Beautiful Architecture

What are the ingredients of robust, elegant, flexible, and maintainable software architecture? Beautiful Architecture answers this question through a collection of intriguing essays from more than a dozen of today's leading software designers and architects. In each essay, contributors present a notable software architecture, and analyze what makes it innovative and ideal for its purpose. Some of the engineers in this book reveal how they developed a specific project, including decisions they faced and tradeoffs they made. Others take a step back to investigate how certain architectural aspects have influenced computing as a whole. With this book, you'll discover: How Facebook's architecture is the basis for a data-centric application ecosystem The effect of Xen's well-designed architecture on the way operating systems evolve How community processes within the KDE project help software architectures evolve from rough sketches to beautiful systems How creeping featurism has helped GNU Emacs gain unanticipated functionality The magic behind the Jikes RVM self-optimizable, self-hosting runtime Design choices and building blocks that made Tandem the choice platform in high-availability environments for over two decades Differences and similarities between object-oriented and functional architectural views How architectures can affect the software's evolution and the developers' engagement Go behind the scenes to learn what it takes to design elegant software architecture, and how it can shape the way you approach your own projects, with Beautiful Architecture.

A truly inclusive celebration of architecture around the world and across the ages.

An unrivaled survey of the most exciting contemporary interior design across the globe, curated by the editors of ten international editions of Architectural Digest. Since 1920, Architectural Digest has celebrated design talents, innovative homes, and products--providing endless decoration, lifestyle, and travel inspiration. With ten global editions, the magazine is an authority renowned all over the world for publishing only the very best of today's interior design. In this new volume--spearheaded by AD France's editor in chief, Marie Kalt--the editors of Architectural Digest's international editions have teamed up to thoughtfully curate a collection of today's most exceptional interiors around the globe. These diverse residential spaces span from the United States and China, to France, Italy, Germany, Russia, Spain, India, Mexico, and the Middle East, presenting each country's unique "AD style manifesto" and the work of design luminaries such as Peter Marino, Martyn Lawrence Bullard, Jacques Grange, Joseph Dirand, and Bijoy Jain, to name a few. The featured projects range from Marc Jacobs's New York townhouse to Tommy Hilfiger's Connecticut abode and Seth Meyers's Manhattan duplex; a sumptuous eighteenth-century Italian villa and a Moroccan palace; Pierre Bergé's apartment and a hôtel particulier in Paris; a Majorca summer home; and a country house in Russia. Brimming with stunning images and rich international inspirations, this unparalleled compendium of global interiors is a must for every library of interior design.

Beautiful China is the title of the Chinese government's broad policy to ensure the traditions and esthetics of Chinese culture not only survive as heritage but apply to contemporary society and to the future. Beautiful China is also nested within the larger policy concept of creating an "ecological civilization." Applied to a nation of over 1.3 billion people and the second most powerful economy in the world, these policies are arguably the most fascinating socio-political experiment taking place anywhere in the world today. This book is the first serious consideration of this policy and what it means for the design professions in contemporary China.

An inspiring monograph that captures the practical yet beautiful architecture of one of the leading architectural firms in the world

This study looks at the architectural transformation of Cleveland during its "golden age"--roughly the period between Civil War reconstruction and World War I. By the early twentieth century, Cleveland, which would evolve into the fifth largest city in America, hoped to shed the gritty industrial image of its rapid growth period. Encouraged by the spectacle and enthusiastic response to the Beaux-Arts buildings of the Chicago World's Exposition of 1893, the city embarked upon a grand scheme to construct new governmental and civic structures known as the Cleveland Plan of Grouping Public Buildings, one of the earliest and most complete City Beautiful planning schemes in the country. The success of this plan led to a spillover effect that prompted architects to design all manner of new public buildings that adopted similar Beaux-Arts architectural characteristics over the ensuing decades.

Beauty provides the dynamic catalyst for sixteen very charged and individual discussions about architecture and design. Based on a series of interviews by Yael Reisner, Architecture and Beauty has been developed into sixteen individual chapter/portraits, written up by Fleur Watson, that eloquently recount the thoughts of some of the world's most creative designers. Each interviewee candidly expresses their beliefs and experiences and espouses their own distinctive position on aesthetics. Offering up rare and often highly personal insights into the minds of today's most progressive and high-profile architects, the book is lusciously illustrated with the works that the architects discuss. Featured architects: Will Alsop, Hernan Diaz Alonso, Peter Cook, Odile Decq, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Zvi Hecker, Mark Goulthorpe, Kolatan/MacDonald Studio, Greg Lynn, Tom Mayne, Juhani Pallasmaa, Gaetano Pesce, Eric Owen Moss, Wolf Prix and Lebbeus Woods.

The first monograph of MASS Design Group, the internationally lauded firm creating some of the most powerful and humane works of architecture today. Founded in 2008, MASS Design Group collaborated with Partners In Health and the Rwanda Ministry of Health to design and build the Butaro District Hospital in Rwanda, a masterwork of architecture that also uniquely serves a community in need. Since then, MASS has grown into a dynamic collaborative of architects, planners, engineers, filmmakers, researchers, and public health professionals working in more than a dozen countries in the fields of design, research, policy, education, and strategic planning. Amid ongoing recognition (the 2018 American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Architecture, the 2017 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture), MASS's most recent project, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, has been featured in more than 400 publications, including the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the Washington Post. Mark Lamster of Dallas Morning News called the memorial "the single greatest work of American architecture of the twenty-first century." Justice Is Beauty highlights MASS's first decade of designing, researching, and advocating for an architecture of justice and human dignity. With more than thirty projects built or under construction and some 200,000 people served, MASS has pioneered an immersive approach in the practice of architecture that provides the infrastructure, buildings, and physical systems necessary for growth, dignity, and well-being, while always engaging local communities with attention to the specifics of cultural context and social needs.

Dazzling beautiful, this new hardcover book is a tour de force of the latest European-inspired homes designed by Bassenian/Lagoni Architects of Newport Beach, California's premier residential architecture firm. Here the reader will discover ruggedly handsome exteriors reminiscent of the hill towns of Tuscany and richly appointed interiors that echo the great rooms of Andalusia--all with very modern floor plans and amenities. This milestone book will serve as a valuable resource for anyone seeking ideas for a home design, landscaping, interiors and furnishings in the Old World Style.

An unprecedented look at the complex and beautiful world of underground ant architecture Walter Tschinkel has spent much of his career investigating the hidden subterranean realm of ant nests. This wonderfully illustrated book takes you inside an unseen world where thousands of ants build intricate homes in the soil beneath our feet. Tschinkel describes the ingenious methods he has devised to study ant nests, showing how he fills a nest with plaster, molten metal, or wax and painstakingly excavates the cast. He guides you through living ant nests chamber by chamber, revealing how nests are created and how colonies function. How does nest architecture vary across species? Do ants have "architectural plans"? How do nests affect our environment? As he delves into these and other questions, Tschinkel provides a one-of-a-kind natural history of the planet's most successful creatures and a compelling firsthand account of a life of scientific discovery. Offering a unique look at how simple methods can lead to pioneering science, Ant Architecture addresses the unsolved mysteries of underground ant nests while charting new directions for tomorrow’s research, and reflects on the role of beauty in nature and the joys of shoestring science.