- Table View
- List View
Architecture and Leadership: The Nature and Role of Space and Place in Organizational Culture (Leadership Horizons)
by Mark A. Roberson Alicia D. CrumptonFrom cathedrals to cubicles, people go to great lengths and expense to design their living and working environments. They want their spaces to be places where they enjoy being, reflecting who they are and what they care about. The resultant environments in turn become loud, albeit unvocal, leaders for people occupying those corresponding spaces. The design and use of work and living spaces typifies and thematizes expectations for the group. Essentially, the architecture of rooms, buildings and cities creates cultures by conveying explicit and implicit messages. This is evident when people approach and walk into St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow, the Forbidden City in Beijing, the Sydney Opera House in Sydney, Australia, the Jewish Museum in Berlin, or the Rothko Chapel in Houston, to name some examples. While leaders oftentimes lack the resources to have their spaces mirror the greatest architectural achievements of the world, they are in a position to use the art and science of architecture, at whatever scale is available, to their advantage. The creative and intentional use of space and place advances and promotes cherished values and enhances organizational effectiveness. This book explores the essence of good architecture and establishes relevant connections for leaders and managers to strategically design and use the organizational workplace and space to support their mission and purpose, and create aesthetically meaningful work environments. It equips leaders to be culturally astute on what defines good architecture and to incorporate principles of beauty in their leadership practices accordingly and will be of interest to researchers, academics, professionals, and students in the fields of leadership, organizational studies, and architecture theory and practice.
Architecture and the Forest Aesthetic: A New Look at Design and Resilient Urbanism
by Jana VanderGootDespite population trends toward urbanization, the forest continues to have a strong appeal to the human imagination, and the human preference for forest over many other types of terrain is well documented. This book re-imagines architecture and urbanism by allowing the forest to be a prominent consideration in the language of design, thus recognizing the forest as essential rather than just incidental to human well-being. In Architecture and the Forest Aesthetic, forest is a large-scale urban construct that is far more extensive and nuanced than trees and shrubbery. The forest aesthetic opens designers to the forest as a model for an urban architecture of permeable floors, protective canopies, connected food chains, beneficial decomposition, and resilient ecologies. Much can be learned about these features of the forest from the natural sciences; however, when they are given due consideration technically and metaphorically in the design of urban habitat, the places in which humans live become living forests. What is present here in Architecture and the Forest Aesthetic is both a review of many ingenious ways in which the forest aesthetic has already been expressed in design and urbanism, and an encouragement to further use the forest aesthetic in design language and design outcomes. Case study projects featured include the Chilotan building craft of Southern Chile, the yaki sugi of Japan, the Biltmore Forest in the Southeastern United States, the Australian capital city Canberra, Bosco Verticale in Milan, Italy, the Beijing Olympic Forest Park in China, and more.
Architecture and the Nazi Cultural Landscape: Blood, Soil, Building
by David H. HaneyThis book traces cultural landscape as the manifestation of the state and national community under the Nazi regime, and how the Nazi era produced what could be referred to as a totalitarian cultural landscape. For the Nazi regime, cultural landscape was indeed a heritage resource, but it was much more than that: cultural landscape was the nation. The project of Nazi racial purification and cultural renewal demanded the physical reshaping and reconceptualization of the existing environment to create the so-called "new Nazi cultural landscape." One of the most important components of this was a set of monumental sites thought to embody blood and soil beliefs through the harmonious synthesis of architecture and landscape. This special group of "landscape-bound" architectural complexes was interconnected by the new autobahn highway system, itself thought to be a monumental work embedded in nature. Behind this intentionally aestheticized view of the nation as cultural landscape lay the all-pervasive system of deception and violence that characterized the emerging totalitarian state. This is the first historical study to consider the importance of these monumental sites together with the autobahn as evidence of key Nazi cultural and geographic strategies during the pre-war years. This book concludes by examining racial and nationalistic themes underlying cultural landscape concepts today, against this historic background.
Architecture and the Nazi Cultural Landscape: Blood, Soil, Building
by David H. HaneyThis book traces cultural landscape as the manifestation of the state and national community under the Nazi regime, and how the Nazi era produced what could be referred to as a totalitarian cultural landscape.For the Nazi regime, cultural landscape was indeed a heritage resource, but it was much more than that: cultural landscape was the nation. The project of Nazi racial purification and cultural renewal demanded the physical reshaping and reconceptualization of the existing environment to create the so-called "new Nazi cultural landscape." One of the most important components of this was a set of monumental sites thought to embody blood and soil beliefs through the harmonious synthesis of architecture and landscape. This special group of "landscape-bound" architectural complexes was interconnected by the new autobahn highway system, itself thought to be a monumental work embedded in nature. Behind this intentionally aestheticized view of the nation as cultural landscape lay the all-pervasive system of deception and violence that characterized the emerging totalitarian state.This is the first historical study to consider the importance of these monumental sites together with the autobahn as evidence of key Nazi cultural and geographic strategies during the pre-war years. This book concludes by examining racial and nationalistic themes underlying cultural landscape concepts today, against this historic background.
Architecture and the Social Sciences: Inter- and Multidisciplinary Approaches between Society and Space
by Maria Manuela Mendes Teresa Sá João CabralThis book contributes to current debates on the relationship between architecture and the social sciences, highlighting current interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary teaching as well as research and practice in architecture and urbanism. It also raises awareness about the complementarities and tensions between the spaces of the project, including the construction spaces and living space. It gives voice to recent projects and socio-territorial interventions, focusing on interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches between society and space. Divided into two parts, the first part discusses the possible dialogue between social sciences and architecture, while the second part explores architecture, politics and social change in urban territories from a European perspective.
Architecture for Residential Care and Ageing Communities: Spaces for Dwelling and Healthcare
by Sten Gromark; Björn AnderssonArchitecture for Residential Care and Ageing Communities confronts urgent architectural design challenges within residential innovation, ageing communities and healthcare environments. The increasing and diversified demands on the housing market today call for alterability and adaptability in long term solutions for new integrated ways of residing. Meanwhile, an accentuated ageing society requires new residential ways of living, combining dignity, independence and appropriate care. Concurrently, profound changes in technical conditions for home healthcare require rethinking healing environments. This edited collection explores the dynamics between these integrated architectural and caring developments and intends to envision reconfigured environmental design patterns that can significantly enhance new forms of welfare and ultimately, an improved quality of life. This book identifies, presents, and articulates new qualities in designs, in caring processes, and healing atmospheres, thereby providing operational knowledge developed in close collaboration with academics, actors and stakeholders in architecture, design, and healthcare. This is an ideal read for those interested in health promotive situations of dwelling, ageing and caring.
Architecture in Motion: The history and development of portable building
by Robert KronenburgThe idea that architecture can be portable is one that grabs the imagination of both designers and the people who use it, perhaps because it so often forecasts a dynamic and creative solution to the complex problems of our contemporary mobile society, while at the same time dealing with issues of practicality, economy and sustainability. Architecture in Motion examines the development of portable, transportable, demountable and temporary architecture from prehistory to the present day. From familiar vernacular models such as the tent, mobile home and houseboat, to ambitious developments in military and construction engineering, all aspects of portable building are considered. Building on his earlier works Portable Architecture and Houses in Motion, Robert Kronenburg compares traditional forms of building, current commercial products and the work of innovative designers, and examines key contemporary portable buildings to reveal surprising, exciting and imaginative examples. He explores the philosophical and technological issues raised by these experimental and futuristic prototypes. By understanding the nature of transitory architecture, a new ecologically aware design strategy can be developed to prioritise buildings that 'tread lightly on the earth' and still convey the sense of identity and community necessary for an established responsible society. This book provides a unique insight into this pivotal field of design.
An Architecture of Parts: Architects, Building Workers, And Industrialization In Britain, 1940-1970 (Routledge Research in Architecture)
by Christine WallThis book is unique in describing the history of post war reconstruction from an entirely new perspective by focusing on the changing relationship between architects and building workers. It considers individual, as well as collective, interactions with technical change and in doing so brings together, for the first time, an extraordinary range of sources including technical archives, oral history and visual material to describe the construction process both during and in the decades after the war. It focuses on the social aspects of production and the changes in working life for architects and building workers with increasing industrialization, in particular analysing the effect on the building process of introducing dimensionally co-ordinated components. Both architects and building workers have been accused of creating a built environment now popularly discredited: architects responsible for poor design and building workers for poor workmanship. However, many of the structures and ideas underpinning this period of rapid change were revolutionary in their commitment to a complete transformation of the building process. An Architecture of Parts adds to the growing literature on changes in the building world during and immediately after the Second World War. It is significant, both empirically and historically, in its examination of the ideas, technology and relationships that fired industrialization of the building process in mid-century Britain.
The Architecture of Phantasmagoria: Specters of the City
by Libero Andreotti Nadir LahijiIn a time of mass-mediated modernity, the city becomes, almost by definition, a constitutively ‘mediated’ city. Today, more than ever before, the omnipresence of media in every sphere of culture is creating a new urban ontology, saturating, fracturing, and exacerbating the manifold experience of city life. The authors describe this condition as one of 'hyper-mediation' – a qualitatively new phase in the city’s historical evolution. The concept of phantasmagoria has pride of place in their study; using it as an all-embracing explanatory framework, they explore its meanings as a critical category to understand the culture, and the architecture, of the contemporary city. Andreotti and Lahiji argue that any account of architecture that does not include understanding the role and function of media and its impact on the city in the present ‘tele-technological-capitalist’ society is fundamentally flawed and incomplete. Their approach moves from Walter Benjamin, through the concepts of phantasmagoria and of media – as theorized also by Theodor Adorno, Siegfried Kracauer, and a new generation of contemporary critics – towards a new socio-critical and aesthetic analysis of the mediated space of the contemporary city.
An Architecture of Place: Topology in Practice
by Randall S. LindstromChallenging mainstream architecture’s understandings of place, this book offers an illuminating clarification that allows the idea’s centrality, in all aspects of everyday design thinking, to be rediscovered or considered for the first time.Rigorous but not dense, practical but not trivialising, the book unfolds on three fronts. First, it clearly frames the pertinent aspects of topology—the philosophy of place—importantly differentiating two concepts that architecture regularly conflates: place and space. Second, it rejects the ubiquitous notion that architecture “makes place” and, instead, reasons that place is what makes architecture and the built environment possible; that place “calls” for and to architecture; and that architecture is thus invited to “listen” and respond. Finally, it turns to the matter of designing responses that result not just in more places of architecture (demanding little of design), nor merely in architecture with some “sense of place” (demanding little more), but, rising above those, responses that constitute an architecture of place (demanding the greatest vigilance but offering the utmost freedom).Opening up a term regarded as so common that its meaning is seldom considered, the author reveals the actual depth and richness of place, its innateness to architecture, and its essentiality to practitioners, clients, educators, and students—including those in all spatial disciplines.
The Architecture of Ruins: Designs on the Past, Present and Future
by Jonathan HillThe Architecture of Ruins: Designs on the Past, Present and Future identifies an alternative and significant history of architecture from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first century, in which a building is designed, occupied and imagined as a ruin. This design practice conceives a monument and a ruin as creative, interdependent and simultaneous themes within a single building dialectic, addressing temporal and environmental questions in poetic, psychological and practical terms, and stimulating questions of personal and national identity, nature and culture, weather and climate, permanence and impermanence and life and death. Conceiving a building as a dialogue between a monument and a ruin intensifies the already blurred relations between the unfinished and the ruined and envisages the past, the present and the future in a single architecture. Structured around a collection of biographies, this book conceives a monument and a ruin as metaphors for a life and means to negotiate between a self and a society. Emphasising the interconnections between designers and the particular ways in which later architects learned from earlier ones, the chapters investigate an evolving, interdisciplinary design practice to show the relevance of historical understanding to design. Like a history, a design is a reinterpretation of the past that is meaningful to the present. Equally, a design is equivalent to a fiction, convincing users to suspend disbelief. We expect a history or a novel to be written in words, but they can also be delineated in drawing, cast in concrete or seeded in soil. The architect is a ‘physical novelist’ as well as a ‘physical historian’. Like building sites, ruins are full of potential. In revealing not only what is lost, but also what is incomplete, a ruin suggests the future as well as the past. As a stimulus to the imagination, a ruin’s incomplete and broken forms expand architecture’s allegorical and metaphorical capacity, indicating that a building can remain unfinished, literally and in the imagination, focusing attention on the creativity of users as well as architects. Emphasising the symbiotic relations between nature and culture, a building designed, occupied and imagined as a ruin acknowledges the coproduction of multiple authors, whether human, non-human or atmospheric, and is an appropriate model for architecture in an era of increasing climate change.
The Architecture of the Facade
by Randall KormanThe Architecture of the Facade provides a comprehensive study of the facade as both a physical and cultural artifact, highlighting its significance as a critical component of the civic realm and arguing for the restoration of the art of the facade as both a subject of study within academia and an aspiration within the profession at large. As the principal surface of mediation, contextualization, and representation, the facade carries the lion’s share of responsibility for containing the internal environment and confronting the outer world. And yet, in recent decades, the very question of what exactly a facade is has been raised by the dramatic changes in building technology, advances of parametric design, and the ubiquity of autonomous buildings. The Architecture of the Facade addresses these and other related issues. The book is organized into 12 chapters, with each chapter focusing on a particular aspect of the phenomenon of the facade such as those of wall, the frame, transparency, and the role of the facade in civic space. Korman also discusses proportional systems, the language of composition, the role of precedent, the importance of context, and much more. Over 350 photos and diagrams provide readers with a variety of examples of artful facades throughout history. Online teaching resources that accompany this book include a course syllabus, a glossary, and a Pinterest tack board of facades. This book will be of great interest to students in architecture studios as well as instructors and professional architects interested in facade design.
Architecture of Threshold Spaces: A Critique of the Ideologies of Hyperconnectivity and Segregation in the Socio-Political Context (Routledge Research in Architecture)
by Laurence KimmelThis book explores the relationship between architecture and philosophy through a discussion on threshold spaces linking public space with publicly accessible buildings. It explores the connection between exterior and interior and how this creates and affects interactions between people and the social dynamics of the city. Building on an existing body of literature, the book engages with critical philosophy and discusses how it can be applied to architecture. In a similar vein to Walter Benjamin’s descriptions of the Parisian Arcades in the nineteenth century, the book identifies the conditions under which thresholds reveal and impact social life. It utilises a wide range of illustrated international case studies from architects in Japan, Norway, Finland, France, Portugal, Italy, the USA, Australia, Mexico, and Brazil. Within the examples, thresholds become enhancers of social interactions and highlight broader socio-political contexts in public and private space. Architecture of Threshold Spaces is an enlightening contribution to knowledge on contemporary architecture, politics and philosophy for students, academics, and architects.
The Architecture Portfolio Guidebook: The Essentials You Need to Succeed
by Vincent HuiThe Architecture Portfolio Guidebook shows you how to make portfolios for both academic and professional needs to provide reviewers exactly what they are looking for. In school, architecture curricula nurture the knowledge and skills to develop design work to varying levels of presentation. In the profession, those skills are further developed and applied in the creation of the built environment. In both contexts, a portfolio is a core component for admission and advancement. This book provides key strategies to: • develop an understanding of the unique needs of professional and academic organizations; • identify applicants’ key differentiators; • highlight how applicants present themselves in their portfolios to address institutional needs; • create successful reinforcing documentation; • communicate using portfolios. Rather than proposing generic solutions, this book details the successful practices for portfolio creation by addressing portfolio creation academically and professionally. Supporting insights and examples from leading academics and architects from around the world reinforce the themes presented in this guidebook. An ideal read for students and professionals of architecture, landscape architecture, interior design, and urban design, looking to advance their studies and careers.
Architecture, Ritual Practice and Co-determination in the Swedish Office (Routledge Library Editions: Ethnoscapes)
by Dennis DoxtaterOriginally published in 1994, as part of the Ethnoscapes: Current Challenges in the Environmental Social Sciences series, reissued now with a new series introduction, Architecture, Ritual Practice and Co-determination in the Swedish Office is a case study of Swedish office buildings and examines how they have been influenced by spatial aspects of traditional culture in Scandinavia. It suggests a theoretical framework for architecture by casting the ritual form of Swedish offices into three distinct modes of expression.
Architecture’s Disability Problem (Routledge Research in Architecture)
by Wanda Katja LiebermannArchitecture’s Disability Problem explores the intersection of architecture and disability in the United States from the perspective of professional practice. This book uncovers why, despite the profound effect of the Americans with Disabilities Act on the architectural profession, there has been so little interest in design for disability in mainstream architecture. To counter this, the book investigates alternative approaches to designing with disability, through three case studies. These showcase both buildings and how design processes driven by disabled people shape design and professional roles.Combining historical research, formal and discourse analysis, and interviews with people who design, construct, use buildings, and advocate for access, the book develops a social understanding of how the buildings work at functional, affective, and symbolic levels. Architecture’s Disability Problem is aimed at three primary readers: practicing architects, architectural scholars, and members of disability scholar-activist communities. Grounded in detailed design studies, the author hopes to unearth the social meaning-making of architecture related to disability. Ultimately, the book makes an argument for a focus on disability in its own right—as well as on the body—in place of the dominance of formal, object-oriented approaches.This book presents and argues for a fundamental shift in the way architectural education, policy, and practice views and engages with disability. It will be key reading for students, researchers, practitioners and policy-makers.
Architectures of Occupation in the Australian Short Story: Literature and the Built Environment after 1900
by Patrick WestPatrick West’s Architectures of Occupation in the Australian Short Story cultivates the potential for literary representations of architectural space to contribute to the development of a contemporary politics of Australian post-colonialism.West argues that the predominance of tropes of place within cultural and critical expressions of Australian post-colonialism should be re-balanced through attention to spatial strategies of anti-colonial power. To elaborate the raw material of such strategies, West develops interdisciplinary close readings of keynote stories within three female-authored, pan-twentieth century, Australian short-story collections: Bush Studies by Barbara Baynton (1902); Kiss on the Lips and Other Stories by Katharine Susannah Prichard (1932); and White Turtle: A Collection of Short Stories by Merlinda Bobis (1999). The capacity of the short-story form to prompt creative and politically germinal engagements with species of space associated with architecture and buildings is underscored. Relatedly, West argues that the recent resurgence of binary thought—on local, national, and international scales—occasions an approach to the short-story collections shaped by binary relationships like a dichotomy of inside and outside. Concluding his argument, West connects the literary and architectural critiques of the story collections to the wicked problem, linked to ongoing colonial violences, of improving Australian Indigenous housing outcomes.Innovative and interdisciplinary, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of Literary, Architectural, and Postcolonial Studies. .
Architekturpsychologie Perspektiven: Band 2 Diskurs und Vermittlung
by Alexandra AbelIn der gebauten und vom Menschen beeinflussten Umwelt manifestiert sich unser Leben: Lebenshaltung, Lebensformen, Lebensentwurf. Indem man Architektur neu denkt, hat man daher das Potential, die derzeitige Form unseres Lebens zu überdenken. Ein solches Neu, Anders braucht eine Sensibilisierung für die Relevanz der gebauten Umwelt, für die Werte und Zielgrößen, die hinter einer bestimmten Gestaltung stehen und braucht einen gesamtgesellschaftlichen Diskurs zu der zentralen Frage: Wie wollen wir leben? Wie dürfen wir leben? Vor dem Hintergrund ökologischer und ökonomischer Fairness: Welche Lebensformen sind kompatibel mit einer möglichst hohen Lebensqualität für uns alle, als Teil eines Ökosystems, mit dem unser Wohlbefinden unauflöslich verbunden ist. In diesem Band kommen namhafte Expertinnen aus Österreich, der Schweiz und Deutschland aus den Disziplinen der Architektur, der Psychologie, der Kunst und Kunstdidaktik zu Wort, die sich zu der Relevanz und zu den Voraussetzungen einer solchen Debatte äußern.
Architekturpsychologie Perspektiven: Band 3 Entwurf und Prozess
by Martina GuhlWie findet die Begegnung von Psychologie und Architektur während des Entwurfs- und Planungsprozesses statt? In welchem Planungsabschnitt wird architekturpsychologisches Wissen relevant und einsetzbar? Welche Erkenntnisse liefert die urbane Architekturpsychologie für den städtebaulichen Diskurs? In diesem Buch bringen renommierte Expert*innen aus Deutschland, der Niederlande und der Schweiz aus den Disziplinen Architektur, Psychologie, Städtebau, Farbgestaltung und Kommunikationspsychologie ihr Pionierwissen ein.
Are You Ready?
by Maggie MooneyAs earthquakes have struck around the world with alarming frequency, millions have realized they are unprepared for similar catastrophes close to home. Online disaster plans and older books-heavy with seismic science and a survivalist focus-leave the average reader overwhelmed with details and anxiety. How much water will I need? What if I'm driving? How do I protect my six-year-old? The questions go on-and in this book Maggie Mooney answers them. Her four-week readiness program includes straightforward instructions, forms, and checklists. Mooney explains what to expect during a quake, and what to do when the shaking stops. She also addresses both aftershocks and tsunamis.Use this guide and the checklists inside to get ready:Find your safe spots at home, at work, at school, and outdoors.Develop your emergency communication plan.Shake-proof your home.Assemble emergency supplies. By following the steps in the four-week readiness program described here you can avoid injury and ensure you have the food, water and other essentials you need to be prepared rather than scared.
Armitage's Vines and Climbers: A Gardener's Guide to the Best Vertical Plants
by Allan M. Armitage“Climbing plants are hugely underrated—this book with its lively expression of deep knowledge should encourage everyone to grow more of them.” —Noël Kingsbury Climbing plants constitute a huge, and largely untapped, resource for today’s gardeners. Because their habit of growth is primarily vertical, they can be used for utilitarian as well as ornamental purposes like providing privacy, or screening eyesores. In this comprehensive reference, renowned horticulturist Allan Armitage selects and profiles the most useful and attractive climbing plants for a wide range of sites and conditions, from well-known favourites like clematis, morning glories, and wisteria to more unusual plants like Dutchman’s pipe, passion flowers, and the tropical mandevillas. Each profile includes a general description (enlivened by Armitage’s trademark wry humour) along with the plant’s hardiness, plant family, best method of propagation, method of climbing, and etymology of botanical and common names.“Climbing plants are hugely underrated—this book with its lively expression of deep knowledge should encourage everyone to grow more of them.” —Noël Kingsbury
The Aromatherapy Garden: Growing Fragrant Plants for Happiness and Well-Being
by Kathi Keville“Kathi guides you to all the joys of an aromatic garden with wonderful tips, fascinating facts, and sumptuous photos.” —Mandy Aftel, acclaimed natural perfumer and author of Essence and Alchemy and FragrantThe Aromatherapy Garden explains how fragrant plants can be as therapeutic as they are intoxicating, and how easy it is to add this captivating element to gardens large and small. It reveals the scents, secrets, and science behind fragrant plants, and how to optimize the full benefits of fragrance. Hone your powers of concentration with lemon verbena. Beat the blues with wintersweet. And use rose geranium to relieve anxiety and stress. Revealed here are the scents, secrets, and science behind plant aromatherapy, and how to optimize its full benefits. Detailed plant profiles will help you create a beautiful source of restorative aromas, oils, sachets, teas, and more. The nose knows—and with Keville’s expertise, now you too can create your own sanctuary of health and happiness
Around the House and in the Garden: A Memoir of Heartbreak, Healing, and Home Improvement
by Dominique BrowningWhen divorce tore Browning's home and heart apart, she began seeing with a new perspective. This is her therapeutic journey: she had taken care of the garden, now it would care for her.
La arquitectura de la felicidad
by Alain de BottonAlternando ideas y anécdotas sabrosas, Alain de Botton nos ofrece un libro que habla de arquitectura, pero habla sobre todo de lo que nos falta y a menudo nos sobra para llegar a la auténtica felicidad. Si es verdad que somos lo que comemos, también es cierto que somos lo que habitamos, y basta con entrar en una casa para saber no solo qué posee, sino qué esconde y qué desea su dueño. La felicidad depende de la idea que tenemos de nosotros mismos, de la capacidad de casar lo que es con lo que debería ser, y eso se refleja en los objetos que nos rodean. Así es desde tiempos inmemoriales, y Alain de Botton nos lleva de la mano para que revisemos bajo esta óptica un tanto insólita los edificios que han marcado la historia de la arquitectura, desde la Villa Rotonda de Palladio hasta las casas funcionales de Le Corbusier y los rascacielos de Jean Nouvel. Stendhal dijo que la belleza es una promesa de felicidad, y cada cual tiene una idea de belleza de acuerdo con la época y las circunstancias en que le ha tocado vivir. Por eso lo que fue hermoso un tiempo, ahora no puede reproducirse tal cual sin que nos parezca inadecuado. Cierta innovación se impone, pero hay elementos arquitectónicos que se repiten a lo largo de los siglos porque responden a las necesidades hondas de los humanos, y el camino de la felicidad se apoya en ellos: en la simetría, por ejemplo, o en las curvas de ciertos objetos. Donde esté la disposición adecuada de líneas y trazos, estará nuestro hábitat ideal, ese lugar al que nos gusta volver porque ahí reencontramos lo mejor de nosotros mismos. Reseña:«Para Botton, la arquitectura y el diseño son algo intensamente personal. Los edificios tienen carácter, vicios y virtudes, miran al mundo con una cara casi humana.»William Grietes, The New York Times «De Botton tiene una maravillosa habilidad para abordar temas de peso desde puntos de vista amenos y excéntricos.»The Seattle Times «Un libro elegante e [...] inusual, lleno de grandes ideas. [...] Rara vez ha habido un matrimonio más delicado de palabras e imágenes.»The New York Sun «Con originalidad, brío e ingenio, De Botton explica cómo encontramos reflejos de nuestros propios valores en los edificios que construimos.»San Francisco Chronicle «De Botton mantiene la arquitectura a una escala humana.»Los Angeles Times «Alain de Botton ha devuelto a la filosofía su propósito más importante: ayudarnos a vivir mejor».Christina Hardyment, The Independent
Arrume a casa Organize as emoções
by Rafaela GarcezUm livro que nos ajuda a encontrar o essencial na nossa vida, seja nos objetos, seja nas emoções, através da organização. Este livro tem como objetivo ajudar o leitor a encontrar o seu essencial. Seja nos objetos que tem em casa, alguns dos quais guarda há anos apesar de já não servirem para nada, seja dentro de si. Para Rafaela Garcez, consultora de organização, o que guardamos e mantemos em casa, e forma como o fazemos, está relacionada com a organização das emoções de cada um. Desbloqueando uma casa cheia de tralha, abre-se espaço mental e emocional para o novo, o futuro brilhante e cheio de possibilidades. Ao ajudar-nos a encontrar o nosso essencial no espaço que habitamos, encontramos o essencial dentro de nós. E a partir daí podemos aprender a ser mais livres e leves. Em "Arrume a casa, organize as emoções" a autora apresenta soluções, passo a passo, para todas as áreas da vida: casa, carro, carteira, computador.Sim, ela até ensina a fazer limpeza e organização digital.