The average lifespan of a house is somewhere around 100 years. During that time it will see many mutations in household composition and related spatial rituals. the more durable component of the house or building–constitutes the frame within which change can take place, while the frame defines the generic space, the space in which change can occur.
The chapters on leading contemporary architects have been greatly expanded. There is new material on the later development of Frank Lloyd Wright and the more recent buildings of Walter Gropius, particularly his American Embassy in Athens. In his discussion of Le Corbusier, Mr. Giedion provides detailed analyses of the Carpenter Center at Harvard University, Le Corbusier’s only building in the United States, and his Priory of La Tourette near Lyons.
Learning from Las Vegas created a healthy controversy on its appearance in 1972, calling for architects to be more receptive to the tastes and values of “common” people and less immodest in their erections of “heroic,” self-aggrandizing monuments.
In this book, the author presents an architectural theory according to which the idea of type is not conceived as a mechanism of reproduction but as a structure of form capable of multiple developments.
Architecture As Space
It examines the history of architecture in light of its essence as space, animating and illuminating architectural creations so that their beauty—or indifference—is exposed. Beautifully illustrated with examples from the entire history of the art, this is one of the most stimulating and provocative books ever written on the history and purpose of architecture.
A Pattern Language
You can use this book to design a house for yourself with your family; you can use it to work with your neighbors to improve your town and neighborhood; you can use it to design an office, or a workshop, or a public building. And you can use it to guide you in the actual process of construction.
The Architecture of Image: Existential Space in Cinema
This book explores the shared experiential ground of cinema, art, and architecture. Pallasmaa carefully examines how the classic directors Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Andrei Tarkovsky used architectural imagery to create emotional states in their movies. He also explores the startling similarities between the landscapes of painting and those of movies.
Precedents in Architecture: Analytic Diagrams, Formative Ideas, and Partis
Thirty-eight leading architects are represented in this updated edition through an analysis of more than 100 buildings that are assessed using a diagrammatic technique applicable to any building. This impressive collection includes fourteen new buildings and seven new, innovative architects distinguished by the strength, quality, and interest of their designs. It delivers valuable guidance in analyzing architectural history as an evolutionary process by exploring the commonality of design ideas reflected in a broad range of structures by internationally renowned architects.
Which books did we miss? Have you read any of these?