Four Walls and a Roof

Four Walls and a Roof PDF

Author: Reinier de Graaf

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2017-09-25

Total Pages: 528

ISBN-13: 0674982762

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Architects, we like to believe, shape the world as they please. Reinier de Graaf draws on his own tragicomic experiences to present a candid account of what it is really like to work as an architect. To achieve anything, he notes, architects must serve the powers they strive to critique, finding themselves in a perpetual conflict of interest.

Four Walls and a Roof

Four Walls and a Roof PDF

Author: Reinier de Graaf

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2017-09-25

Total Pages: 529

ISBN-13: 067497610X

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Architects, we like to believe, shape the world as they please. Reinier de Graaf draws on his own tragicomic experiences to present a candid account of what it is really like to work as an architect. To achieve anything, he notes, architects must serve the powers they strive to critique, finding themselves in a perpetual conflict of interest.

Four Walls and a Roof

Four Walls and a Roof PDF

Author: Reinier de Graaf

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2019-10-15

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780674241466

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A Financial Times Best Book of the Year A Guardian Best Architecture Book of the Year “Sharp, revealing, funny.” —The Guardian “An original and even occasionally hilarious book about losing ideals and finding them again... [De Graaf] deftly shows that architecture cannot be better or more pure than the flawed humans who make it.” —The Economist Architecture, we like to believe, is an elevated art form that shapes the world as it pleases. Four Walls and a Roof turns this fiction on its head, offering a candid account of what it’s really like to work as an architect. Drawing on his own tragicomic experiences in the field, Reinier de Graaf reveals the world of contemporary architecture in vivid snapshots: from the corridors of wealth in London, Moscow, and Dubai to the demolished hopes of postwar social housing in New York and St. Louis. We meet ambitious oligarchs, developers for whom architecture is nothing more than an investment, and layers of bureaucrats, consultants, and mysterious hangers-on who lie between any architect’s idea and the chance of its execution. “This is a book about power, money and influence, and architecture’s complete lack of any of them... Witty, insightful and funny, it is a (sometimes painful) dissection of a profession that thinks it is still in control.” —Financial Times “This is the most stimulating book on architecture and its practice that I have read for years.” —Architects’ Journal

Brown Girl, Brownstones

Brown Girl, Brownstones PDF

Author: Paule Marshall

Publisher: Courier Corporation

Published: 2012-03-06

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0486118606

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Set in Brooklyn during the Depression and World War II, this 1953 coming-of-age novel centers on the daughter of Barbadian immigrants. "Passionate, compelling." — Saturday Review. "Remarkable for its courage." — The New Yorker.

Two Walls and a Roof

Two Walls and a Roof PDF

Author: John Michael Cahill

Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub

Published: 2012-08-01

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 9781479164172

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This is the story of an Irish family from Cork Ireland. It documents how they survived in the 50's and 60's and will take you on a roller coaster ride of every emotion, sometimes all on the same page. Here you will read of an inspiring mother, always encouraging her six children to laugh at life, and believe in tomorrow. She did this inspiring while battling a domineering old grandmother, and an alcoholic husband, as her children drank tea from their jam jars, and read by a candle. Its a book filled with humor, drama, and dreams that come true, culminating in the author meeting his American dream. It's said the book is like, Irish Stew for the Soul. You will feel uplifted when you finish reading a book that seems to be everyone's story.

Delirious New York

Delirious New York PDF

Author: Rem Koolhaas

Publisher: The Monacelli Press, LLC

Published: 2014-07-01

Total Pages: 538

ISBN-13: 1580934102

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Since its original publication in 1978, Delirious New York has attained mythic status. Back in print in a newly designed edition, this influential cultural, architectural, and social history of New York is even more popular, selling out its first printing on publication. Rem Koolhaas's celebration and analysis of New York depicts the city as a metaphor for the incredible variety of human behavior. At the end of the nineteenth century, population, information, and technology explosions made Manhattan a laboratory for the invention and testing of a metropolitan lifestyle -- "the culture of congestion" -- and its architecture. "Manhattan," he writes, "is the 20th century's Rosetta Stone . . . occupied by architectural mutations (Central Park, the Skyscraper), utopian fragments (Rockefeller Center, the U.N. Building), and irrational phenomena (Radio City Music Hall)." Koolhaas interprets and reinterprets the dynamic relationship between architecture and culture in a number of telling episodes of New York's history, including the imposition of the Manhattan grid, the creation of Coney Island, and the development of the skyscraper. Delirious New York is also packed with intriguing and fun facts and illustrated with witty watercolors and quirky archival drawings, photographs, postcards, and maps. The spirit of this visionary investigation of Manhattan equals the energy of the city itself.

Roof Gardens

Roof Gardens PDF

Author: Theodore Osmundson

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 1999-08-03

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 9780393730128

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An illustrated study of gardens built on the roofs of buildings traces the history of roof gardens, from the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to the present; explains how to construct safe, durable gardens; and offers tips on selecting plants, garden maintenance, and planting techniques.

The Sun Is a Compass

The Sun Is a Compass PDF

Author: Caroline Van Hemert

Publisher: Little, Brown Spark

Published: 2019-03-19

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 0316414433

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For fans of Cheryl Strayed, the gripping story of a biologist's human-powered journey from the Pacific Northwest to the Arctic to rediscover her love of birds, nature, and adventure. During graduate school, as she conducted experiments on the peculiarly misshapen beaks of chickadees, ornithologist Caroline Van Hemert began to feel stifled in the isolated, sterile environment of the lab. Worried that she was losing her passion for the scientific research she once loved, she was compelled to experience wildness again, to be guided by the sounds of birds and to follow the trails of animals. In March of 2012, she and her husband set off on a 4,000-mile wilderness journey from the Pacific rainforest to the Alaskan Arctic, traveling by rowboat, ski, foot, raft, and canoe. Together, they survived harrowing dangers while also experiencing incredible moments of joy and grace -- migrating birds silhouetted against the moon, the steamy breath of caribou, and the bond that comes from sharing such experiences. A unique blend of science, adventure, and personal narrative, The Sun is a Compass explores the bounds of the physical body and the tenuousness of life in the company of the creatures who make their homes in the wildest places left in North America. Inspiring and beautifully written, this love letter to nature is a lyrical testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Winner of the 2019 Banff Mountain Book Competition: Adventure Travel

Grass Roof, Tin Roof

Grass Roof, Tin Roof PDF

Author: Dao Strom

Publisher: HMH

Published: 2003-01-07

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 0547972830

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A Vietnamese family flees its war-torn home and resettles in California, in a novel that offers a “brilliant exploration of exile, loss, and identity” (Robert Olen Butler). Told from multiple perspectives and spanning several decades, Grass Roof, Tin Roof begins with the story of Tran, a Vietnamese writer facing government persecution, who flees her homeland during the exodus of 1975 and brings her two children to the West. Here, she marries a Danish American man who has survived a different war. He promises understanding and guidance—but the psychic consequences of his past soon hinder his relationships with the family, as the children, for whom the war is now a distant shadow, struggle to understand the world around them on their own terms. In delicate, innovative prose, Strom’s characters experience the collision of cultures and the spiritual aftermath of war on the most visceral level. Grass Roof, Tin Roof is “an affecting study on the slippery nature of home” (Los Angeles Times). “[Strom] explores the mysteries of loss, culture and identity, with skill, poignancy and imagination.” —Detroit Free Press

Harvard

Harvard PDF

Author: Bainbridge Bunting

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1985

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 9780674372917

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This history of Harvard's architecture examines the Federal architecture of Charles Bulfinch, H.H. Richardson's Romanesque buildings, the Imperial manner reflected in Widener Library, and the work of other architects such as Charles McKim, Gropius and Le Corbusier.