Spiro Kostof

Examination of the universal phenomenon of the city from a historical perspective, considering how and why cities took the shape they did.

Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History

The City Shaped

settings and rituals

A history of architecture

Greg Castillo

Professor of Architectural History Spiro Kostof

A history of architecture from the prehistoric environments of the Stone Age to Post-Modernism, which encompasses both Western and non-Western traditions

Settings and Rituals

A History of Architecture

Richard Ingersoll

Spiro Kostof pioneered a sweeping, unified narrative of architecture, based on its role in everyday life and society. New lead author Richard Ingersoll makes Kostof's highly-respected prose much more accessible, the coverage more global and flexible, social and cultural themes more obvious in section openers and boxes, and the diagrams bolder and clearer.

A Cross-Cultural History

World Architecture

The book is about the universal phenomenon of citymaking seen in a historical perspective - how and why cities took the shape they did. It focuses on a number of themes - organic patterns, the grid, the city as a diagram, the grand manner, and the skyline - and moves through time and place to interpret the hidden order inscribed in urban patterns.

the elements of urban form through history : with 346 illustrations, 40 in colour

The City Assembled

There exists perhaps no site more arresting than the strange rockscape of Cappadocia in central Turkey. Buried within the heart of this incredible vision of shapes and colors lie hundreds of monasteries and churches where Christian communities lived and prayed for the greater part of two millennia. This comprehensive study explores the land and hidden monuments of Christian Cappadocia. Spiro Kostof has written a readable, general introduction to the rockcut architecture of Cappadocia and its painted decoration and a critical review of the current state of scholarship on the subject. Focusing on the physical setting, the buildings, and painting programs in the context of their creation, he discusses the nature and historical background of monasticism in Cappadocia; depicts the builders, artists, and patrons who created the monuments; and describes the sources and meaning of the particular types of buildings and painting programs. This detailed account of the region and its monuments also includes revealing line drawings of plans, elevations, and cross sections, a glossary of terms, notes, a bibliography, and an index, as well as a new introduction for this edition.

Cappadocia and Its Churches

Caves of God

Cappadocia, a province in central Turkey, offers the traveler a startling rockscape whose cones, pleats, and folds conceal hundreds of monasteries and churches carved from the soft, porous "tuff" and used by Christian communities over nearly two millennia for shelter, burial, and sanctuary. This region in the Turkish hinterland is recognized as one of the centers of Byzantine mural painting. However, numerous hermitages, monasteries, and independent chapels dating from the seventh century onward reveal it also as one of the most concentrated areas of Eastern monasticism.This book serves a double purpose: it provides a thorough and lucid introduction to the rockcut churches and monasteries and their painted decorations, while it critically examines current scholarship on the monastic environment of Byzantine Cappadocia--particularly in regard to the architecture, which has been generally neglected by art historians.Scooped out rather than constructed, this anonymous architecture has its own unique appeal. Kostof writes: "The Cappadocian carver-architect was not inhibited... by statics or the nature of materials. His structure stood, a monolith, before he started to work on it. And he could cut into this monolith quickly, effortlessly. It might take a single man about a month to carve out a large room of two to three thousand cubic feet. Loads and thrusts were negligible. One was free to try any structural symbol with little concern for structural safety. Cupolas could bubble from flat ceilings, or be placed over square bays by means of the most cavalier transition elemenis. No shape need be perfect: extemporaneous geometry is everywhere the rule. Wall lines sag, one half of an arch doesn't quite match the other, carefree deviations, here and there, mark the general outline of the building."Following an account of the region, its environmental, political, and religious history, the author discusses in detail the building types and painting programs in the context of their creation--answering such questions as what was the nature of monasticism in Cappadocia, and who were the builders, the artists, their patrons? The author was born and educated in Turkey, and his personal knowledge of the monuments is a convincing factor in his handling of chronological and stylistic uncertainties. Throughout, Kostof's mind's eye never leaves the total environment, observing the inseparability of landscape, buildings, paintings, and the ritual that informs them.

The Monastic Environment of Byzantine Cappadocia

Rabun Taylor

Katherine Rinne

This is the first urban history of Rome to span its entire three-thousand-year history. It examines the processes by which Rome's leaders have shaped its urban fabric by organizing space, planning infrastructure, designing ritual, controlling populations, and exploiting Rome's standing as a seat of global power and a religious capital.

An Urban History from Antiquity to the Present

Rome

The Architect traces the role of the profession across the centuries and in different cultures, showing the architect both as designer and as mediator between the client and the builder.

Chapters in the History of the Profession

The Architect

Moving from the historical and cultural overviews of the city, Kostof descends into the streets, sidewalks, squares, markets, and waterfronts and presents a detailed urban anatomy. The book is organized thematically around the structural phenomena of cities, the city edge, the street, public space, the marketplace, and the realities of cultural and economic segregation.

Spiro Kostof

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