Architecture And Design Tour Aesthetics Around The Globe

Explore the world’s most fascinating structures and the stories behind them with Architecture and Design Tour: Aesthetics Around the Globe. This comprehensive guide takes you on a journey through the history and evolution of architecture, from ancient wonders to modern marvels. Discover the cultural and historical significance of iconic buildings, learn about influential architectural movements, and gain insights into contemporary design trends. Whether you're a seasoned architect, a student, or an avid traveler with a passion for design, this book provides valuable knowledge and inspiration for your next architectural adventure. Embark on a global tour and see the world through the lens of architectural brilliance.

Everyday aesthetic experiences and concerns occupy a large part of our aesthetic life. However, because of their prevalence and mundane nature, we tend not to pay much attention to them, let alone examine their significance. Western aesthetic theories of the past few centuries also neglect everyday aesthetics because of their almost exclusive emphasis on art. In a ground-breaking new study, Yuriko Saito provides a detailed investigation into our everyday aesthetic experiences, and reveals how our everyday aesthetic tastes and judgments can exert a powerful influence on the state of the world and our quality of life. By analysing a wide range of examples from our aesthetic interactions with nature, the environment, everyday objects, and Japanese culture, Saito illustrates the complex nature of seemingly simple and innocuous aesthetic responses. She discusses the inadequacy of art-centered aesthetics, the aesthetic appreciation of the distinctive characters of objects or phenomena, responses to various manifestations of transience, and the aesthetic expression of moral values; and she examines the moral, political, existential, and environmental implications of these and other issues.

By analyzing ten examples of buildings that embody the human experience at an extraordinary level, this book clarifies the central importance of the role of function in architecture as a generative force in determining built form. Using familiar twentieth-century buildings as case studies, the authors present these from a new perspective, based on their functional design concepts. Here Grabow and Spreckelmeyer expand the definition of human use to that of an art form by re-evaluating these buildings from an aesthetic and ecological view of function. Each building is described from the point of view of a major functional concept or idea of human use which then spreads out and influences the spatial organization, built form and structure. In doing so each building is presented as an exemplar that reaches beyond the pragmatic concerns of a narrow program and demonstrates how functional concepts can inspire great design, evoke archetypal human experience and help us to understand how architecture embodies the deeper purposes and meanings of everyday life.

Virtual Aesthetics in Architecture: Designing in Mixed Realities presents a curated selection of projects and texts contributed by leading international architects and designers who are using virtual reality technologies in their design process. It triggers discussion and debate on exploring the aesthetic potential and establishing its language as an expressive medium in architectural design. Although virtual reality is not new and the technology has evolved rapidly, the aesthetic potential of the medium is still emerging and there is a great deal more to explore. The book provides a comprehensive overview of the current use of virtual reality technologies in the architectural design process. Contributions are presented in six parts, fully illustrated with over 150 images. Recent projects presented are distributed in five themes: introduction to mixed realities; space and form; context and ambiguity; materiality and movement; body and social. Each theme includes richly illustrated essays by leading academics and practitioners, including those from Zaha Hadid Architects and MVRDV, detailing their design process using data-driven methodologies. Virtual Aesthetics in Architecture expands the use of technology per se and focuses on how architecture can benefit from its aesthetic potential during the design process. A must-read for practitioners, academics, and students interested in cutting-edge digital design.

If you want to be a good designer, set aside the glossy magazines, turn off your computer, and seek out first-hand encounters with good design. When it comes to cities, buildings, and art, actual experience is almost always better than the virtual kind. No image can replicate Le Corbusier's Ronchamp when the light is just right, or capture the silent speech one hears on a stroll through Ian Hamilton Finlay's Little Sparta, or explain hours dissolving in Peter Zumthor's baths at Vals. That is the reason for this book: to encourage you to actively pursue direct aesthetic experience in the built environment, and to reflect upon the best reasons and ways to be a dedicated design traveler. Traveling to learn is an integral part of the education of student architects and designers. It is vital for designers to know how to be effective design travelers, to know how to seek out and encounter places, buildings, and objects, and to develop a capacity for looking, drawing, and, above all, discerning. But to be a student is only to be "one who is studying," which means all of us who, if we are truly alive, delight in the application of the mind to the acquisition of knowledge.

This publication presents the perspectives and insights of the world's present-day authorities on bridge aesthetics and design. Bridge engineers and architects representing 16 nations examine and highlight the aesthetic appearance of existing bridges with the goal of improving tomorrow's bridge design. Supplementing the individual papers is a comprehensive bibliography on bridge aesthetics, containing annotated references to more than 250 books, papers, and articles. There are 245 black-and-white photographs and numerous line drawings plus 24 pages of color plates. Author biographical information is provided and an index of bridges and locations is included. Individual entries into the TRIS data base have been made for the 22 papers and the bibliography.

"Paperback reissue, with a new introduction by the author."

How do people react to the visual character of their surroundings? What can planners do to improve the aesthetic quality of these surroundings? Too often in environmental design, visual quality--aesthetics--is misunderstood as only a minor concern, dependent on volatile taste and thus undefinable. Yet a substantial body of research indicates the importance of visual quality in the environment to the public and has uncovered systematic patterns of human response to visual attributes of the built environment. Efforts to understand environmental aesthetics have been undertaken by investigators from such diverse fields as landscape architecture, environmental psychology, geography, philosophy, architecture, and city planning. As a result the relevant information is scattered and not readily available to professionals and policy makers. The book brings together classic and new contributions by distinguished workers in different disciplines. It explores theory and data on preferences in the visual environment, and also addresses the practical application of aesthetic criteria in design, planning and public policy. Promising directions for future research are identified.

How can architecture develop better aesthetic directions for the twenty-first-century built environment? Our world, increasingly defined by efficient but unconsidered architecture and cities, seems to be getting uglier. In On the Appearance of the World, Mark Foster Gage asks why. He imagines a future scenario where architectural design and ideas from aesthetic philosophy align toward the production of a built world that is more humane, habitable, beautiful, and just.

A collection of pivotal ideas about beauty from throughout history, with an introduction and critical headnotes. This collection of writings on beauty includes selections from twenty key philosophers and theoreticians spanning two millennia: Plato • Aristotle • Vitruvius • Alberti • Kant • Burke • Fiedler • Nietzsche • Wilde • Bergson • Bell • Scott • Benjamin • Bataille • Sontag • Jameson • Scarry • Nehamas • Zangwill • Freedberg and Gallese With an introduction and critical headnotes explaining the importance of each text, Mark Foster Gage offers a framework for a provocative history of ideas about beauty as they relate to contemporary thinking on architecture and design. In a world increasingly defined by sumptuous visuality, the concepts of beauty and visual sensation are not mere intellectual exercises but standards that define the very nature of design practice across disciplines and that are essential to the emerging worlds of design and architecture in the twenty-first century.