Normally，when people think about archiecture，the first thingthat comes to their minds is residental projects such as privatehouses or apartments，but if we think about the time we spend on ourwork location，we can imagine the importance and influence，a welldesigned office has on our daily life.

Saving space: Big ideas for small buildings Over the years, talented architects have occasionally indulged themselves with the challenge of designing small but perfectly formed buildings . Today, with reduced budgets, many architects have turned in a more focused way to creating works that may be diminutive in their dimensions, but are definitely big when it comes to trendsetting ideas. Whether in Japanese cities, where large sites are hard to come by, or at the frontier between art and architecture, small buildings present many advantages, and push their designers to do more with less . A dollhouse for Calvin Klein in New York, a playhouse for children in Trondheim, pop-up stores for fashion stars, vacation cabins, and housing for victims of natural disasters are all part of the new rush to develop the great small architecture of the moment. The 2013 Pritzker Prize winner Toyo Ito is here, but so are emergent architects from Portugal, Chile, England, and New Zealand. Alvaro Siza and Kazuyo Sejima (SAN

Like dreamers do: The lyrical mark-making of a modern maestroWith a career spanning seven decades, Catalan-born Joan Miro (1893 1983) was a polymath giant of modern art, producing masterworks across painting, sculpture, art books, tapestry, and ceramics, and embracing ideologies as varied as Fauvism, Surrealism, Dada, Magic Realism, Cubism, and abstraction.Over the course of his prodigious output, Miro evolved constantly, seeking to eschew categorization and the approval of bourgeois art critics as much as he pursued his own dreamlike worlds. Emerging into the public spotlight in the early 1920s, he first experimented with Fauvism and Cubism before developing a distinctive style of symbols and pictograms, arranged in elusive visual narratives, with frequent reference to Catalan life. As his career progressed, Miro moved towards Surrealism, and, despite never fully identifying with the movement, emerged as one of its most celebrated practitioners with techniques including automated drawing, Lyrical Abstractio

Patrick Blanc, an artist with a green thumb, has created dozens of his admired botanical tapestries in public and private spaces around the world, including the Marithé & Fran ois Girbaud boutique in Manhattan; the Jean Nouvel-designed Quai Branly Museum in Paris; the aquarium in Genoa; the Siam Paragon mall in Bangkok; and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan. In this luscious, oversize, all-color book, he explains how to create plant walls using more than one thousand plants, drawing on his observation of natural milieus, his technique of growing on vertical surfaces, his savoir faire, and his passion for plants.

Naked Architecture Valerio Paolo Mosco An account of one of the most interesting phenomena of contemporary architecture: the return to the structure and methods with which contemporary constructions are realized. Over the last ten years architecture would seem to have rediscovered engineering. Now that the Postmodern period, in which the structure of buildings was camouflaged by coverings of every kind, has passed, architecture today seems to have undressed, almost as though wishing to show how it is made (and to render this spectacular). On the other hand, the rediscovery in recent years of plastic form has brought about a closer relationship between architects and engineers. In the wake of the phenomenon that is the work of Santiago Calatrava, figures of engineer-architects have emerged such as Cecil Balmond, Sasaki and Guy Nordenson, who have been able to give a strongly "engineering-oriented" guise to ever more complex building sites. To this we must add the rise of new issues, such as that of envi

The Case Study House program (1945 1966) was an exceptional, innovative event in the history of American architecture and remains to this day unique. The program, which concentrated on the Los Angeles area and oversaw the design of 36 prototype homes, sought to make available plans for modern residences that could be easily and cheaply constructed during the postwar building boom. Highly experimental, the program generated houses that were designed to redefine the modern home, and thus had a pronounced influence on architecture American and international both during the program's existence and even to this day. This compact guide includes all projects featured in our XL version, with over 150 photos and plans and a map of where all houses are (or were) located.

"In presenting us with a vision of organic exuberance andhuman delight, which ecology and ecological design promise to openup for us, McHarg revives the hope for a better world." --LewisMumford *"This century's most influential landscape architecturebook." --Landscape Architecture *In the twenty-five years since it first took the academicworld by storm, Design With Nature has done much to redefine thefields of landscape architecture, urban and regional planning, andecological design. It has also left a permanent mark on the ongoingdiscussion of mankind's place in nature and nature's place inmankind within the physical sciences and humanities. Described byone enthusiastic reviewer as a "user's manual for our world,"Design With Nature offers a practical blueprint for a new,healthier relationship between the built environment and nature. Inso doing, it provides nothing less than the scientific, technical,and philosophical foundations for a mature civilization that will,as Lewis Mumford ecsta

A temptation to dream This book explores contemporary interiors in the sun-soaked land that stretches from the Sahara to the Mediterranean: Morocco. The diversity is breathtaking: the rural pis? architecture of the south is a far cry from the Hispano-Mooresque ornamental beauty of the imperial cities. Moroccan Interiors are as endlessly varied as the country itself, from the restored palaces in the medina of Marrakesh (where aesthetes of the international set now live) to humble troglodyte fishermen's homes at Sidi Moussa d?Aglou. The colorful palette of this country and the light there themselves suffuse these very different homes with a vitality that is as distinctive to modern Morocco as it is a reflection of contemporary trends in d?cor worldwide. The author: Lisa Lovatt-Smith was born in 1967 in Barcelona of British parents. She has since lived in London, Madrid and Milan. At eighteen she began a meteoric career at the various international editions of Vogue. She has since decided to concentrate on writi

Architecture tells the story of the world's most incredible buildings, from the ancient world to the present day. Take a closer look at the beautiful details, principal elements, and decorative features of every architectural style, from China's Temple of Heaven and the Great Mosque of Damascus, to the Guggenheim museum and the London Olympic Velodrome. Architecture offers a truly worldwide look at historical and contemporary building, with breathtaking photography, intriguing cross-sections, and unique CGI artwork. Now fully updated, this stunning new edition covers contemporary architecture and green buildings, with incredible new photography to transport you to the most interesting and iconic buildings on earth. Previous edition ISBN 9781405310291 ,

The companion volume to the twelve-hour PBS series from theacclaimed filmmaker behind The Civil War, Baseball, and TheWar America’s national parks spring from an idea as radical as theDeclaration of Independence: that the nation’s most magnificent andsacred places should be preserved, not for royalty or the rich, butfor everyone. In this evocative and lavishly illustrated narrative,Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan delve into the history of the parkidea, from the first sighting by white men in 1851 of the valleythat would become Yosemite and the creation of the world’s firstnational park at Yellowstone in 1872, through the most recentadditions to a system that now encompasses nearly four hundredsites and 84 million acres. The authors recount the adventures, mythmaking, and intensepolitical battles behind the evolution of the park system, and theenduring ideals that fostered its growth. They capture theimportance and splendors of the individual parks: from Haleakala inHawaii to Acadia in Maine, from Denali

A tremendous body of sophisticated and sensitively designed architectural work has been produced in Thailand in the first decade of the 21st century. The 25 houses in The Modern Thai House illustrate the radical new ideas coming from a dynamic younger generation of architects who are producing work comparable with and sometimes even surpassing the very best architecture in the world. Most of these architects were trained in the U.S. or U.K. and reflect not only American and European sensibilities but also affinities with their contemporaries in Asia including Japan, China, Singapore, and Bali all hotbeds for innovation in modern design. The houses in this book are readily accessible from Bangkok, Phuket, and Chiangmai. They reflect a wide variety of concerns and solutions, such as: sustainability; responses to climate; strategies for cooling with minimal electricity; openness versus security in a large metropolis such as Bangkok; cultural sensitivity and responsiveness, as evidenced in a "three-generation

Shopping, which was seen by our ancestors as a necessity, has increasingly taken on a purely lucrative character (although this has obviously always been present to some extent). The store window lies at the frontier between the buyer and the seller, and in recent years it has broadened its horizons to become a conduit for ideological statements and a work of art in its own right. The window display represents society, with all its desires and dreams, as a theater show (another similarly ephemeral art form). In this way, the act of exhibiting a product in a store window enriches it and makes it recognizable and attractive, making it stay in the viewer's mind until the moment when it is purchased.

The new student edition of the definitive architecturalreference For seventy–five years, Architectural Graphic Standards hasbeen the go–to reference for architects, builders, and engineers.Revised for the first time since 2000, Architectural GraphicStandards, Student Edition gives students their own handyresource. Carefully abridged from the Eleventh Edition of ArchitecturalGraphic Standards, this Student Edition features the same richlydetailed graphics and text that have made Architectural GraphicStandards a classic, but updated and reorganized in a way that isrelevant to today′s student. Thousands of illustrations and a richindex offer immediate access to hundreds of architectural elements,while the wide variety of topics covered makes this work relevantthroughout a student′s architecture education and into the earlystages of professional practice. With a wealth of information for the student preparing forprofessional practice, this new edition: Covers building standard