Cozy, charming, and distinctly Californian, the bungalow is an enduring architectural icon. Originally designed to survive earthquakes, the low, rambling structures combined grace, beauty, and comfort at minimum cost.Early in the twentieth century, Los Angeles architect Henry Wilson, who called himself «The Bungalow Man,» compiled 112 of the most popular and economic bungalow blueprints of his time in a catalog for would-be homeowners. Complemen ...
New York City boasts more spectacular bridges than any other city in the world. From the Gothic stone arches and gossamer steel webbing of the Brooklyn Bridge (perhaps the greatest engineering achievement of the 19th century), to the Verrazano-Narrows — the world's longest suspension bridge when completed in 1964 — more than 75 bridges span the city's waterways. This book is a stirring text-and-picture tribute to th ...
Most people do not think to observe geology from the sidewalks of a major city, but all David B. Williams has to do is look at building stone in any urban center to find a range of rocks equal to any assembled by plate tectonics. In Stories in Stone , he takes you on explorations to find 3.5-billion-year-old rock that looks like swirled pink-and-black taffy, a gas station made of petrified wood, and a Florida fort that has withstood three hundr ...
As China struggled to redefine itself at the turn of the twentieth century, nationalism, religion, and material culture intertwined in revealing ways. This phenomenon is evident in the twin biographies of North China’s leading Catholic bishop of the time, Alphonse Favier (1837–1905), and the Beitang cathedral, epicenter of the Roman Catholic mission in China through incarnations that began in 1701. After its relocation and re ...
For nearly one hundred years, Shanghai was an international treaty port in which the extraterritorial rights of foreign governments shaped both architecture and infrastructure, and it merits examination as one of the most complex and influential urban environments of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Improvised City illuminates the interplay between the city’s commercial nature and the architectural forms and practices designe ...
Mapping Chinese Rangoon is both an intimate exploration of the Sino-Burmese, people of Chinese descent who identify with and choose to remain in Burma/Myanmar, and an illumination of twenty-first-century Burma during its emergence from decades of military-imposed isolation. This spatial ethnography examines how the Sino-Burmese have lived in between states, cognizant of the insecurity in their unclear political status but aware of the social a ...
Exploring several utopian imaginaries and practices, A Place for Utopia ties different times together from the early twentieth century to the present, the biographical and the anthropological, the cultural and the conjunctional, South Asia, Europe, and North America. It charts the valency of «utopia» for understanding designs for alternative, occluded, vernacular, or emergent urbanisms in the last hundred years. Central to the designs for utop ...
Residents and visitors in today’s Seattle would barely recognize the landscape that its founding settlers first encountered. As the city grew, its leaders and inhabitants dramatically altered its topography to accommodate their changing visions. In Too High and Too Steep , David B. Williams uses his deep knowledge of Seattle, scientific background, and extensive research and interviews to illuminate the physical challenges and sometimes startli ...
This book attempts a comprehensive overview of the "architecture" of the kibbutz: its essence, its history, its constant change, and its physical planning and architectural expression and management, and relates to this unique spatial alternative from a holistic viewpoint: the kibbutz in all stages of its development, from the kvutza as a "micro-utopian" commune to its physical configuration as an autonomous-a ...
