The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.24 (830 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0226036987 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 320 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-04-28 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Reyner Banham (1922-88) was professor of history at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
When the research for the present study was first put in hand, the intention was to write a purely architectual history; to consider what architects had taken to be the proper use and exploitation of mechanical environmental controls, and to show how this had manifested itself in the design of their buildings. . From the Back Cover This book is offered as a contribution to the history of architecture as normally understood and was produced by fairly conventional modes of architectural history writing
Truly Insightful Fresh on the heels of reading his "Scenes of America Deserta" (SIC) I was prepared for some architectural pedantry and was pleasantly surprised to find a book provocative in content and full of wonderfully appropriate and obscure case studies. The previous review mentions some of the beneficiaries of Banham's writings e.g. Sir Norman Foster but another Sir worth mention is Sir Peter Cook of Archigram and his Archigram cohorts--as Banham's Wikipedia b. Hal Levin said Enlightening, Eloquent, and Entertaining - An environmental designer's "Must read". Banham was clever, curious, and creative.He discovered that Wright's marvelous purportedly natural house got all sorts of technological help.He discovered that the photos of the purportedly undecorated grain silos in Corbusier's Towards a New Architecture (Vers un architecture)were actually air-brushed to get rid of the ornament and support Corbu's philosophy/aesthetic sense.He was dedicate to understanding and able to relate the motivations for new . "An Excellent Book" according to A Customer. This is an excellent book. I read it in the early 1970's and it has to be a classic as it has stuck with me all this time. By suggesting that the mechanical and electrical apparatus of our modern dwellings is more important than decorative appearance it puts forward the seminal concepts that have driven the architecture of Sirs Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, and today's High-Tech Movement in architecture.
In this revision of his classic work, Banham has added considerable new material on the use of energy, particularly solar energy, in human environments. Included in the new material are discussions of Indian pueblos and solar architecture, the Centre Pompidou and other high-tech buildings, and the environmental wisdom of many current architectural vernaculars.. Reyner Banham was a pioneer in arguing that technology, human needs, and environmental concerns must be considered an integral part of architecture. No historian before him had so systematically explored the impact of environmental engineering on the design of buildings and on the minds of architects