This book showcases recent houses by the world-renowned Japanese minimalist architect, offering unprecedented access to his thought process through more than 100 photographs, line drawings, sketches, and plans. Tadao Ando is one of the best-known and most influential contemporary architects with a minimalistic aesthetic and love of natural materials like glass and concrete--proof that less is more. This volume features ten houses and examines his approach to these designs. Viewed as a collection, these houses serve to demonstrate the wide range of Ando's prodigious genius through lavish and striking photographs. Characteristics of his work include large expanses of unadorned architectural concrete walls combined with wooden or stone floors and large windows. He uses simple methods to solve complicated and small spaces and turns them into spaces with breathtaking landscapes. With precise and beautiful photographs accompanied by Tadao Ando's sketches, drawings, and plans, this volume presents several unseen and little published works, from the Bosco Studio and House facing the Pacific Ocean in Oaxaca, Mexico (2014)to a penthouse in Manhattan for a Japanese collector, completed in 2019.

Based around an interview with Tadao Ando, this book explores the influence of the Buddhist concept of nothingness on Ando’s Christian architecture, and sheds new light on the cultural significance of the buildings of one of the world’s leading contemporary architects. Specifically, this book situates Ando’s churches, particularly his world-renowned Church of the Light (1989), within the legacy of nothingness expounded by Kitaro Nishida (1870-1945), the father of the Kyoto Philosophical School. Linking Ando’s Christian architecture with a philosophy originating in Mahayana Buddhism illuminates the relationship between the two religious systems, as well as tying Ando’s architecture to the influence of Nishida on post-war Japanese art and culture.

The contributions of this volume discuss the broad field of transformation processes in Muslim societies from different perspectives with various disciplinary approaches. Apart from methodological questions the authors investigate religious and social developments in Africa and the Near and Middle East while focusing e.g. on the production of meaning, negotiation of religious values and spaces, gendered agency, and debates of identity.

In her Introduction, Tymieniecka states the core theme of the present book sharply: Is culture an excess of nature's prodigious expansiveness - an excess which might turn out to be dangerous for nature itself if it goes too far - or is culture a 'natural', congenial prolongation of nature-life? If the latter, then culture is assimilated into nature and thus would lose its claim to autonomy: its criteria would be superseded by those of nature alone. Of course, nature and culture may both still be seen as being absorbed by the inner powers of specifically human inwardness, on which view, human being, caught in its own transcendence, becomes separated radically in kind from the rest of existence and may not touch even the shadow of reality except through its own prism. Excess, therefore, or prolongation? And on what terms? The relationship between culture and nature in its technical phase demands a new elucidation. Here this is pursued by excavating the root significance of the 'multiple rationalities' of life. In contrast to Husserl, who differentiated living types according to their degree of participation in the world, the phenomenology of life disentangles living types from within the ontopoietic web of life itself. The human creative act reveals itself as the Great Divide of the Logos of Life - a divide that does not separate but harmonizes, thus dispelling both naturalistic and spiritualistic reductionism.

The image of open working and living spaces flooded with light has, more than any other, become fixed in our minds as a symbol of modernity and the spirit of the times. While the workplace has always been the focus of ergonomic studies and optimization with respect to a good provision of daylight, large glass surfaces have now become the order of the day for living spaces as well. But does this automatically make for better illumination? Taking this question as its starting point, the publication Illuminating thematizes central aspects of light planning, including the connection between the provision of daylight and architectural design, building orientation, the nature of the facade, the ground plan, comfort, and the proportions and atmosphere of rooms. In the process, general characteristics and fundamental principles as well as subtle facets of an intelligent treatment of daylight are discussed and critically examined within an expanded architecture- and culture-historical context.

CD-ROM contains: files for all of the plans, sections and elevations included in the book.

This is an important book, written by one of the top lighting designers in the country. Written at the end of a career as an architect and lighting designer, the book draws on the experience gained while living through a period of intense lighting development, from 1956 up to the millenium. It bridges the gap between the present day architect and lighting engineer, from the viewpoint of the 'independent lighting designer'. 'Lighting Modern Buildings' documents the part played by the independent lighting designer, leading to a greater understanding by architects and lighting engineers of the importance of lighting in architectural design. The book starts with an exploration of the basic human needs of vision and the perception of our exterior world...the intellectual and the physical...since this is what lighting is all about. To do this, it is necessary to trace the development of daylight from earliest times up to the present day; the starting point for any lighting design is the 'natural' source. Whilst an essential understanding of the role of daylight is the beginning, a knowledge of the various forms and properties of artificial light is essential; not only at night but during the day. In early buildings, there was one form of light - daylight - during the day and another - artificial - at night. No attempt was made to integrate the two. The situation today is different; there are many reasons for this, not least in the possibilities of modern structure. The book therefore has extensive coverage of day and night lighting and how it is designed to provide optimum solutions in building design. A major portion of Derek Phillips' book is devoted to 'design'. Sufficient technical detail is provided in the book to permit an understanding of the design principles of each scheme. Schemes illustrated vary from small domestic buildings, churches and workplace, to those devoted to leisure and sport. At the end of each section a series of conclusions are drawn leading to a philosophy of lighting design.