Architecture

"This book is an attack on current city planning and rebuilding." From this first sentence of the seminal 1961 bookThe Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs gave voice to those who believed the bulldozing, postwar policies of urb...

Exclusive Montecito, California, is home to some of America's most spectacular private residences, but none is as spectacular as Val Verde. Built in 1915 by architect Bertram Goodhue, Val Verde is the most preserved of the great early-twentieth-century So...

Roving vigilantes, fear-mongering politicians, hysterical pundits, and the looming shadow of a 700-mile-long fence: the U.S.Mexico border is one of the most complex and dynamic areas on the planet today. With more than one million daily crossings, the bo...

For more than fifteen years, Jones, Partners: Architecture has dedicated itself to innovative,iconoclastic architectural projects. Picking up where their 1998 book, Instrumental Form, left off, Jones, Partners: Architecture presents an ove...

Smart Growth advocates, environmentalists, and New Urbanists have all tried in their own ways to spread the message of reforming current land use patterns. Their solutions are often criticized for being overly prescriptive, opposed to growth, or nostalgic...

In 1959 journalist John Roderick joined the Tokyo bureau of the Associated Press. There, he befriended a Japanese family, the Takishitas. After musing offhandedly that he would like to one day have his own house in Japan, the familyunbeknownst to Johnse...

The benefits of green roofs are many: longer roof lifespan, greater sound insulation, reduced heating and cooling system needs, and a cutback in storm water runoff. Green roofs decrease carbon dioxide and increase oxygen in cities, making them cooler in t...

In an age of digital cameras and computer renderings, the tradition of drawing and assembling an architectural sketchbook seems at once either willfully eccentric and or charmingly retrograde. But its profound importance to architecture and urban planning...

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 spar...

Our 2004 publication of Erwin Hauer Continua resurrected the extraordinary but little-known work of this Austrian-born sculptor whose designs of perforated wall screens and modular structures are symphonies of measured elegance. Now available in pa...

What if the constraints and limitations of architecture became the catalyst for design invention? The award-winningyoung architecture firm Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis calls their answers to this question "opportunistic architecture." It is a design philosophy...

Very small buildings have a special appeal. The constraints of space and cost can actually liberate the imagination. Most of the projects in this book consist of no more than a few key spaces, in many cases just a single space. They are united only by the...

The twin revolutions of the global economy and omnipresent Internet connectivity have had a profoundimpact on architectural design. Geographical gaps and, in many cases, architecture's tie to the built world itself have evaporated in the face of our new...

The discipline of landscape architecture encompasses many typologies, from domestic gardens and neighborhood playgrounds to urban designs and state parks. Most critical studies of the discipline tend to approach it from a historical or contemporary perspe...

More than ever, particularly in this day of online media, architects and designers are increasingly faced with exciting and critical marketing and publishing opportunities. Simply documenting a project is no longer enough. Successful design practices are...

Flexible architecture adapts to new uses, responds to change rather than stagnating, and is motive rather than static. Understanding how it has been conceived, designed, made, and used helps us understand its potential in solving current and future proble...

In the wake of the Great Depression, one of Franklin Roosevelt's most successful New Deal programs was the formation of the Tennessee Valley Authority, a federal governmentowned corporation created in 1933 to revitalize the Tennessee River Valley. The TV...

Grant Jones, founding principal of the noted landscape architecture firm Jones & Jones, has practiced ecological design for more than 30 years and has been a pioneer in river planning, scenic highway design, zoo design, and landscape aesthetics. The lates...

European emigrs have been changing the face of modern American architecture for decades. Winka Dubbeldam surely belongs to that long list of distinguished practitioners. Working across scalesfrom a New York skyscraper to a rural housethe Dutch-born arc...

In 1977 Steven Holl and William Stout created a grittier alternative to mainstream architectural publishing called Pamphlet Architecture. With Holl's Bridges, the landmark series was born, and for 30 years Pamphlet has served as soapbox and laborat...

Do you really know what is under that new house you just bought? How about what lies beneath the neighborhood playground? Was that "big box" retailer down your street built atop a toxic site? Will the warehouse just beyond your backyard be converted into...

In 1989, Princeton Architectural Press published Anchoring, the first book on the work of the then up-and-coming architect Steven Holl. Since then, Holl has become one of the most famous and highly regarded architects in the world through his award...

Instability is the eighth in an annual series of publications that feature the best young architects as selected by the Architectural League of New York in their annual Young Architects competition. This yearcandidates confronted the question of definin...

In this rapidly globalizing world, any investigation of architecture inevitably leads to considerations of regionalism. But despite its omnipresence in contemporary practice and theory, architectural regionalism remains a fluid concept, its historical dev...

Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall is a stunning piece of architecture whose curved metal skin is known worldwide. The hall's rich wood interior allows musicians and listeners to dwell inside an instrument of exquisite craftsmanship. The centerpiece o...

Descanso Gardens is one of Los Angeles's oldest botanical gardens. Initially a Spanish rancho and later the estate of publisher and horticulturist E. Manchester Boddy, the 160-acre lot was granted to the people of Los Angeles and includes one of the world...

Descanso Gardens is one of Los Angeles's oldest botanical gardens. Initially a Spanish rancho and later the estate of publisher and horticulturist E. Manchester Boddy, the 160-acre lot was granted to the people of Los Angeles and includes one of the world...

Prefabricated construction is a hot topic in architecture these days, and for good reason. Prospective homebuilders around the world are gravitating to prefab as an environ-mentally responsible and cost-effective way to achieve that holiest of grails: an...

One of the legendary figures in twentieth-century landscape design, Ian McHarg transformed the fields of landscape architecture and planning through his personal methodology, his unique curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania, and his own inspi...

Among the critical adulation that follows VJAA wherever they build, you'll find words like graceful, beautiful, sublime, quiet, classic, disciplined, and lightall suggesting the kind of alchemy that makes the work of this Minnesota-based firm so highly r...

Curious about how Alsop Architects managed to construct that flying, translucent rectangle at the Ontario College of Art and Design? Wonder about the sustainability of the Genzyme Building? The saying "the truth is in the details" reveals an essential qua...