In order to function, architectural theory and practice must be shaped to suit current cultural, economic, and political forces. Thus, architecture embodies reductive logic that conditions the treatment of human and social processes – which raises the question of how to define objectivity for architectural mentalities that must conform to a set of immediate conditions. This book focuses on meaning, and on the physical and mental processes that define life in built environments. The potential to draw knowledge from aesthetics, psychology, political economy, philosophy, geography, and sociology is offset by the fact that architectural logic is inevitably reductive, cultural, socio-economic, and political. However, despite the duty to conform, it is argued that the treatment of human processes, and the understanding of architectural mentalities, can benefit from interdisciplinary linkages, small freedoms, and cracks in a system of imperatives that can yield the means of greater objectivity. This is valuable reading for students and researchers interested in architectural theory as a working reality, and in the relationships between architecture and other fields.

In order to function, architectural theory and practice must be shaped to suit current cultural, economic, and political forces. Thus, architecture embodies reductive logic that conditions the treatment of human and social processes – which raises the question of how to define objectivity for architectural mentalities that must conform to a set of immediate conditions. This book focuses on meaning, and on the physical and mental processes that define life in built environments. The potential to draw knowledge from aesthetics, psychology, political economy, philosophy, geography, and sociology is offset by the fact that architectural logic is inevitably reductive, cultural, socio-economic, and political. However, despite the duty to conform, it is argued that the treatment of human processes, and the understanding of architectural mentalities, can benefit from interdisciplinary linkages, small freedoms, and cracks in a system of imperatives that can yield the means of greater objectivity. This is valuable reading for students and researchers interested in architectural theory as a working reality, and in the relationships between architecture and other fields.

Do We Need Architects? Journey Beneath the Surface of Architecture is a journey of discovery that takes place over twenty-five years of my life, from exploring my own motivations to become an architect, learning about architecture, and the changing environment of practicing architecture to experiencing the impact of architecture on the built environment. The story investigates the meaning, perception, and relevance of architecture in todays world. Have you ever had a favorite building, park, or square? A place that affects your mood? All of us at some stage have experienced the impact of architecture and landscape on the way we perceive reality. Let me invite you on a journey that examines what architects do, as well as the legacy of the architectural process that influences the environment, visiting places and exploring architectural interventions by taking them out of the glossy images shown in the architecture books and industry journals and placing them in the context of their urban or natural setting. It is always as a found object, always in the present, examining the impact of humanity on the environment and the contribution architecture has made and is continuing to make to the everyday environment where we all live, work, and play.

The aim of this book is to expand the subject and matter of architecture, and to explore their interdependence. There are now many architectures. This book acknowledges architecture far beyond the familiar boundaries of the discipline and reassesses the object at its centre: the building. Architectural matter is not always physical or building fabric. It is whatever architecture is made of, whether words, bricks, blood cells, sounds or pixels. The fifteen chapters are divided into three sections - on buildings, spaces and bodies - which each deal with a particular understanding of architecture and architectural matter. The richness and diversity of subjects and materials discussed in this book locates architecture firmly in the world as a whole, not just the domain of architects. In stating that architecture is far more than the work of architects, this book aims not to deny the importance of architects in the production of architecture but to see their role in more balanced terms and to acknowledge other architectural producers. Architecture can, for example, be found in the incisions of a surgeon, the instructions of a choreographer or the movements of a user. Architecture can be made of anything and by anyone.

In the nineteenth century, new cemeteries were built in many Italian cities that were unique in scale and grandeur, and which became destinations on the Grand Tour. From the Middle Ages, the dead had been buried in churches and urban graveyards but, in the 1740s, a radical reform across Europe prohibited burial inside cities and led to the creation of suburban burial grounds. Italy’s nineteenth-century cemeteries were distinctive as monumental or architectural structures, rather than landscaped gardens. They represented a new building type that emerged in response to momentous changes in Italian politics, tied to the fight for independence and the creation of the nation-state. As the first survey of Italy’s monumental cemeteries, the book explores the relationship between architecture and politics, or how architecture is formed by political forces. As cities of the dead, cemeteries mirrored the spaces of the living. Against the backdrop of Italy’s unification, they conveyed the power of the new nation, efforts to construct an Italian identity, and conflicts between Church and state. Monumental cemeteries helped to foster the narratives and mentalities that shaped Italy as a new nation.

Writings on the metropolis generally foreground illimitability, stressing thereby that the urban ultimately remains both illegible and unintelligible. Instead, the purpose of this interdisciplinary study is to demonstrate that mentality as a tool offers orientation in the urban realm. Nora Pleßke develops a model of urban mentality to be employed for cities worldwide. Against the background of the Spatial Turn, she identifies dominant urban-specific structures of London mentality in contemporary London novels, such as Monica Ali's »Brick Lane«, J.G. Ballard's »Millennium People«, Nick Hornby's »A Long Way Down«, and Ian McEwan's »Saturday«.

Since antiquity, the sciences have served as a source of images and metaphors for architecture and have had a direct influence on the shaping of built space. In recent years, architects have been looking again at science as a source of inspiration in the production of their designs and constructions. This volume evaluates the interconnections between the sciences and architecture from both historical and contemporary perspectives. Architecture and the Sciences shows how scientific paradigms have migrated to architecture through the appropriation of organic and mechanical models. Conversely, architecture has provided images for scientific and technological discourse. Accordingly, this volume investigates the status of the exchanges between the two domains.Contents include: Alessandra Ponte, Desert Testing; Martin Bressani, Violet-le-Duc's Optic; Georges Teyssot, Norm and Type: Variations on a Theme; Reinhold Martin, Organicism's Other; Catherine Ingraham, Why All These Birds? Birds in the Sky, Birds in the Hand; Antoine Picon, Architecture, Science, Technology and the Virtual Realm; and Felicity Scott, Encounters with the Face of America.