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Title:
The sympathy of things: Ruskin and the ecology of design, 2nd edition

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$51.95
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Summary:
Lars Spuybroek argues that we must 'undo' the twentieth century and learn to understand the aesthetic insights of the nineteenth-century art critic John Ruskin, from which he distils pointers for the contemporary age. Linking philosophy, design, and the digital, with art history, architecture, and craft, Spuybroek explores the romantic notion of 'sympathy', a core concept in Ruskin's aesthetics, re-evaluating it as the driving force of the twenty-first century aesthetic experience. For Ruskin, beauty always comprises variation, imperfection and fragility, three concepts that wholly disappeared from our mindsets during the twentieth century, but which Spuybroek argues to be central to contemporary aesthetics and design.

Title:
Textile tectonics

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$45.00
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Summary:
Until recently, thanks to the unforgiving geometric rigors of modernism, biomorphism in design and architecture was seen a purely decorative feature - as in Art Nouveau, for example. This publication turns this idea on its head, offering a glimpse into the future of architectural design, in which the veins of leaves, formations of foam, Celtic knotwork and even hair braiding can be transformed into viable structures through the wonders of digital design technology. For the architect and researcher Lars Spuybroek, such natural, ornamental and folkloristic pattern could entirely replace standardized geometric design to determine the structural basis and aesthetic character of tomorrow's buildings. Here, Spuybroek presents both a theoretical framework and an inspiring taxonomy of patterns and structures, followed by more than 100 illustrated designs for skyscrapers and façades based on organizational principles ranging from rose windows to knitting patterns.

Title:
Grace and gravity: Architectures of the figure

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$56.95
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Summary:
How do we live well? The first sentence of ''Grace and gravity'' raises the fundamental question that constantly occupies our minds-and of all those who lived before us. Paradoxically, the impossibility of answering this question opens up the very room needed to find ways of living well. It is the gap where all disciplines fall short, where architecture does not fit its inhabitants, where economy is not based on shortage, where religion cannot be explained by its followers, and where technology works far beyond its own principles. According to Lars Spuybroek, the prize-winning former architect, this marks the point where the “paradoxical machine” of grace reveals its powers, a point where we “cannot say if we are moving or being moved”. Following the trail of grace leads him to a new form of analysis that transcends the age-old opposition between appearances and technology. Linking up a dazzling and often delightful variety of sources-monkeys, paintings, lamp posts, octopuses, tattoos, bleeding fingers, rose windows, robots, smart phones, spirits, saints, and fossils-with profound meditations on living, death, consciousness, and existence, ''Grace and gravity'' offers an eye-opening provocation to a wide range of art historians, architects, theologians, anthropologists, artists, media theorists and philosophers.

Title:
The architecture of variation

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$32.00
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Summary:
Edited by a pioneer of the digital revolution, this new book takes its cue from the practice of mass-customization, one of the most important design and retail trends of recent years, to consider how variations on the same design idea can be applied to a broad spectrum of architectural, engineering, and construction solutions. The book has three parts: a group of essays by leading thinkers on design; comparative studies on variation; and case studies.