Showing titles in Architecture

Journeying aross Britain, from West Penwith and Avebury to the Lake District and Orkney, Stone Lands uncovers the magic and rich history of our incredible prehistoric standing stones. It conveys the delight that lies in tracking them down, as well as the solace these ancient places offer in times of darkness.

Brunelleschi's Dome is the story of how a Renaissance genius bent men, materials, and the very forces of nature to build an architectural wonder we continue to marvel at today. Denounced at first as a madman, Brunelleschi was celebrated at the end as a genius. He engineered the perfect placement of brick and stone, built ingenious hoists and cranes to carry an estimated 70 million pounds hundreds of feet into the air, and designed the workers' platforms and routines so carefully that only one man died during the decades of construction.

It is ordinary homes, not grand public buildings or the mansions of the rich that have all the best stories. The rises and falls, the shifts in the fortunes of neighbourhoods and whole cities are here, tracing the often surprising journey one single house can take from elegant dwelling in a fashionable district to a tenement for society’s rejects. Packed with remarkable human stories, it is a phenomenal insight into living history, a history we can see every day on the streets where we live.

With this updated edition of his earlier book, A Place of My Own, listeners can revisit the inspired, intelligent, and often hilarious story of Pollan’s realization of a room of his own—a small, wooden hut, his “shelter for daydreams” — built with his admittedly unhandy hands. Inspired by both Thoreau and Mr. Blandings, A Place of My Own not only works to convey the history and meaning of all human building, it also marks the connections between our bodies, our minds, and the natural world.

Wildly irreverent and warm, this is a story about practice, competence and failure, told through tales in a world most of us never see. Glamour, luxury and refinement are products of a flawed, human process, of missed deadlines, overrun budgets, heated tantrums and scrapped blueprints. Throughout my career I have observed, erred, learned, finessed, apologised, and resisted the urge to say I told you so. I offer these tales from the trade in the hope that others might find them amusing, instructive and inspirational. There are many good reasons to work. Here are a few of them.

Thirty years after its publication, 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 even by those who long ago absorbed and appropriated the book's arguments."

AudioLearn Crash Courses presents AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Complete review for the Amazon Web Services Certified Solutions Architect - Associate certification exam! Developed by experienced technicians and professionally narrated for easy listening, this course is a valuable tool when preparing for your AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Certification Exam. The audio is focused and high-yield, covering the most important topics you need to know to succeed on the test. The material is accurate, up-to-date, and broken down into bite-sized sections.

Part hands-on archaeological history of Britain, part deeply personal insight into this ancient craft by a stonemason who has worked on Britain's greatest monuments, from Salisbury Cathedral to St Paul's. Following a tradition that dates back hundreds of years, stonemason Andrew Ziminski has worked on many of Britain's greatest monuments, from the Roman ruins of Bath to Salisbury Cathedral's spire to St Paul's, and his three decades of work give a unique perspective on the warp and weft of English history, nature and geology.

On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the epic story of an enormous apartment building where Communist true believers lived before their destruction. The House of Government is unlike any other book about the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experiment.

Set against the backdrop of the Nazi occupation of World War II, The Hôtel on Place Vendôme is the captivating history of Paris' world-famous Hôtel Ritz - a breathtaking tale of glamour, opulence, and celebrity and of dangerous liaisons, espionage, and resistance.

As the sun set slowly on the British Empire in the years after the Second World War, the nation's stately homes were in crisis. Tottering under the weight of rising taxes and a growing sense that they had no place in 20th-century Britain, hundreds of ancestral piles were dismantled and demolished. Perhaps even more surprising was the fact that so many of these great houses survived, as dukes and duchesses clung desperately to their ancestral seats and tenants' balls gave way to rock concerts, safari parks and day trippers.

In the decades before the First World War, the owners of the nation’s stately homes revelled in a golden age of glory and glamour. Nothing lay beyond their reach in a world where privilege and hedonism went hand-in-hand with duty and honour. This was a time when the ancestral seats of ancient nobility stood side-by-side with the fabulous palaces of Jewish bankers and Indian princes, when dukes and duchesses mixed with aristocratic society hostesses who had learned to dance in the chorus line and self-made millionaires who had been raised in the slums of Manchester and Birmingham.

Soho - illicit, glamorous, sordid, louche, poverty-stricken, squalid, exhilarating. One of Britain's best loved historians, Dan Cruickshank, grants us an intimacy with centuries of rich and varied history as he guides us around the Soho of the last 500 years. We learn of its original aspirations towards respectability, how it became London's bohemian quarter and why it was once home to its criminal underworld. The bars, clubs and theatres and their frequenters are described with detail that evokes the heart of the district.

England's villages have survived, developed and thrived over hundreds of years. But what makes a village, and how has that changed over time? Take a charming and unexpected journey through the quirks of England's villages throughout the ages in the excellent company of Dr Ben Robinson, expert archaeologist.

The story of London, told through 12 of its most seminal buildings. In a sweeping narrative, from its mythic origins to the glittering towers of the contemporary financial capital, The Stones of London tells the story of 12 London buildings in a kaleidoscopic and unexpected history of one of the world's most enigmatic cities. From the Roman forum to the Gherkin, Regent Street to the East End, the Houses of Parliament to Greenwich Palace, London's buildings are testament to the richness of its past.

Critical Path is Fuller's master work - the summing up of a lifetime's thought and concern - as urgent and relevant as it was upon its first publication in 1981. Critical Path details how humanity found itself in its current situation - at the limits of the planet's natural resources and facing political, economic, environmental, and ethical crises.

The Bowery Boys podcast is a phenomenon, thrilling audiences each month with one amazing story after the next. Now, in their first-ever book, the duo gives you an exclusive personal tour through New York's old cobblestone streets and gas-lit back alleyways.

Modern Man is a penetrating psychological portrait of a true genius and constant self-inventor, as well as a sweeping tale filled with exotic locales, sex and celebrity (he was a lover of Josephine Baker), and high-stakes projects. In Flint's telling, Corbusier isn't just the grandfather of modern architecture but a man who sought to remake the world according to his vision, dispelling the Victorian style and replacing it with something never seen before.

This is the step-by-step method from the social media sensation Tidy Dad. A father of three with a stressful job, Tyler Moore felt his life resembled an overstuffed closet: disorganized and overly busy behind the tidy, closed doors. When it all became too much for their 750-square-foot apartment and his nerves, he set out to unpack the physical and emotional mess around him. He learned that tidying is about so much more than the decluttering of a physical space. When he analyzed what was 'just enough', he was able to devise systems and hacks that brought order to his whole life.

The remarkable and inspiring story of how London was transformed after the Great Fire of 1666 into the most powerful city in the world, and the men who were responsible for that achievement. Opening in the 1640s, as the city was gripped in tumult leading up to the English Civil War, The Phoenix charts the lives and works of five extraordinary men who would grow up in the chaos of a world turned upside down: the architect, Sir Christopher Wren; gardener and virtuosi, John Evelyn; the scientist, Robert Hooke; the radical philosopher, John Locke; and the builder, Nicholas Barbon.