 |
GetTextbooks.com
Compare Prices & Save up to 90% |
|
|
|
| Login | Sign up | My Wish List |
 | | The Culture of Building by Howard Davis ISBN-10: 0195112946 ISBN-10: 0-19-511294-6 ISBN-13: 9780195112948 ISBN-13: 978-0-19-511294-8 Hardcover 2000-01-06 Oxford University Press, USA Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description All buildings are ultimately the products of building cultures--complex systems of people, relationships, rules, and habits in which design and building are anchored. In this book of thirteen chapter-essays, Davis uses historical, contemporary and cross-cultural examples to describe the structure of such cultures and how they are reflected in the form of buildings and cities. His aim is to show that special insights about the improvement of the contemporary built world come from looking at the building culture as a whole, not merely the individual acts of architects and city planners. The book is illustrated with over 260 historic and contemporary photographs, drawings and prints. | ||
Reviews | ||
A perceptive analysis This book is conceptually in the same iconoclastic camp as the work of Christopher Alexander and a very few others; fitting, as they worked together a couple decades back. Davis, however, is better able to cloth these revolutionary ideas in conventional terminology that doesn't make you squirm (not to denigrate Alexander, his work is genius, but the language he uses can veer into hippy-dippy and new-agey). And I mean revolutionary when I say it. The book is not intended as a manifesto, exactly, but it lays out the sources of our contemporary built environment, tracing their evolution through the past several centuries. He perceptively describes the various interacting institutional and cultural forces that control the modern building industry. He is also not afraid of passing qualitative judgement. If you feel that the built environment of the past 50 years has become something dehumanizing and unhealthy, this book will help you understand the cultural and institutional changes that have driven this. And in this way it IS a manifesto: once you understand a problem a certain way, you can start to infer solutions and act towards realizing them. | ||
Why We Build What We Do? An excellent introduction to why we build the way we do. Davis explains the role of conflicting forces and institutions in shaping the buildings we build. He recommends improvements which our culture and architects needs to make in order to build healthy communities. | ||
A Building Culture For years, I have been waiting for an honest discussion about the interface between development, design, construction and history. The Culture of Building helps to answer some of those nagging questions of why the built world of America looks the way that it does. Davis skillfully compares the evolution and habits of several building cultures to help illuminate our own. It is an important book for my education as an architect. | ||