Visions of Heaven - The Dome in European Architecture
There's an ethereal magic to standing beneath a dome, neck craned, looking up at a vision of the heavens created by some long-ago figure of genius. From the Pantheon to the Hagia Sophia, the power of the dome seems transcendent. Photographer David Stephenson's magnificently kaleidoscopic images of dome interiors capture this evanescent drama, and make "Visions of Heaven" one of the most spectacularly beautiful books we've ever produced.
Nikolaus Pevsner was the best known and most important architectural historian of the twentieth century, admired for dedicating his career to areas of English architecture that had never been considered before. But this English specialist and honorary Englishman, knighted in 1969, only came to England at the age of 31. He had been born and brought up in Germany, didn't imagine that English architecture would become his life's focus, and had no wish to move to England even when forced from teaching by the Nazis.
Never has the relationship between art and nature been more complicated and more fragile, but also richer and more fascinating. The artists and architects in Natural Architecture have transformed the act of building into an art form capable of sparking new relationships with nature, landscape, and the environment. Though far from basic or primitive, these creations are built from humble elements branches, twigs, pebbles, straw, stone found at their site. Fulfilling a wide variety of intentions sometimes structural, sometimes sculptural, sometimes sacred the works presented here inspire a sense of awe and reverence for the forces of nature.
Architecture and Revolution: Contemporary Perspectives on Central and Eastern Europe
Architecture and Revolution explores the consequences of the recent "revolutions" in Central and Eastern Europe from an architectural perspective. This series of essays offers a novel and incisive view on some of the pressing questions that now face architects, planners and politicians alike in Central and Eastern Europe as they consider how best to formulate the new architecture for Europe.
The Patterns of Architecture: Architectural Design
Pattern-making is ubiquitous in both the natural and manmade world. The human propensity for pattern recognition and fabrication is innate. Encompassing the historical, vernacular and parametric, this title explores the creation, materialisation and theorisation of some of the world's most significant and spectacularly patterned spaces. It investigates how interiors, buildings, cities and landscapes are patterned through design, production and manufacturing, use, time, accident and perception. Extending patterns far beyond the surface notion of style and decoration, Patterns of Architecture assesses how and why the deployment of patterns is shaping the future of architecture.
