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Titre:
Architecture and the crisis of modern science

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$70.00
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Résumé:
This important book, which received the 1984 Alice Davis Hitchcock Award, traces the process by which the mystical and numerological grounds for the use of number and geometry in building gave way to the more functional and technical ones that prevail in architectural theory and practice today.

Titre:
Architectural representation and the perspective hinge

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$82.50
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Résumé:
Writing from inside the discipline of architecture, rather than from the more common extrapolations from the history of painting and philosophy, Alberto Pérez-Gómez and Louise Pelletier focus on the implications of the tool of perspective (and the hegemony of vision) for architectural representation. Their primary thesis is that tools of representation have a direct influence on the conceptual development of projects and generation of forms, and that there are alternatives to the reductive working methods of most contemporary practice. The book examines textual evidence across a broad historical period, concentrating on the relationship between drawing and architectural space in the period from the seventh century to the twentieth century. The book discusses such issues as optical correction and the nature of architectural drawing in selected treatises, revealing the complexity and potential contradiction inherent in any linear history of representation. The authors' ultimate aim is to probe the possibilities of the constructed world as a poetic translation, rather than prosaic transcription, of its representations.

Titre:
Piero en tête : sculptures de Geoffrey Smedley / Meditations on Piero: sculptures by Geoffrey Smedley

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$12.95
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Résumé:
Dans un traité sur la perspective écrit vers la fin de sa vie, Piero della Francesca tente d’établir les proportions mathématiques « idéales » de la tête humaine. Après des années de méditation créative à partir de ces dessins, Smedley a décidé d’en traduire concrètement le mystère en leur donnant une forme physique. Travaillant à la manière d’un architecte, il en a extrait la structure de ses sculptures. Sa pièce principale, The Numbers, est une méticuleuse représentation de plus d’un mètre de haut de la tête idéale de Piero della Francesca. In a treatise on perspective written towards the end of his life, Piero della Francesca attempted to determine the mathematically "ideal" proportions of the human head, basing his drawings on a belief in the cosmological significance of certain numbers and their geometrical relationships. After many years of creative meditation on these drawings, Smedley decided to translate their mystery into physical form, working the way an architect works to extract from them the structure of his sculptures. His principal piece, The Numbers, is a meticulous, four-foot high realization of Piero’s ideal head.

Titre:
Architectural representation and the perspective hinge

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Prix:
$67.95
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Résumé:
Writing from inside the discipline of architecture, rather than from the more common extrapolations from the history of painting and philosophy, Alberto Pérez-Gómez and Louise Pelletier focus on the implications of the tool of perspective (and the hegemony of vision) for architectural representation. Their primary thesis is that tools of representation have a direct influence on the conceptual development of projects and generation of forms, and that there are alternatives to the reductive working methods of most contemporary practice. The book examines textual evidence across a broad historical period, concentrating on the relationship between drawing and architectural space in the period from the seventh century to the twentieth century. The book discusses such issues as optical correction and the nature of architectural drawing in selected treatises, revealing the complexity and potential contradiction inherent in any linear history of representation. The authors' ultimate aim is to probe the possibilities of the constructed world as a poetic translation, rather than prosaic transcription, of its representations. First published in cloth in 1997.

Titre:
Chora 4 : intervals in the philosophy of architecture

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$32.95
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Résumé:
Contributors to this volume strive to uncover architectural alternatives to simplistic models based on concepts of aesthetics, technology, or sociology. Seventeen essays explore historical topics ranging from antiquity, with a study of the Roman Colosseum; through early Renaissance subjects, such as the treatises of Luca Pacioli on architecture; through to the modern era and explorations on topics ranging from seventeenth-century Amsterdam to architectural insights that can be found in the works of the poet and mathematician Lewis Carroll. Authors examining contemporary issues seek to explicate the spatial poetics of architecture by invoking other artistic disciplines. Essays in this group include a discussion of the accomplishments of Gordon Matta-Clark, a reading of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, and an analysis of the implications of ethical/formal questions in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein for architecture. Contributors include Caroline Dionne (Université de Québec à Montréal), Mark Dorrian (University of Edinburgh), Michael Emerson (University of New South Wales), Marc Glaudemans (University of Technology), George Hersey (emeritus, Yale University), Robert Kirkbride (design director, Studiolo), Joanna Merwood (doctoral dissertation, Princeton University), Michel Moussette (Ph.D. at the Université de Montréal), Juhani Pallasmaa (architect, Finland, emeritus Washington University in St. Louis), Alberto Pérez-Gómez (McGill University), David Theodore (McGill University), and Dorian Yurchuk (architect, New York City).

Titre:
Built upon love : architectural longing after ethics and aesthetics

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$48.00
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Résumé:
The forced polarity between form and function in considerations of architecture - opposing art to social interests, ethics to poetic expression - obscures the deep connections between ethical and poetical values in architectural tradition. Architecture has been, and must continue to be, writes Alberto Pérez-Gómez, built upon love. Modernity has rightly rejected past architectural excesses, but, Pérez-Gómez argues, the materialistic and technological alternatives it proposes do not answer satisfactorily the complex desire that defines humanity. True architecture is concerned with far more than fashionable form, affordable homes, and sustainable development; it responds to a desire for an eloquent place to dwell- one that lovingly provides a sense of order resonant with our dreams. In "Built upon love" Pérez-Gómez uncovers the relationship between love and architecture in order to find the points of contact between poetics and ethics - between the architect's wish to design a beautiful world and architecture's imperative to provide a better place for society. Eros, as first imagined by the early lyric poets of classical Greece, is the invisible force at the root of our capacity to create and comprehend the poetic image. Pérez-Gómez examines the nature of architectural form in the light of eros, seduction, and the tradition of the poetic image in Western architecture. He charts the ethical dimension of architecture, tracing the connections between philia - the love of friends that entails mutual responsibility among equals - and architectural program. He explores the position of architecture at the limits of language and discusses the analogical language of philia in modernist architectural theory. Finally, he uncovers connections between ethics and poetics, describing a contemporary practice of architecture under the sign of love, incorporating both eros and philia.

Titre:
Attunement: Architectural Meaning after the Crisis of Modern Science

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$34.95
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Résumé:
In this publication, Alberto Pérez-Gómez calls for an architecture that can enhance our human values and capacities, an architecture that is connected -- attuned -- to its location and its inhabitants. Architecture, Pérez-Gómez explains, operates as a communicative setting for societies; its beauty and its meaning lie in its connection to human health and self-understanding.