Homebody: A Guide to Creating Spaces You Never Want to Leave

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Alain de Botton

Alain de Botton investigates how physical spaces and architectural forms affect our moods and moral values, exploring why harmonious proportions and honest materials nurture human happiness.

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William L. MacDonald

Examines Roman architecture as a party of overall urban design and looks at arches, public buildings, tombs, columns, stairs, plazas, and streets.

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Duo Dickinson

Detailing has traditionally been relegated to the lowest tier in an architectural office - the apprentices, interns, and newly licensed. And yet architectural detailing has the ability to elevate projects to the highest level of aesthetic expression. Now, for the first time in book form, there's a collection of projects displaying the "nuts and bolts" of creative architectural detailing in building design - one that offers a treasure of examples for creating richer detailing using state-of-the-art techniques. Putting the lie to the common assumption that quality detailing is either prohibitively expensive or that it requires an obsession with technology, the book shows how architects address practical architectural needs with aggressively innovative and aesthetically expressive solutions. Among its special features schematics, working drawings, and photographs of actual built details - all in one place; depictions of details that can be created with readily available materials; easy-to-follow classification of details by function and use; and examples of state-of-the-art technology and materials for a wide variety of situations. On display are details that add touches to buildings that go far beyond the commonplace moldings, trim, eaves, and flashing of typical construction. Projects represent a wide range of budgets. The detailing of walls, ceilings, roofs, doors, windows, kitchens, bathrooms, siding and exterior trim, millwork, mantelpieces, and light fixtures are all examined in a wide variety of approaches by some of America's leading architects. Lavishly illustrated with 350 line drawings and photographs, this book shows the architectural detailing work of some of our country's most gifted architects at the peak of their abilities. The art of creating details that are expressive as well as technologically sound is featured from such masters as Stanley Tigerman, Peter Bohlin, James Cutler, George Ranalli, Alfredo De Vido, and many more of today's most exciting and innovative designers.

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Gottfried Semper

"The enduring influence of the architect Gottfried Semper (1803-79) derives less from his monumental buildings in Dresden, Zurich, and Vienna than from his Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts (1860-63). Semper's landmark survey of the motives giving rise to the technical arts (textiles, ceramics, carpentry, masonry) explores the symbolic and material preconditions of style. An extended inquiry into the inner principles of artistic form, this work radically altered the intellectual field for aesthetics and art history and stands as a vital document in the consolidation of modern architectural theory."--BOOK JACKET.