Alexander Tzonis

la poetica della macchina e della metafora

Le Corbusier

Santiago Calatrava

Very few designers of this century-- a century dominated by specialization and fragmentation-- can be called universal, but Santiago Calatrava is one of these few. In his numerous buildings, engineering projects, sculptures, and furniture designs, this Spanish architect whose practice is based in Switzerland has developed a unique poetics of morphology that overlaps structure and movement. Combining art and science, technology and architecture, Calatrava's bridges and buildings create a sublime elegance in their urban contexts. With dynamic curves, leaning vertical elements, and mechanically operable roofs, they embody potential motion. In this book, Alexander Tzonis explores Calatrava's "poetics of movement" not only in the architect's large-scale work, but also in his drawings and sculptures. The book features thirty-five projects, fully documented with photographs, drawings, and sketches. Included are Calatrava's most recent works-- the Milwaukee Art Museum Addition and the Orient Station in Lisbon-- and his best known, from the Montjuic Tower to the Alameda Bridge.

The Poetics of Movement

Liane Lefaivre

"This richly illustrated and designed book in the "Architecture in Focus" series reconsiders critical regionalism and demonstrates the global viability of one of the most visible trends in contemporary architecture. As globalization increasingly enters every facet of our lives, its homogenizing effects on architecture, urban spaces and the landscape have compelled architects to embrace the principles of critical regionalism, an alternative theory that respects local culture, geography and climate. In this reexamination of critical regionalism, two prominent architectural critics argue for a truce between the seemingly antithetical philosophies of critical regionalism and globalization. The authors trace the genesis of critical regionalism to its ancient historical and political roots, and focus on its modern expression in the works of Alvar Aalto, Richard Neutra, Oscar Niemeyer and others. They point to the increasing use of the theory in the recent works of a truly global selection of visionary architects - including Santiago Calatrava in Spain, Renzo Piano in the South Pacific and Berger and Parkkinen in Germany. Discussions of Tropical Architecture and contemporary work in Asia round out this important contribution to a topical debate about architecture's role in the world."--Amazon.

Architecture and Identity in a Globalised World

Critical Regionalism

The Athens Olympics

"The definitive study of the great Spanish architect whose soaring work is allabout openness, energy and aspiration." -Met Home Spanish-born architect Santiago Calatrava has achieved considerable international acclaim with his breathtaking feats of architecture and engineering in the service of elegant and humanistic modern forms. This updated volume comprehensively examines this contemporary master's career, including the architect's furniture designs, sculpture, and drawings. His spectacular cultural and civic projects have secured Calatrava's place in the pantheon of world-class 21st-century architects. Among these are the Athens Olympics Sports Complex; the Tenerife Concert Hall in the Spanish Canary Islands; the Valencia Science Museum, Planetarium, and Opera House, and the much-anticipated World Trade Center Transportation Hub. This newest edition introduces Calatrava's latest triumphs, including the expressive Turning Torso tower in Sweden and the Chicago Tower, the tallest skyscraper in the US when built. A catalogue raisonne, detailed biography, and bibliography complete this comprehensive monograph.

The Complete Works

This fascinating introduction to classical art and architecture is the first book to investigate the way classical buildings are put together as formal structures. It researches the generative rules, the poetics of composition that classical architecture shares with classical music, poetry, and drama, and is enriched by a variety of examples and an extensive analysis of compositional rules. The 205 line drawings make up a discourse of their own, a pictorial text that serves as an introductory theory of composition or basic design aid. Drawing from Vitruvius, the poetics of Aristotle, the theories of classical architecture, music, and poetry since the Renaissance, and the poetics of the Russian formalists, the authors present classical architecture as a coherent system of architectural thinking that is capable of producing a tragic humanistic discourse, a public art with critical, moral, and philosophical meaning.

The Poetics of Order

Classical Architecture

A cognitive history of the emergence of modern architecture. Cutting across disciplinarian and institutional divisions as we know them today, this book reconstructs developments within the framework of a cognitive history of the past. Modern is here taken to mean the radical re-thinking of architecture from the end of the tenth century in Europe to the end of the eighteenth century. Among the key debates that mark the period are those that oppose tradition to innovation, canon to discovery, geometrical formality to natural picturesqueness, the functional to the hedonistic.

Alexander Tzonis

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