This is a book of marvelous pictures that illustrates standard examples in low dimensional topology. The text starts at the most basic level (the intersection of coordinate planes) and gives hands on constructions of the most beautiful examples in topology: the projective plane, Poincare's example of a homology sphere, lens spaces, knotted surfaces, 2-sphere eversions, and higher dimensional manifolds. The text carefully explains the importance of the examples and the techniques without being bogged down in a morass of technicalities.Chapter 1 opens with the classification of orientable surfaces, and the meaning of space. Chapter 2 discusses examples of non-orientable surfaces including models of the projective plane and the Klein bottle. Chapter 3 discusses how curves fit on surfaces and gives a general discussion of knotted strings in space. In Chapter 4, some examples of other 3-dimensional spaces are described. These include the 3-dimensional sphere, lens spaces, and the quaternionic projective space. In Chapter 5, the author reviews the movie techniques of studying surfaces in 4-dimensions. He shows how to move among the standard examples of Klein bottles, and he gives a “movie move” decomposition of turning the 2-sphere inside out. In the final Chapter, higher dimensional spaces are examined from the same elementary point of view.The book is a guide book to a wide variety of topics. It will be of value to undergraduates who want to learn geometric topology and to graduate students who want examples with which they can make computations and who need an elementary description of topological spaces. Finally, the book should be interesting to other scientists and mathematicians who want to learn some examples of topological spaces.

This marvelous book of pictures illustrates the fundamental concepts of geometric topology in a way that is very friendly to the reader. It will be of value to anyone who wants to understand the subject by way of examples. Undergraduates, beginning graduate students, and non-professionals will profit from reading the book and from just looking at the pictures.

In this book the authors develop the theory of knotted surfaces in analogy with the classical case of knotted curves in 3-dimensional space. In the first chapter knotted surface diagrams are defined and exemplified; these are generic surfaces in 3-space with crossing information given. The diagrams are further enhanced to give alternative descriptions. A knotted surface can be described as a movie, as a kind of labeled planar graph, or as a sequence of words in which successive words are related by grammatical changes. In the second chapter, the theory of Reidemeister moves is developed in the various contexts. The authors show how to unknot intricate examples using these moves. The third chapter reviews the braid theory of knotted surfaces. Examples of the Alexander isotopy are given, and the braid movie moves are presented. In the fourth chapter, properties of the projections of knotted surfaces are studied. Oriented surfaces in 4-space are shown to have planar projections without cusps and without branch points. Signs of triple points are studied. Applications of triple-point smoothing that include proofs of triple-point formulas and a proof of Whitney's congruence on normal Euler classes are presented. The fifth chapter indicates how to obtain presentations for the fundamental group and the Alexander modules. Key examples are worked in detail. The Seifert algorithm for knotted surfaces is presented and exemplified. The sixth chapter relates knotted surfaces and diagrammatic techniques to 2-categories. Solutions to the Zamolodchikov equations that are diagrammatically obtained are presented. The book contains over 200 illustrations that illuminate the text. Examples are worked out in detail, and readers have the opportunity to learn first-hand a series of remarkable geometric techniques.

1. A sphere -- 2. Surfaces, folds, and cusps -- 3. The inside and outside -- 4. Dimensions -- 5. Immersed surfaces -- 6. Movies -- 7. Movie moves -- 8. Taxonomic summary -- 9. How not to turn the sphere inside-out -- 10. A physical metaphor -- 11. Sarah's thesis -- 12. The eversion -- 13. The double point and fold surfaces

This book proposes a new critical relationship between computation and architecture, developing a history and theory of representation in architecture to understand and unleash potential means to open up creativity in the field. Historically, architecture has led to spatial representation. Today, computation has established new representational paradigms that can be compared to spatial representations, such as the revolution of perspective in the Renaissance. Architects now use software, robotics, and fabrication tools with very little understanding and participation in how these tools influence, revolutionize, and determine both architecture and its construction today. Why does the discipline of architecture not have a higher degree of authorship in the conception and development of computational technologies that define spatial representation? This book critically explores the relationship between history, theory, and cultural criticism. Lorenzo-Eiroa positions new understandings through parallel historical sections and theories of many revolutionary representational architecture canons displaced by conventional spatial projection. He identifies the architects, artists, mathematicians, and philosophers that were able to revolutionize their disciplines through the development of new technologies, new systems of representation, and new lenses to understand reality. This book frames the discussion by addressing new means to understand and expand architecture authorship in relation to the survey, information, representation, higher dimensional space, Big Data, and Artificial Intelligence – in the pursuit of activating an architecture of information. This will be important reading for upper-level students and researchers of architecture and architectural theory, especially those with a keen interest in computational design and robotic fabrication.

The book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Workshop on Algebraic Frames for the Perception-Action Cycle, AFPAC '97, held in Kiel, Germany, in September 1997. The volume presents 12 revised full papers carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. Also included are 10 full invited papers by leading researchers in the area providing a representative state-of-the-art assessment of this rapidly growing field. The papers are organized in topical sections on PAC systems, low level and early vision, recognition of visual structure, processing of 3D visual space, representation and shape perception, inference and action, and visual and motor neurocomputation.