The Venice Variations

The Venice Variations PDF Author: Sophia Psarra
Publisher: UCL Press
ISBN: 1787352390
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
From the myth of Arcadia through to the twenty-first century, ideas about sustainability – how we imagine better urban environments – remain persistently relevant, and raise recurring questions. How do cities evolve as complex spaces nurturing both urban creativity and the fortuitous art of discovery, and by which mechanisms do they foster imagination and innovation? While past utopias were conceived in terms of an ideal geometry, contemporary exemplary models of urban design seek technological solutions of optimal organisation. The Venice Variations explores Venice as a prototypical city that may hold unique answers to the ancient narrative of utopia. Venice was not the result of a preconceived ideal but the pragmatic outcome of social and economic networks of communication. Its urban creativity, though, came to represent the quintessential combination of place and institutions of its time. Through a discussion of Venice and two other works owing their inspiration to this city – Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital – Sophia Psarra describes Venice as a system that starts to resemble a highly probabilistic ‘algorithm’, that is, a structure with a small number of rules capable of producing a large number of variations. The rapidly escalating processes of urban development around our big cities share many of the motivations for survival, shelter and trade that brought Venice into existence. Rather than seeing these places as problems to be solved, we need to understand how urban complexity can evolve, as happened from its unprepossessing origins in the marshes of the Venetian lagoon to the ‘model city’ that endured a thousand years. This book frees Venice from stereotypical representations, revealing its generative capacity to inform potential other ‘Venices’ for the future.

The Venice Variations

The Venice Variations PDF Author: Sophia Psarra
Publisher: UCL Press
ISBN: 1787352390
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 335

Get Book Here

Book Description
From the myth of Arcadia through to the twenty-first century, ideas about sustainability – how we imagine better urban environments – remain persistently relevant, and raise recurring questions. How do cities evolve as complex spaces nurturing both urban creativity and the fortuitous art of discovery, and by which mechanisms do they foster imagination and innovation? While past utopias were conceived in terms of an ideal geometry, contemporary exemplary models of urban design seek technological solutions of optimal organisation. The Venice Variations explores Venice as a prototypical city that may hold unique answers to the ancient narrative of utopia. Venice was not the result of a preconceived ideal but the pragmatic outcome of social and economic networks of communication. Its urban creativity, though, came to represent the quintessential combination of place and institutions of its time. Through a discussion of Venice and two other works owing their inspiration to this city – Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital – Sophia Psarra describes Venice as a system that starts to resemble a highly probabilistic ‘algorithm’, that is, a structure with a small number of rules capable of producing a large number of variations. The rapidly escalating processes of urban development around our big cities share many of the motivations for survival, shelter and trade that brought Venice into existence. Rather than seeing these places as problems to be solved, we need to understand how urban complexity can evolve, as happened from its unprepossessing origins in the marshes of the Venetian lagoon to the ‘model city’ that endured a thousand years. This book frees Venice from stereotypical representations, revealing its generative capacity to inform potential other ‘Venices’ for the future.

The Venice Variations

The Venice Variations PDF Author: Sophia Psarra
Publisher: UCL Press
ISBN: 1787352412
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
From the myth of Arcadia through to the twenty-first century, ideas about sustainability – how we imagine better urban environments – remain persistently relevant, and raise recurring questions. How do cities evolve as complex spaces nurturing both urban creativity and the fortuitous art of discovery, and by which mechanisms do they foster imagination and innovation? While past utopias were conceived in terms of an ideal geometry, contemporary exemplary models of urban design seek technological solutions of optimal organisation. The Venice Variations explores Venice as a prototypical city that may hold unique answers to the ancient narrative of utopia. Venice was not the result of a preconceived ideal but the pragmatic outcome of social and economic networks of communication. Its urban creativity, though, came to represent the quintessential combination of place and institutions of its time. Through a discussion of Venice and two other works owing their inspiration to this city – Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital – Sophia Psarra describes Venice as a system that starts to resemble a highly probabilistic ‘algorithm’, that is, a structure with a small number of rules capable of producing a large number of variations. The rapidly escalating processes of urban development around our big cities share many of the motivations for survival, shelter and trade that brought Venice into existence. Rather than seeing these places as problems to be solved, we need to understand how urban complexity can evolve, as happened from its unprepossessing origins in the marshes of the Venetian lagoon to the ‘model city’ that endured a thousand years. This book frees Venice from stereotypical representations, revealing its generative capacity to inform potential other ‘Venices’ for the future.

Architecture and Narrative

Architecture and Narrative PDF Author: Sophia Psarra
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134288867
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Conceptual ordering, spatial and social narrative are fundamental to the ways in which buildings are shaped, used and perceived. This intriguing book explores the ways in which these three dimensions interact in the design and life of buildings.

Dream of Venice Architecture

Dream of Venice Architecture PDF Author: JoAnn Locktov
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780990772514
Category : Architectural photography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Winner, IPPY Silver Award in Architecture Finalist, 2016 Foreword Indies Award in Architecture An intimate journey through the remarkable Venetian urban landscape, this book reveals the architectural features that contribute to the incredulity of the beautiful city from the mysterious sotoporteghi to the complexity of Carlo Scarpa's "immaculate detailing." Evocative photographs complement the personal reveries contributed by 36 notable international architects and architectural writers who have been inspired by the city and share in her wonder. Included are personal reflections from Tadao Ando, James Biber, Mario Botta, Michele De Lucchi, Massimiliano Fuksas, Robert McCarter, Richard Murphy, Witold Rybczynski, Annabelle Selldorf, and Thomas Woltz.

House Tour

House Tour PDF Author: Adam Jasper
Publisher: Park Publishing (WI)
ISBN: 9783038601142
Category : Architectural photography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
240 cm is the standard distance between floor and ceiling in residential buildings: the height of the void we inhabit. In its precision, and its emptiness, the number reflects contemporary interior architecture's condition. In a series of essays, 'House Tour' explores an interior that is both familiar and seemingly uninhabited, critically celebrating a peculiar genre of representation, the architectural photography of an unfurnished interior. The authors - including anthropologists, architecture theorists and art historians - consider the ubiquitous contemporary apartment from an eye-level view, foregrounding the appearance and material presence of the architectural shell. They start out from photographs of unfurnished interiors found on the websites of leading Swiss architecture firms. They have a blank, labyrinthine appearance, with walls intersecting at oblique angles and exits seemingly leading nowhere, and show featureless rooms with seamless trans.

Paradigm Islands

Paradigm Islands PDF Author: Teresa Stoppani
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 041556185X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
A critical look at the making of Manhattan and Venice provides a background to addressing the dynamic redefinition and making of space today. The book concerns architecture and the city, built, imagined and narrated, but, importantly, considers architecture as an intellectual and spatial process rather than a product.

The Nolan Variations

The Nolan Variations PDF Author: Tom Shone
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0525655328
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
An in-depth look at Christopher Nolan, considered to be the most profound, commercially successful director at work today, written with his full cooperation. A rare, revelatory portrait, "as close as you're ever going to get to the Escher drawing that is Christopher Nolan's remarkable brain" (Sam Mendes). In chapters structured by themes and motifs ("Time"; "Chaos"; "Dreams"), Shone offers an unprecedented intimate view of the director. Shone explores Nolan's thoughts on his influences, his vision, his enigmatic childhood past--and his movies, from plots and emotion to identity and perception, including his latest blockbuster, the action-thriller/spy-fi Tenet ("Big, brashly beautiful, grandiosely enjoyable"--Variety). Filled with the director's never-before-seen photographs, storyboards, and scene sketches, here is Nolan on the evolution of his pictures, and the writers, artists, directors, and thinkers who have inspired and informed his films. "Fabulous: intelligent, illuminating, rigorous, and highly readable. The very model of what a filmmaking study should be. Essential reading for anyone who cares about Nolan or about film for that matter."--Neal Gabler, author of An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood and Walt Disney, The Biography

The Jewish Ghetto and the Visual Imagination of Early Modern Venice

The Jewish Ghetto and the Visual Imagination of Early Modern Venice PDF Author: Dana E. Katz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107165148
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
This book explores how the Jewish ghetto engaged the sensory imagination of Venice in complex and contradictory ways to shape urban space and reshape Christian-Jewish relations.

Kashef Chowdhury

Kashef Chowdhury PDF Author:
Publisher: Park Publishing (WI)
ISBN: 9783038600831
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Over the past years, Dhaka-based architect Kashef Chowdhury has become renowned for a body of work that responds with great sensitivity to places, local circumstances, and the demands of a building's users. At the 2016 International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, Chowdhury presented four recent projects his firm URBANA has realised in Bangladesh in a fascinating exhibition which he has designed with equal sensitivity and care. For his installation in Venice, Chowdhury challenged spatial perceptions by a simple turn: the labyrinth - which hides and blocks - is suddenly made transparent. Notwithstanding the obvious reference to Venetian glass, the labyrinth retains, or even accentuates, a sense of spatial disorientation.

Ephemeral City

Ephemeral City PDF Author: Rosa Salzberg
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781784993443
Category : Publishers and publishing
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Ephemeral city explores the rapid rise of cheap print and how it permeated Venetian urban culture in the Renaissance. It offers the first view of one of the city's most productive and creative industries from the bottom up and a new and unexpected vision of Renaissance culture, characterised by the fluid mobility and dynamic intermingling of texts, ideas, goods and people. Closely intertwined with oral culture and often peddled in the streets, cheap printed texts helped to open up new audiences for literature, providing information and entertainment to a diverse public and transforming the city into an epicentre of vernacular literature and performance. Examining the ways in which the production and dissemination of cheap print infiltrated Venice's urban environment and changed the course of its cultural life, the book also traces how local authorities responded by escalating censorship and control over the course of the sixteenth century. Ephemeral city will be of interest to scholars and students of early modern European and Italian Renaissance culture and society and the history of the book and communication.