice no longer buffered the small town from destructive storm waves. Shishmaref was being undone by a warming world. To survive, the villagers recently decided to move to the mainland. Soon Shishmaref on Sarichef will be gone. Pithy and powerful, the opening of Elizabeth Kolbert's book about global warming, Field Notes from a Catastrophe, echoes that of another book that also originated as a series of articles in the New Yorker magazine. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring starts in much the same way, with a fable about a town that lived in harmony with its surroundings and that fell silent. The question is, Can Field Notes galvanize a national movement to curb global warming in the same way Silent Spring sparked one to curb the use of pesticides? Silent Spring's success as a transformative force came about because of Carson's scientific authority, the way she shaped her argument, the immediate nature of the threat, and the many movements afoot in American society in 1962. Carson was a scientist, and she had credibility when she described how synthetic chemicals, DDT in particular, affect living things. That authority convinced her readers and withstood critics and attacks by the chemical industry. Carson's writing was direct and her rhetoric carefully chosen, as her biographer Linda Lear and other scholars have noted. Carson appreciated Americans' fears about nuclear fallout: something invisible was contaminating their food. She made clear DDT's similar qualities: "No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves." Concerned that her audience might be solely women--mothers worried about the health of their children--she also spoke directly to hunters, outdoorsmen. She deliberately sought, and got, the widest possible reach. Although Carson was describing something people could not see in their food, she was writing about something they could viscerally understand: they saw pesticides being sprayed. They could connect their health with their surroundings, and that kind of connection can lead to powerful activism. It did after Silent Spring. It did in the late 1970s in Woburn, Mass., as Jonathan Harr describes in A Civil Action, the story of families whose children were dying of leukemia. It did in 1978 at Love Canal in New York State. It continues to do so in communities around the world. If we can see the problem--in our family, in our neighborhood, in the natural world we are intimate with--it is not necessarily easier to tackle, but it becomes more immediate, more mobilizing. Just as important as Carson's credentials, her literary brilliance and the tangibility of her topic was the time at which she was writing. In the 1960s Americans were energetically exercising their freedom of transformation. As Adam Rome, an environmental historian at Pennsylvania State University, has written, the environmental movement that blossomed after Silent Spring owed a great deal to the Democratic agenda set in the mid-1950s, to the growing activism of middle-class women, and to a counterculture raised in fear of the bomb and the planet's end. The power of Silent Spring lay in what people and politicians did with it. Field Notes from a Catastrophe is not arriving on a similar scene. There is not much widespread U.S. protest about anything--not about the war with Iraq, not about the administration's links to oil and other industry, not about the diminishing of our civil rights. It is strangely quiet here. Americans are also burned out on environmental catastrophism. Many people have noted that with each new catastrophe that has not appeared--the extinction of nearly everything by the end of last year and food shortages, to mention two examples--doomsayers have lost more of their clout and their audience. The problems grow, but apathy has set in. Kolbert is also writing about something most of us cannot see clearly. Despite reports of melting glaciers, changing ecology, shorter winters and other critical indicators, global warming remains hard to grasp. We can see breast cancer cases on Long Island. We can see high asthma rates in inner cities. And we can see nongovernmental organizations struggling on those fronts. We are not good at seeing big, wide and far away; our sense of scale has not evolved in tandem with the scale of our lives. And yet. After Katrina, newspapers around the country explored the question of whether there was a link between the ferocity of the hurricane and global warming. (Answer: No one hurricane's force can be attributed to global warming, but trends of increasing intensity might, in time.) Maybe climate change is becoming more personal to more Americans--those in the lower 48. Kolbert's book contributes more important images for us to personalize. Fairbanks, Alaska, is losing its foundation; as the permafrost melts, huge holes are opening in the earth, under houses, in front yards. Twenty-two English butterfly species have shifted their ranges to the cooler north. The Dutch are busy developing amphibious houses. Burlington, Vt., has tried to reduce energy consumption and has been only modestly successful; without national political will, any one plan hits a wall. Field Notes has scientific authority as well. Kolbert is not a scientist, but she reports regularly on science, and she may well have talked to every researcher on the planet studying global warming. There are names and characters in Field Notes that even a climate-change obsessive may not have seen in other press articles or books. It can get dizzying at times. Yet the enduring impression is of deep, sober, rooted authority--the same impression Silent Spring conveys. The book is a review of the scientific evidence and of the failure of the politicians we chose. The details are terrifying, and Kolbert's point of view is very clear, but there is no rhetoric of rant here. She is most directly editorial in the last sentence of the book, and by that point, she has built the case. Other books on global warming have not had much widespread social or political effect. There have been many--and even Field Notes arrives at the same time as The Winds of Change, by Eugene Linden (Simon & Schuster), and The Weather Makers, by Tim Flannery (Atlantic Monthly Press). In 1989 the much celebrated The End of Nature, by Bill McKibben, for example, catalyzed debate--is nature really ending?--but not a national movement. Perhaps Field Notes can't make a movement where there's little concentrated activist juice. But something about this book feels as though it might. For a friend of mine, Kolbert's New Yorker series was an awakening--the first time, she said, she really understood what was happening and why we must act. Let's hope this powerful, clear and important book is not just lightly compared to Silent Spring. Let's hope it is this era's galvanizing text.

Le Corbusier + Man-hattan

This scale model of Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin marks the turning point where city plans as constraints on individual initiative are replaced with architectural design at the scale of millions of inhabitants. (Le Corbusier, 1964) [1]

[1] Modernism: the replacement for the spontaneous order by Chris Pearson

Book #009 - Theories and Manifestoes of Contemporary Architecture

Theories and Manifestoes of Contemporary Architecture
by Charles Jencks (Editor), Karl Kropf (Editor)


The last forty years have seen an outburst of theories and manifestoes which explore the possibilities of architecture: its language, evolution and social relevance. With the many ‘crises in architecture and the obvious urban and ecological problems., Modernism has been criticised, questioned, overthrown, extended, subverted and revivified — not a peaceful time for architectural thought and production. The result has been a cascade of new theories, justifications and recipes for building. This anthology, edited by the well-known historian and critic Charles Jencks, and the urbanist and theorist Karl Kropf, collects the main texts which define these changes. Essential for the student and practitioner alike, it presents over 120 of the key arguments of todays major architectural philosophers and gurus. These show that the Modern architecture of the early part of this century has mutated into three main traditions: a critical and ecological Post-Modernism; a High-Tech and sculptural Late Modernism; and a deconstructive, subversive New Modernism. Here are the seminal texts of James Stirling, Robert Venturi, Colin Rowe, Christopher Alexander, Frank Gehry, Reyner Banham, Bernard Tschumi, Rem Koolhaas and many others who have changed the discourse of architecture. Here also are the anti-Modern texts of the traditionalists — Leon Krier, Demetri Porphyrios, Quinlan Terry, Prince Charles and others. Many of these texts are concise, edited varsions of influential books. Highly informative and richly illustrated with over forty drawings and photographs, this volume is a vital learning and teaching tool for all those interested in the philosophies of contemporary architecture.

Book #008 - The Architecture of Happiness by Alain De Botton

With this entertaining and stimulating book, de Botton (How Proust Can Change Your Life) examines the ways architecture speaks to us, evoking associations that, if we are alive to them, can put us in touch with our true selves and influence how we conduct our lives.

Because of this, he contends, it's the architect's task to design buildings that contribute to happiness by embodying ennobling values.




While he makes no claim to be able to define true beauty in architecture, he suggests some of the virtues a building should have (illustrated by pictures on almost every spread): order combined with complexity; balance between contrasting elements; elegance that appears effortless; a coherent relationship among the parts; and self-knowledge, which entails an understanding of human psychology, something that architects all too often overlook.

To underscore his argument, de Botton includes many apt examples of buildings that either incorporate or ignore these qualities, discussing them in ways that make obvious their virtues or failings.

The strength of his book is that it encourages us to open our eyes and really look at the buildings in which we live and work. A three-part series of the same title will air on PBS this fall. (Oct. 3)

Book #007 - Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan by Rem Koolhaas

Product Description
Since its original publication in 1978, Delirious New York has attained mythic status. Back in print in a newly designed edition, this influential cultural, architectural, and social history of New York is even more popular, selling out its first printing on publication. Rem Koolhaas's celebration and analysis of New York depicts the city as a metaphor for the incredible variety of human behavior. At the end of the nineteenth century, population, information, and technology explosions made Manhattan a laboratory for the invention and testing of a metropolitan lifestyle -- "the culture of congestion" -- and its architecture.

"Manhattan," he writes, "is the 20th century's Rosetta Stone . . . occupied by architectural mutations (Central Park, the Skyscraper), utopian fragments (Rockefeller Center, the U.N. Building), and irrational phenomena (Radio City Music Hall)." Koolhaas interprets and reinterprets the dynamic relationship between architecture and culture in a number of telling episodes of New York's history, including the imposition of the Manhattan grid, the creation of Coney Island, and the development of the skyscraper. Delirious New York is also packed with intriguing and fun facts and illustrated with witty watercolors and quirky archival drawings, photographs, postcards, and maps. The spirit of this visionary investigation of Manhattan equals the energy of the city itself.

Amazon.com Review
In this fanciful volume, Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, founder of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (O.M.A.), both analyzes and celebrates New York City. By suggesting the city as the site for an infinite variety of human activities and events--both real and imagined--the essence of the metropolitan lifestyle, its "culture of congestion" and its architecture are revealed in a brilliant new light. "Manhattan," Koolhaas writes, "is the 20th century's Rosetta stone . . . occupied by architectural mutations (Central Park, the Skyscraper), utopian fragments (Rockefeller Center, the U.N. Building), and irrational phenomena (Radio City Music Hall)." Filled with fascinating facts, as well as photographs, postcards, maps, watercolors, and drawings, the vibrancy of Koolhaas's poignant exploration of Gotham equals the heady, frenetic energy of the city itself. Anyone who loves New York will want to own this book.

Booklist of Architect Hyo-Sang Seung

프랑스 고졸 자격 시험문제

프랑스 고졸 자격 시험문제
1장 인간(Human)

질문1-스스로 의식하지 못하는 행복이 가능한가?
질문2-꿈은 필요한가?
질문3-과거에서 벗어날 수 있다면 우리는 자유로운 존재가 될 수 있을까?
질문4-지금의 나는 내 과거의 총합인가?
질문5-관용의 정신에도 비관용이 내포되어 있는가?
질문6-사랑이 의무일 수 있는가?
질문7-행복은 단지 한순간 스치고 지나가는 것인가?
질문8-타인을 존경한다는 것은 일체의 열정을 배제한다는 것을 뜻하는가?
질문9-죽음은 인간에게서 일체의 존재 의미를 박탈해 가는가?
질문10-우리는 자기 자신에게 거짓말을 할 수 있나?
질문11-행복은 인간에게 도달 불가능한 것인가?

2장 인문학(Humanities)

질문1-우리가 하고 있는 말에는 우리 자신이 의식하고있는 것만이 담기는가?
질문2-철학이 세상을 바꿀 수 있는가?
질문3-철학자는 과학자에게 어떤 도움을 줄 수 있는가?
질문4-역사가는 객관적일 수 있는가?
질문5-역사학자가 기억력만 의존해도 좋은가?
질문6-역사는 인간에게 오는 것인가 아니면 인간에 의해 오는 것인가?
질문7-감각을 믿을 수 있는가?
질문8-재화만이 교환의 대상이 될 수 있는가?
질문9-인문학은 인간을 예견 가능한 존재로 파악하는가?
질문10-인류가 한 가지 언어만을 말하는 것은 바람직한가?

3장 예술(Arts)

질문1-예술 작품은 반드시 아름다운가?
질문2-예술없이 아름다움에 대하여 말할 수 있는가?
질문3-예술 작품의 복재는 그 작품에 해를 끼치는 일인가?
질문4-예술 작품은 모두 인간에 대해 이야기 하고 있는가?
질문5-예술이 인간과 현실과의 관계를 변화시킬 수 있는가?

4장 과학(Sciences)

질문1-생물학적 지식은 일체의 유기체를 기계로만 여기기를 요구하는가?
질문2-우리는 과학적으로 증명된 것만을 진리로 받아들여야 하는가?
질문3-계산, 그것은 사유한다는 것을 말하는 것인가?
질문4-무의식에 대한 과학은 가능한가?
질문5-오류는 진리를 발견하는 과정에서 어떤 역할을 하는가?
질문6-이론의 가치는 실제적 효용가치에 따라 가늠되는가?
질문7-과학의 용도는 어디에 있는가?
질문8-현실이 수학적 법칙에 따른다고 할 수 있는가?
질문9-기술이 인간조건을 바꿀 수 있는가?
질문10-지식은 종교적인 것이든 비종교적인 것이든 일체의 믿음을 배제하는가?
질문11-자연을 모델로 삼는 것이 어느 분야에서 가장 적합한가?

5장 정치와 권리(Politics&Rights)

질문1-권리를 수호한다는 것과 이익을 옹호한다는 것은 같은 뜻인가?
질문2-자유는 주어지는 것인가 아니면 싸워서 획득해야 하는 것인가?
질문3-법에 복종하지 않는 행동도 이성적인 행동일 수 있을까?
질문4-여론이 정권을 이끌 수 있는가?
질문5-의무를 다하지 않고도 권리를 행사할 수 있는가?
질문6-노동은 욕구 충족의 수단에 불구한가?
질문7- 정의의 요구와 자유의 요구는 구별될 수 있는가?
질문8-노동은 도덕적 가치를 지니는가?
질문9-자유를 두려워해야 하나?
질문10-유토피아는 한낱 꿈일 뿐인가?
질문11-국가는 개인의 적인가?
질문12-어디에서 정신의 자유를 알아차릴 수 있나?
질문13-권력 남용은 불가피한 것인가?
질문14-다름은 곧 불평등을 의미하는 것인가?
질문15-노동은 종속적일 따름인가?
질문16-평화와 불의가 함께 갈 수 있나?

6장 윤리(Ethics)

질문1-도덕적으로 행동한다는 것은 반드시 자신의 욕망과 싸운다는 것을 뜻하는가 ?
질문2-우리는 좋다고 하는 것만을 바라는가?
질문3-의무를 다하는 것만으로 충분한가?
질문4-무엇을 비인간적인 행위라고 하는가?
질문5-일시적이고 순간적인 것에도 가치가 존재하는가?
질문6-무엇이 내 안에서 어떤 행동을 해야 할 지를 말해 주는가?
질문7-우리는 정념을 찬양할 수 있는가?
질문8-종교적 믿음을 가지는 것은 이성을 포기한다는 것을 뜻하는가?
질문9-정열은 우리의 의무 이행을 방해하는가?
질문10-진실에 저항할 수 있는가?
질문11-진리가 우리 마음을 불편하게 할 때 진리 대신 우리에게 위안을 주는 환상을 좇아도 좋은가?

New Urbanism - Wikipedia

New Urbanism is an urban design movement that arose in the United States in the early 1980s. Its goal is to reform many aspects of real estate development and urban planning, from urban retrofits to suburban infill. New urbanist neighborhoods are designed to contain a diverse range of housing and jobs, and to be walkable.
A walk street in Venice, California, built around 1905.

New Urbanism can include (neo)traditional neighborhood design, transit-oriented development, and New Pedestrianism. New Urbanism is the re-invention of the old urbanism, commonly seen before the advent of the automobile age, while New Pedestrianism is a further elaboration of less common, pedestrian-oriented, urban design experiments that date to the early 20th century.

Book #006 - Thermal Delight in Architecture: Lisa Heschong

Our thermal environment is as rich in cultural associations as our visual, acoustic, olfactory, and tactile environments. This book explores the potential for using thermal qualities as an expressive element in building design.

Until quite recently, building technology and design has favored high-energy-consuming mechanical methods of neutralizing the thermal environment. It has not responded to the various ways that people use, remember, and care about the thermal environment and how they associate their thermal sense with their other senses. The hearth fire, the sauna, the Roman and Japanese baths, and the Islamic garden are discussed as archetypes of thermal delight about which rituals have developed—reinforcing bonds of affection and ceremony forged in the thermal experience. Not only is thermal symbolism now obsolete but the modern emphasis on central heating systems and air conditioning and hermetically sealed buildings has actually damaged our thermal coping and sensing mechanisms. This book for the solar age could help change all that and open up for us a new dimension of architectural experience.

As the cost of energy continues to skyrocket, alternatives to the use of mechanical force must be developed to meet our thermal needs. A major alternative is the use of passive solar energy, and the book will provide those interested in solar design with a reservoir of ideas.

Lisa Heschong earned a degree in Environmental Planning from the University of California at Berkeley and once in Architecture from MIT.

Book #005 - Architecture and the Sciences ; Exchanging Metaphors

Architecture and the Sciences ; Exchanging Metaphors

Authors ;
Alessandra Ponte is a professor at the School of Architecture, Princeton University
Antoine Picon teaches at the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees.

Book Description ;
Since antiquity, the sciences have served as a source of images and metaphors for architecture and have had a direct influence on the shaping of built space. In recent years, architects have been looking again at science as a source of inspiration in the production of their designs and constructions. This volume evaluates the interconnections between the sciences and architecture from both historical and contemporary perspectives.
Architecture and the Sciences shows how scientific paradigms have migrated to architecture through the appropriation of organic and mechanical models. Conversely, architecture has provided images for scientific and technological discourse. Accordingly, this volume investigates the status of the exchanges between the two domains.

Contents include:
Alessandra Ponte, Desert Testing; Martin Bressani, Violet-le-Duc's Optic; Georges Teyssot, Norm and Type: Variations on a Theme; Reinhold Martin, Organicism's Other; Catherine Ingraham, Why All These Birds? Birds in the Sky, Birds in the Hand; Antoine Picon, Architecture, Science, Technology and the Virtual Realm; and Felicity Scott, Encounters with the Face of America.

All informations are based on Amazon.com / Editorial Reviews

Architectural Fashion?

Disregard whether it is good to follow or lead the fashion, how to expect the next fashion of architecture?

1. Watch what people do at school.
2. Read what general audience may like.
3. Observe the main street of arts and design – since architecture industry moves very slowly…
4. Daydream… ^-^;;
5. What else?

National Museum of the American Indian

Book #004 - The Economy of Cities: Jane Jacobs

Jane Jacobs, OC, O.Ont (May 4, 1916 – April 25, 2006) was an American-born Canadian urbanist, writer and activist. She is best known for “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” (1961), a powerful critique of the urban renewal policies of the 1950s in the United States. The book has been credited with reaching beyond planning issues to influence the spirit of the times.

Along with her well-known printed works, Jacobs is equally well known for organizing grass-roots efforts to block urban-renewal projects that would have destroyed local neighborhoods. She was instrumental in the eventual cancellation of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, and after moving to Canada in 1968, equally influential in canceling the Spadina Expressway and the associated network of highways under construction.




Works:
Jane Jacobs spent her life studying cities. Her books include:

The Death and Life of Great American Cities

The Death and Life of Great American Cities is her single-most influential book and possibly the most influential American book on urban planning and cities. Widely read by both planning professionals and the general public, the book is a strong critique of the urban renewal policies of the 1950s, which, she claimed, destroyed communities and created isolated, unnatural urban spaces. Jacobs advocated dense, mixed-use neighborhoods and frequently cited New York City’s Greenwich Village as an example of a vibrant urban community.

Robert Caro has cited it as the strongest influence on The Power Broker, his legendary biography of Robert Moses, though Caro does not mention Jacobs by name even once in the book despite Jacobs' battles with Moses over his proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway.

Beyond the practical lessons in city design and planning that Death and Life offers, the theoretical underpinnings of the work challenge the modern development mindset. Jane Jacobs adheres to inductive, nearly scientific, reasoning. Moreover, she is open to anecdotal evidence coming to bear on what has been induced from harder data.


The Economy of Cities

The thesis of this book is that cities are the primary drivers of economic development.

Jacobs' main argument is that all economic growth derives from urban import replacement. Import replacement is when a city begins to locally produce goods which it formerly imported, e.g., Tokyo bicycle factories replacing Tokyo bicycle importers in the 1800s. Jacobs claims that import replacement builds up local infrastructure, skills, and production. Jacobs also claims that the increased produce is exported to other cities, giving those other cities a new opportunity to engage in import replacement, thus producing a positive cycle of growth.

In an interview with Bill Steigerwald in Reason Magazine (06/01), Jacobs said that if she is remembered for being a great intellectual she will be remembered not for her work concerning city planning, but for the discovery of import replacement. However, her ideas are similar to those that had begun to be advanced earlier about import substitution by scholars such as Andre Gunder Frank.

The book also advances a new argument that cities preceded agriculture, rather than the reverse, which was archaeologists' previous belief. Archaeologists believed that cities required a food surplus to support specialist workers, thus requiring an existing agricultural economy. Jacobs claims that instead, cities already existed as permanent trading centers, and discovered agriculture through trade in wild animals and grains, and then disseminated agriculture to rural areas.


Cities and the Wealth of Nations

Beginning with a concise treatment of classical economics, this book challenges one of the fundamental assumptions of the greatest economists. Classical (and Neo-classical) economists consider the nation-state to be the main player in macroeconomics. Jacobs makes a forceful argument that it is not the nation-state, rather it is the city which is the true player in this world wide game. She restates the idea of import replacement from her earlier book “The Economy of Cities”, while speculating on the further ramifications of considering the city first and the nation second, or not at all.


The Question of Separatism: Quebec and the Struggle over Sovereignty-Association

“ In 1979 and 1980, Jane Jacobs reached the conclusion that Quebec sovereignty was necessary because of her understanding of how cities emerge and how they influence the development of nations. She looked specifically at Montreal and Toronto and foresaw the regionalization of Montreal, making it into a sort of feeder for Toronto as regional airports are to a hub. ‘In sum,’ she wrote, ‘Montreal cannot afford to behave like other Canadian regional cities without doing great damage to the economic well-being of the Québécois. It must instead become a creative economic centre in its own right… Yet there is probably no chance of this happening if Quebec remains a province.’ ”


Systems of Survival

Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics moves outside of the city, studying the moral underpinnings of work. As with her other work, she used an observational approach. This book is written as a Platonic dialogue. It appears that she (as described by characters in her book) took newspaper clippings of moral judgements related to work, collected and sorted them to find that they fit two patterns of moral behaviour that were mutually exclusive. She calls these two patterns “Moral Syndrome A”, or commercial moral syndrome and “Moral Syndrome B” or guardian moral syndrome. She claims that the commercial moral syndrome is applicable to business owners, scientists, farmers, and traders. Similarly, she claims that the guardian moral syndrome is applicable to government, charities, hunter-gatherers, and religious institutions. She also claims that these Moral Syndromes are fixed, and do not fluctuate over time.

It is important to stress that Jane Jacobs is providing a theory about the morality of work, and not all moral ideas. Moral ideas that are not included in her syndrome are applicable to both syndromes.

Jane Jacobs goes on to describe what happens when these two moral syndromes are mixed, showing the work underpinnings of the Mafia and communism, and what happens when New York Subway Police are paid bonuses here — reinterpreted slightly as a part of the larger analysis.


The Nature of Economies

The Nature of Economies, also in Platonic dialogue form, and based on the premise that “human beings exist wholly within nature as part of the natural order in every respect” (p ix), argues that the same principles underlie both ecosystems and economies: “development and co-development through differentiations and their combinations; expansion through diverse, multiple uses of energy; and self-maintenance through self-refueling” (p82).

Jacobs’ characters then discuss the four methods by which “dynamically stable systems” may evade collapse: “bifurcations; positive-feedback loops; negative-feedback controls; and emergency adaptations” (p86). Their conversations also cover the “double nature of fitness for survival” (traits to avoid destroying one’s own habitat as well as success in competition to feed and breed, p119), and unpredictability including the butterfly effect characterized in terms of multiplicity of variables as well as disproportionality of response to cause, and self-organization where “a system can be making itself up as it goes along” (p137).

Through the dialogue, Jacobs’ characters explore and examine the similarities between the functioning of ecosystems and economies. Topics include: environmental and economic development, growth and expansion, and how economies and environments keep themselves alive through “self-refueling”. Jacobs also comments on the nature of economic and biological diversity and its role in the development and growth of the two kinds of systems.

The book is infused with many real-world economic and biological examples, which help keep the book “down to earth” and comprehensible, if dense. Concepts are furnished with both economic and biological examples, showing their coherence in both worlds.

One particularly interesting insight is the creation of “something from nothing” — an economy from nowhere[citation needed]. In the biological world, free energy is given through sunlight, but in the economic world natural resources supply this free energy, or at least starter energy. Another interesting insight is the creation of economic diversity through the combination of different technologies, for example the typewriter and television as inputs and outputs of a computer system[citation needed]: this can lead to the creation of “new species of work”[citation needed].


Dark Age Ahead

Published in 2004 by Random House, in Dark Age Ahead Jacobs argued that “North American” civilization showed signs of spiral of decline comparable to the collapse of the Roman empire. Her thesis focused on “five pillars of our culture that we depend on to stand firm,” which can be summarized as the nuclear family (but also community), education, science, representational government and taxes, and corporate and professional accountability. As the title suggests, her outlook was far more pessimistic than in her previous books. However, in the conclusion she admitted that, “At a given time it is hard to tell whether forces of cultural life or death are in the ascendancy. Is suburban sprawl, with its murders of communities and wastes of land, time, and energy, a sign of decay? Or is rising interest in means of overcoming sprawl a sign of vigor and adaptability in North American culture? Arguably, either could turn out to be true.”

Bruder Klaus Field Chapel

Book #003 - Architectural Regionalism : Vincent Canizaro

In this rapidly globalizing world, any investigation of architecture inevitably leads to considerations of regionalism. But despite its omnipresence in contemporary practice and theory, architectural regionalism remains a fluid concept, its historical development and current influence largely undocumented. This comprehensive reader brings together over 40 key essays illustrating the full range of ideas embodied by the term. Authored by important critics, historians, and architects such as Kenneth Frampton, Lewis Mumford, Sigfried Giedion, and Alan Colquhoun, Architectural Regionalism represents the history of regionalist thinking in architecture from the early twentieth century to today. These seminal texts—many of which are out of print and hard to locate—are organized around themes that include regionalism and rapid modernization, modernism, historicism, regional planning, bioregionalism, and critical regionalism. Also included are a small group of recent, previously unpublished essays that extend the notion of architectural regionalism into the future. Taken as a whole, the collection underscores the continuing relevance of the concept as it fosters thoughtful works that engage the senses, embody and express local cultural processes, promote environmental sustainability, and enhance people's awareness of the world around them. Editor Vincent Canizaro's insightful introduction and his brief analysis of each essay guides readers through the lively debate surrounding this topic, making this the definitive reference on architectural regionalism for faculty, students, and practitioners in design and design-related fields.

Cloister Museum

In Praise of shadows in Western architecture?

侘寂 (wabi-sabi)

와비사비에 관한 글을 위키에서 퍼왔습니다.

Wabi-sabi (侘寂 ) represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience. The phrase comes from the two words wabi and sabi. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete" (according to Leonard Koren in his book Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers). It is a concept derived from the Buddhist assertion of the Three marks of existence (三法印 ,sanbōin), specifically impermanence (無常 ,mujō). Note also that the Japanese word for rust, 錆 is also pronounced sabi (the borrowed Chinese character is different, but the word itself is of assumed common etymology), and there is an obvious semantic connection between these concepts.

Characteristics of the wabi-sabi aesthetic include asymmetry, asperity, simplicity, modesty, intimacy, and suggest a natural process.

Photographer Nikki S. Lee’s Triple Exposure

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Book #002 - Thinking Architecture : Peter Zumthor

March 17th, 2009 through March 30th, 2009

Product Description

In order to design a building with a sensuous connection to life, one must think in a way that goes far beyond form and construction. In these essays Peter Zumthor expresses his motivation in designing buildings, which speak to our emotions and understanding in so many ways, and possess a powerful and unmistakable presence and personality.

This book, whose first edition has been out of print for years, has been expanded to include three new essays: "Does Beauty Have a Form?,” "The Magic of the Real,” and "Light in the Landscape.” It has been freshly illustrated throughout with new color photographs of Zumthor’s new home and studio in Haldenstein, taken specially for this edition by Laura Padgett, and received a new typography by Hannele Grönlund.

Book #001 - In Praise of Shadows : Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

March 2nd 2009 through March 16th 2009

In Praise of Shadows (陰翳礼讃 ,In'ei Raisan?) is the title of a short book on aesthetics by the Japanese author and novelist Jun'ichirō Tanizaki. It was translated to English more than 40 years later by Japanese literature academics, Thomas Harper and Edward Seidensticker.