Questioning Architectural Judgment

by Steven A. Moore
Questioning Architectural Judgment
Author: Steven A. Moore
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2013-07-24
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1135079943
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The book shines light on the problem of judgment, particularly in the realm of architectural "technics" and the codes that regulate it. The struggle to define "sustainability," and thus judge architecture through such lenses, is but one dimension of the contemporary problem of judgment. By providing the reader with an inherently interdisciplinary study of a particular discipline—architecture, it brings to the topic lenses that challenge the too frequently unexamined assumptions of the discipline. By situating architecture within a broader cultural field and using case studies to dissect the issues discussed, the book emphasizes that it is not simply a matter of designing better, more efficient, or more stringent codes to guide place-making, but a matter of reconstructing the boundaries of the systems to be coded. The authors are winners of the EDRA Place-Research Award 2014 for their work on the Green Alley Demonstration Project used in the book.

Questioning Architectural Judgment

by Steven A. Moore
Questioning Architectural Judgment
Author: Steven A. Moore
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780415840811
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The book shines light on the problem of judgment, particularly in the realm of architectural "technics" and the codes that regulate it. The struggle to define "sustainability," and thus judge architecture through such lenses, is but one dimension of the contemporary problem of judgment. By providing the reader with an inherently interdisciplinary study of a particular discipline--architecture, it brings to the topic lenses that challenge the too frequently unexamined assumptions of the discipline. By situating architecture within a broader cultural field and using case studies to dissect the issues discussed, the book emphasizes that it is not simply a matter of designing better, more efficient, or more stringent codes to guide place-making, but a matter of reconstructing the boundaries of the systems to be coded. The authors are winners of the EDRA Place-Research Award 2014 for their work on the Green Alley Demonstration Project used in the book.

The Imperfect City: On Architectural Judgment

by Samir Younes
The Imperfect City: On Architectural Judgment
Author: Samir Younes
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2016-03-03
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1317027728
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If architectural judgment were a city, a city of ideas and forms, then it is a very imperfect city. When architects judge the success or failure of a building, the range of ways and criteria which can be used for this evaluation causes many contentious and discordant arguments. Proposing that the increase in number and intensity of such arguments threatens to destabilize the very grounds upon which judgment is supposed to rest, this book examines architectural judgment in its historical, cultural, political, and psychological dimensions and their convergence on that most expressive part of architecture, namely: architectural character. It stresses the value of reasoned judgment in justifying architectural form -a judgment based on three sets of criteria: those criteria that are external to architecture, those that are internal to architecture, and those that pertain to the psychology of the architect as image-maker. External criteria include, philosophies of history or theories of modernity; internal criteria include architectural character and architectural composition; while the psychological criteria pertain to 'mimetic rivalry', or rivaling desires for the same architectural forms. Yet, although architectural conflicts can adversely influence judgment, they can at the same time, contribute to the advancement of architectural culture.

Diversity among Architects

by Craig Wilkins
Diversity among Architects
Author: Craig Wilkins
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2016-03-10
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1317479270
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Diversity among Architects presents a series of essays questioning the homogeneity of architecture practitioners, who remain overwhelmingly male and Caucasian, to help you create a field more representative of the population you serve. The book is the collected work of author Craig L. Wilkins, an African American scholar and practitioner, and discusses music, education, urban geography, social justice, community design centers, race-space identity, shared landscape, and many more topics.

Media Architecture

by Alexander Wiethoff
Media Architecture
Author: Alexander Wiethoff
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2017-02-20
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110453878
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The augmentation of urban spaces with technology, commonly referred to as Media Architecture, has found increasing interest in the scientific community within the last few years. At the same time architects began to use digital media as a new material apart from concrete, glass or wood to create buildings and urban structures. Simultaneously, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers began to exploit the interaction opportunities between users and buildings and to bridge the gaps between interface, information medium and architecture. As an example, they extended architectural structures with interactive, light-emitting elements on their outer shell, thereby transforming the surfaces of these structures into giant public screens. At the same time the wide distribution of mobile devices and the coverage of mobile internet allow manifold interaction opportunities between open data and citizens, thereby enabling the internet of things in the public domain. However, the appropriate distribution of information to all citizens is still cumbersome and a mutual dialogue not always successful (i.e. who gets what data and when?). In this book we therefore provide a deeper investigation of Using Information and Media as Construction Material with media architecture as an input and output medium.

The Practice Turn in Architecture: Brussels after 1968

by Isabelle Doucet
The Practice Turn in Architecture: Brussels after 1968
Author: Isabelle Doucet
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2016-07-07
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1315308738
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What makes a city? What makes architecture? And, what is to be included in the discussions of architecture and the city? Attempting to answer such ambitious questions, this book starts from a city’s specificity and complexity. In response to recent debates in architectural theory around the agency and locus of critical action, this book tests the potential of criticality through-practice. Rather than through conceptual and ideological categorisations, it studies how architecture and criticality work within specific circumstances. Brussels, a complex city with a turbulent architectural and urban past, forms a compelling case for examining the tensions between urban politics, architectural imaginations, society’s needs and desires, and the city’s history and fabric. Inspired by pragmatist-relational philosophies, this book tests the potential of criticality through-practice. It studies a series of critical actions and tools, which occurred in Brussels’ architectural and urban culture after 1968. Weaved together, Brussels architectural production emerges from a variety of actors, including architects, urban policy makers, activists, social workers, and citizens, but also architectural movements and ideologies, urban renewal programs, urban traumas, plans and projects, and mundane everyday practices and constructions. This book contributes to the study of Brussels and offers a timely contribution to recent scholarship on the critical reappraisal of architectural debates from the 1960s through to the 1990s. In addition, by showing how pragmatist-relational philosophies can be made relevant for architectural theory, the book opens hopeful potentials for how architectural theory can better contribute to the formulation of a critical agenda for architecture.

Flexibility and Design

by Joshua D. Lee
Flexibility and Design
Author: Joshua D. Lee
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2018-12-07
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1351400878
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This book questions flexibility as a design approach by providing a longitudinal analysis of an innovative architectural experiment called the School Construction Systems Development (SCSD) project. The SCSD pioneered the use of performance specifications to create an open, prefabricated, and integrated system of building components that provided four modes of flexibility. Educational facilities throughout California used the SCSD system and it spawned a variety of similar projects throughout North America. This book traces the development and subsequent use of the system over 50 years through archival research, personal observations, re-photography, re-surveying, plan evaluations, interviews, and an advertisement analysis. These new findings provide useful insights for architects, educators, historic preservationists, and others about the affordances of spatial flexibility, the difficulties associated with technological transfer, the impact of unstable market conditions, the importance of user input during the planning process, and the need for long-term social relations to sustain architectural experiments.

Ugliness and Judgment

by Timothy Hyde
Ugliness and Judgment
Author: Timothy Hyde
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2023-01-31
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0691243557
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A novel interpretation of architecture, ugliness, and the social consequences of aesthetic judgment When buildings are deemed ugly, what are the consequences? In Ugliness and Judgment, Timothy Hyde considers the role of aesthetic judgment—and its concern for ugliness—in architectural debates and their resulting social effects across three centuries of British architectural history. From eighteenth-century ideas about Stonehenge to Prince Charles’s opinions about the National Gallery, Hyde uncovers a new story of aesthetic judgment, where arguments about architectural ugliness do not pertain solely to buildings or assessments of style, but intrude into other spheres of civil society. Hyde explores how accidental and willful conditions of ugliness—including the gothic revival Houses of Parliament, the brutalist concrete of the South Bank, and the historicist novelty of Number One Poultry—have been debated in parliamentary committees, courtrooms, and public inquiries. He recounts how architects such as Christopher Wren, John Soane, James Stirling, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe have been summoned by tribunals of aesthetic judgment. With his novel scrutiny of lawsuits for libel, changing paradigms of nuisance law, and conventions of monarchical privilege, he shows how aesthetic judgments have become entangled in wider assessments of art, science, religion, political economy, and the state. Moving beyond superficialities of taste in order to see how architectural improprieties enable architecture to participate in social transformations, Ugliness and Judgment sheds new light on the role of aesthetic measurement in our world.

Public Interest Design Practice Guidebook

by Lisa M. Abendroth
Public Interest Design Practice Guidebook
Author: Lisa M. Abendroth
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2015-04-24
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1317609565
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Public Interest Design Practice Guidebook: Seed Methodology, Case Studies, and Critical Issues is the first book to demonstrate that public interest design has emerged as a distinct profession. It provides clear professional standards of practice following SEED (Social Economic Environmental Design) methodology, the first step-by-step process supporting public interest designers. The book features an Issues Index composed of ninety critical social, economic, and environmental issues, illustrated with thirty case study projects representing eighteen countries and four continents, all cross-referenced, to show you how every human issue is a design issue. Contributions from Thomas Fisher, Heather Fleming and David Kaisel, Michael Cohen, Michael P. Murphy Jr. and Alan Ricks, and over twenty others cover topics such as professional responsibility, public interest design business development, design evaluation, and capacity building through scaling, along with many more. Themes including public participation, issue-based design, and assessment are referenced throughout the book and provide benchmarks toward an informed practice. This comprehensive manual also contains a glossary, an appendix of engagement methods, a case study locator atlas, and a reading list. Whether you are working in the field of architecture, urban planning, industrial design, landscape architecture, or communication design, this book empowers you to create community-centered environments, products, and systems.