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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorSuburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream
Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Jeff Speck · 320 pages
Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century
Peter Geoffrey Hall · 632 pages
"Peter Hall's seminal Cities of Tomorrow remains an unrivalled account of the history of planning in theory and practice, as well as of the social and economic problems and opportunities that gave rise to it. Now comprehensively revised, the fourth edition offers a perceptive, critical, and global history of urban planning and design throughout the twentieth-century and beyond. A revised and updat
Ways of Seeing
John Berger · 166 pages
How do we see the world around us? The Penguin on Design series includes the works of creative thinkers whose writings on art, design and the media have changed our vision forever."Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.""But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we e
Design Like You Give a Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises
Cameron Sinclair · 333 pages
"Edited by architecture for Humanity, a volunteer-based organization that provides architectural solutions to humanitarian crises, Design Like You Give a Damm brings the best of humanitarian design to the printed page. Proceeds from the sale of this book will support the work of Architecture for Humanity." --Cover.
Seven Days in the Art World
Sarah Thornton · 274 pages
The art market has been booming. Museum attendance is surging. More people than ever call themselves artists. Contemporary art has become a mass entertainment, a luxury good, a job description, and, for some, a kind of alternative religion. In a series of narratives, Sarah Thornton investigates the drama of a Christie's auction, the workings in Takashi Murakami's studios, the elite at the Basel Ar
Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas
Rebecca Solnit, Ben Pease, Shizue Seigel · 161 pages
**"What makes a place?"** *Infinite City*, Rebecca Solnit's brilliant reinvention of the traditional atlas, searches out the answer by examining the many layers of meaning, culture and history in one locale, the San Francisco Bay Area. Aided by artists, writers and cartographers, Solnit has compiled twenty-two gorgeous color maps, each of which illuminates San Francisco and its surroundings as exp
Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change
Victor Papanek · 339 pages
The Image of the City
Kevin Lynch · 194 pages
What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion--imageability--and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The
Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time
Jeff Speck · 316 pages
Jeff Speck has dedicated his career to determining what makes cities thrive. And he has boiled it down to one key factor: walkability. The very idea of a modern metropolis evokes visions of bustling sidewalks, vital mass transit, and a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly urban core. But in the typical American city, the car is still king, and downtown is a place that's easy to drive to but often not wort
Home from Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the 21st Century
James Howard Kunstler · 318 pages
In Home from Nowhere Kunstler explores the growing movement across America to restore the physical dwelling place of our civilization. Picking up where The Geography of Nowhere left off, Kunstler describes precisely how the American Dream of a little cottage in a natural landscape mutated into today's sprawling automobile suburb in all its ghastliness, and why "we are going to run shrieking from
On Photography
Susan Sontag · 207 pages
On Photography is a 1977 collection of essays by Susan Sontag. It originally appeared as a series of essays in the New York Review of Books between 1973 and 1977. In the book, Sontag expresses her views on the history and present-day role of photography in capitalist societies as of the 1970s. Sontag discusses many examples of modern photography, among these, she contrasts Diane Arbus's work with
The Language of Things: Understanding the World of Desirable Objects
Deyan Sudjic · 215 pages
A brilliant exposé of the interaction between art, design, and commerce. What is it that persuades us to camp outside Apple stores to be the first to buy an iPhone? Why is it that a generation ago a typewriter might have lasted someone a lifetime, but now we write on computers that we upgrade every couple of years to shinier, faster, sleeker models? Why do the clicks of some car doors sound “ex
A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction
Christopher W. Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein, Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiksdahl-King, Shlomo Angel · 1,171 pages
Alexander and his co-authors present us with over two hundred (roughly 250) "patterns" that they believe must be present in order for an environment to be pleasing, comfortable, or in their words, "alive." The patterns start at the most general level -- the first pattern, "Independent Regions," describes the ideal political entity, while another of my favorite patterns, "Mosaic of Subcultures," de
Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo
Margot Mifflin · 160 pages
The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age
Simon Schama · 698 pages
This text explores the enigma of 17th-century Holland, a nation that attained an unprecedented level of affluence, yet lived in constant dread of being corrupted by prosperity. Examines seventeenth-century Dutch life, history, and culture.
The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change
David Harvey · 378 pages
Traces the development of the concept of postmodernism, explains its differences with modernism, and discusses political and social influences.
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Jane Jacobs · 458 pages
The Death and Life of Great American Cities was described by The New York Times as “perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning. . . . [It] can also be seen in a much larger context. It is first of all a work of literature; the descriptions of street life as a kind of ballet and the bitingly satiric account of traditional planning theory can still be read for pleasure
At Home: A Short History of Private Life
Bill Bryson · 560 pages
"As I stood on the roof of my house, taking in this unexpected view, it struck me how glorious it was that this was exactly how this land must have looked to centuries of people, quietly going about their daily business – eating, sleeping, having sex, endeavouring to be amused – and it occurred to me, with the forcefulness of a thought experienced in 360 degrees, that that's really what history mo
Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste
Pierre Bourdieu · 613 pages
Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football
David Winner · 260 pages
City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles
Mike Davis · 462 pages
Harry Potter: Film Wizardry
Brian Sibley · 159 pages
Immerse yourself in the world of the spectacular Harry Potter film series, and learn why Yule Ball ice sculptures never melt, where Galleons, Sickles, and Knuts are really "minted," how to get a Hippogriff to work with actors, the inspiration behind Hogwarts castle, and why Dementors move the way they do. Written and designed in collaboration with the cast and crew that brought J.K. Rowling's cele