Details the procedure by which architects can make informed decisions on the economic feasibility and performance of any building project, and calculate the economic impact of design decisions, especially in the early phases. Includes topics such as where funding for a building comes from, and using.

We no longer build buildings like we used to nor do we pay for them in the same way. Buildings today are no longer only shelter but are also life support systems, communication terminals, data manufacturing centers, and much more. Buildings are incredibly expensive tools that must be constantly adjusted to function efficiently. The economics of building has become as complex as its design. When buildings were shelter they lasted longer than their builders. The av erage gothic master mason lived 35 or 40 years. Cathedrals took 3 or 4 hundred years to build. Cost estimates were verified by great great grandchildren of the original designer. Today, creative economics has become as important as creative design and creative building. The dient brings builder, contractor, architect, and facilities manager to account in their life time. The cost of building can therefore no longer be left to chance or act of god. Solutions are no longer as ingeniously simple as those proposed by a Flor entine builder early in the 15th century. He proposed to center the dome of S. Maria deI Fiore on a great mound of earth mixed with pennies. When the job was done street urchins would carry away the dirt in their search for the pennies. This was a serious suggestion offered by an early construction manager before Brunelleschi solved the problem more sensibly.

A textbook on design economics for students of architecture, building and quantity surveying, it examines the links between design and the costs of building as well as more general economic issues and their significance for designers and builders.

Architecture for the Commons dives into an analysis of how the tectonics of a building is fundamentally linked to the economic organizations that allow them to exist. By tracing the origins and promises of current technological practices in design, the book provides an alternative path, one that reconsiders the means of achieving complexity through combinatorial strategies. This move requires reconsidering serial production with crowdsourcing and user content in mind. The ideas presented will be explored through the design research developed within Plethora Project, a design practice that explores the use of video game interfaces as a mechanism for participation and user design. The research work presented throughout the book seeks to align with a larger project that is currently taking place in many different fields: The Construction of the Commons. By developing both the ideological and physical infrastructure, the project of the Commons has become an antidote to current economic practices that perpetuate inequality. The mechanisms of the production and governance of the Commons are discussed, inviting the reader to get involved and participate in the discussion. The current political and economic landscape calls for a reformulation of our current economic practices and alternative value systems that challenge the current market monopolies. This book will be of great interest not only to architects and designers studying the impact of digital technologies in the field of design but also to researchers studying novel techniques for social participation and cooperating of communities through digital networks. The book connects principles of architecture, economics and social sciences to provide alternatives to the current production trends.

Architecture and Capitalism tells a story of the relationship between the economy and architectural design. Eleven historians each discuss in brand new essays the time period they know best, looking at cultural and economic issues, which in light of current economic crises you will find have dealt with diverse but surprisingly familiar economic issues. Told through case studies, the narrative begins in the mid-nineteenth century and ends with 2011, with introductions by Editor Peggy Deamer to pull the main themes together so that you can see how other architects in different times and in different countries have dealt with similar economic conditions. By focussing on what previous architects experienced, you have the opportunity to avoid repeating the past. With new essays by Pier Vittorio Aureli, Ellen Dunham-Jones, Keller Easterling, Lauren Kogod, Robert Hewison, Joanna Merwood-Salisbury, Robin Schuldenfrei, Deborah Gans, Simon Sadler, Nathan Rich, and Micahel Sorkin.

The Manhattan skyline is one of the great wonders of the modern world. But how and why did it form? Much has been written about the city's architecture and its general history, but little work has explored the economic forces that created the skyline. In Building the Skyline, Jason Barr chronicles the economic history of the Manhattan skyline. In the process, he debunks some widely held misconceptions about the city's history. Starting with Manhattan's natural and geological history, Barr moves on to how these formations influenced early land use and the development of neighborhoods, including the dense tenement neighborhoods of Five Points and the Lower East Side, and how these early decisions eventually impacted the location of skyscrapers built during the Skyscraper Revolution at the end of the 19th century. Barr then explores the economic history of skyscrapers and the skyline, investigating the reasons for their heights, frequencies, locations, and shapes. He discusses why skyscrapers emerged downtown and why they appeared three miles to the north in midtown-but not in between the two areas. Contrary to popular belief, this was not due to the depths of Manhattan's bedrock, nor the presence of Grand Central Station. Rather, midtown's emergence was a response to the economic and demographic forces that were taking place north of 14th Street after the Civil War. Building the Skyline also presents the first rigorous investigation of the causes of the building boom during the Roaring Twenties. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the boom was largely a rational response to the economic growth of the nation and city. The last chapter investigates the value of Manhattan Island and the relationship between skyscrapers and land prices. Finally, an Epilogue offers policy recommendations for a resilient and robust future skyline.

Taking the break-up of the Soviet Union and the entry of Russia, China and India into the global market as the start of a new era of globalisation, Robert Adam compares new developments in architecture and urban design with major shifts in the balance of power since 1990. Based on the principle that design unavoidably follows social change, politics and economics, this analysis casts a new light on recent architecture. Starting with the lead up to events in the 1990s, links are established between the global dominance of the North Atlantic economies, architectural style and a dramatic increase in international architectural practice. The widely-observed homogeneity of the global consumer economy is examined in relation to branding, tourism and international competition between cities, and parallels are drawn with universal architectural and urban types, iconic architecture and the rise of the star architect. Contrasting pressures to maintain differences are identified in the break-up of nation states, identity politics, targeted marketing and environmentalism, and these are related to attempts to reinforce local identity through architecture and urban design. Using social, political and economic change as a guide to new directions in architecture and urban design, the book ends by tracing the changes in global power revealed by the 2008 Western financial crash and its immediate impact on the built environment. By comparing past patterns of cultural influence, the book speculates on how architecture and urban design may come to reflect wider global trends.