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Title:
Building lives : constructing rites and passages

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$60.00
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Summary:
Conception and birth, growth and maturity, aging and death--these are important moments in the human life story. They are also stages in the existence of a building, says the author of this unconventional history of the rituals and practices that surround built structures in America. Drawing on sources as varied as Masonic manuals, promotional brochures, janitorial contracts, tourist guidebooks, and religious texts, cultural historian Neil Harris explores the rites of building passage over the past one hundred and fifty years. In this generously illustrated volume, he offers fascinating new insights into the social and cultural roles of buildings. This book suggests that architecture is a performing art as well as a fine art. Harris provides entertaining accounts of building introductions and presentations; celebrations, including groundbreakings, cornerstone layings, dedication ceremonies, and milestone anniversaries; efforts by builders, designers, real estate agents, photographers, and users to endow buildings with personality; debates over the naming of buildings; and attempts to document the erection and aging of buildings. Harris details recent strenuous efforts to prolong building life and vitality, and the increasing concern over "sick" and endangered buildings. Observing the difficulty that people experience in saying goodbye to old buildings that feel like friends, he calls for ceremony to mark the end as well as the beginning of a building's life.

Title:
Chicago apartments : a century of lakefront luxury

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$105.00
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Summary:
Chicago is quintessential apartment dweller’s city. Landmark apartment houses designed by renowned architects and decorators, past and present - Howard Van Doren Shaw, Benjamin Marshall, David Adler, Mies van der Rohe, SOM, Tigerman McCurry, Vinci Hamp, and Lucien Lagrange - have afforded dramatic views and fabled luxury to apartment residents. "Chicago Apartments: A Century of Lakefront Luxury" presents a unique history of the nearly 100 elevator structures whose amenities, unusual interior spaces, architectural features, and distinctive innovations define the history of Chicago apartment design. Chicago historian Neil Harris traces essential themes in the development of the city and its apartment culture, profiling each apartment building with new research, floor plans, and never published archival duotone photographs of famed buildings dating from 1883 to 2004, including 500 North Lake Shore Drive, 209 East Lake Shore Drive, 1301 North Astor, Marina Towers, and the Hancock. The preface by Sara Paretsky, whose celebrated detective V. I. Warshawki is an astute observer of Chicago’s built landscape and its inhabitants, offers a literary voice to this first-time study of the architectural and cultural history of these buildings.

Title:
Images de villes idéales : les expositions universelles / Civic vision, world's fairs

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$9.95
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Summary:
Cette publication est consacrée aux emplacements des expositions universelles et à leur planification. Elle montre comment celles-ci reflétaient les théories urbanistiques et les faisaient évoluer, et font ressortir l'empreinte durable des sites d'expositions et des travaux d'aménagement connexes sur le tissu urbain des villes d'accueil. / This publication looks at questions of site and plan in world's fairs, at how those issues reflected and advanced ideas about city planning, and at the lasting impact of the exposition site and development within the fabric of the host city.