SeCRETS of ARCHITECTURE

The SeCRETS of ARCHITECTURE series of eBooks explores the underlying architecture of significant buildings, gardens, urban compositions from around the world and all periods of history and prehistory. The aim of the series is to get inside the minds of architects, wherever and whenever they operated, by analyzing their work. Each eBook focuses on a particular example. The methodology for analysis is based on that illustrated in my books Analysing ARCHITECTURE (Routledge, 2009) and Twenty Buildings Every Architect Should Understand (Routledge, 2010).

VILLA LE LAC NEW

The second eBook in the SeCRETS of ARCHITECTURE Series analyzes Le Corbusier's Villa Le Lac, on the banks of Lac Léman in Switzerland.

SeCRETS of ARCHITECTURE eBooks are downloadable for your iPad from iBooks.

Skara Brae

The first eBook in the SeCRETS of ARCHITECTURE Series analyzes the Neolithic village of Skara Brae on the Orkney Islands.

SeCRETS of ARCHITECTURE eBooks are downloadable for your iPad from iBooks.

Analysing Architecture

Clear and accessible, Analysing Architecture opens a fresh way to understanding architecture. It offers a unique 'notebook' of architectural strategies to present an engaging introduction to elements and concepts in architectural design. Beautifully illustrated throughout with the author's original drawings, examples are drawn from across the world and many periods of architectural history (from prehistoric times to the recent past) to illustrate analytical themes and to show how drawing can be used to study architecture. Since its first edition appeared in 1997, Analysing Architecture has established itself internationally as one of the key texts in architectural education.

This third edition includes a new section discussing the ways analysing examples cultivates a capacity for design. Original chapters have been expanded, new case studies added, and the format rearranged for additional clarity. The bibliography of recommended supplementary reading has also been extended.

In Analysing Architecture, Simon Unwin clearly identifies the key elements of architecture and conceptual themes apparent in buildings and relevant to other works of architecture such as gardens and cities. He describes ideas for use in the active process of design. Breaking down the grammar of architecture into themes and moves, Unwin exposes its underlying patterns to reveal the organisational strategies that lie beneath the superficial appearances of buildings.

Exploring buildings as results of the interaction of people with the world around them, Analysing Architecture offers a definition of architecture as 'identification of place' and provides a greater understanding of architecture as a creative discipline. This book presents a powerful impetus for readers to develop their own capacities for architectural design. It will also be of use to all those with an interest in the human occupation of and involvement with space – anthropologists; archaeologists; film-makers; installation artists; planners; urban designers; politicians...

Sample pages

An Architecture Notebook: Wall

An Architecture Notebook builds on the foundation of Simon Unwin's previous book Analysing Architecture (Routledge, 1997). Using numerous examples, illustrated with clear line drawings, this volume describes and illustrates the many powers attaching to one of the most basic architectural elements – the wall.

Exploring its primitive origins in relation to the natural walls of cliffs and caves, illustrating the effects and opportunities of its evolution into the artificial and then the naked cave, and examining the ways in which it is used to frame and organise the spaces of our lives, this book presents the wall as one of the most powerful inventions of the mind.

Like its predecessor, An Architecture Notebook is a stimulus to thinking about what one can do with architecture. It offers an example to student architects of how they might keep their own architecture notebooks, collecting ideas, sorting strategies, generally expanding their understanding of the potential of architecture to change the world.

Doorway

Remember that frisson as you step through a doorway: into a crowded party or a silent church; for a job interview, or into your own home after a long journey. Though we take them for granted, doorways impinge on our lives in many ways. Their thresholds divide up the world, punctuating our movements from place to place and creating 'fault-lines' in our experience. Their mystery intrigues and challenges us. We measure ourselves against them and they set down the geometry of our relationships. Doorways affect our emotions and influence how we behave; sitting on a doorstep, we can find peace just watching the world go by. Framing the transient moment, doorways stand as reminders of the 'between' in which we live. It is no wonder that through human history and across all cultures, doorways have possessed great symbolic power and had ceremonies and rituals associated with them.

Doorway is a profound but accessible and entertaining exploration of the ways our built surroundings set out the spatial matrix of our existence. Using examples from archaeology to the present, and from all around the world, this book provides a fresh and revealing perspective on architecture and its poetry.

Sample pages

Twenty Buildings Every Architect Should Understand

Have you ever wondered how the ideas behind the world’s greatest architecture came about? What process does an architect go through to design buildings which become world-renowned for their excellence?

In this book Simon Unwin reveals the secrets behind twenty such buildings. He asks you to 'read' the building and understand its starting point by analysing its final form through drawing. By this gradual process of understanding the thinking behind architectural form, you learn a unique methodology which can be used every time you look at a building.

Analysing buildings from throughout the twentieth century and across the globe including the US, France, Italy, Mexico, Switzerland, Spain, Finland, Australia, Norway, Sweden and Japan, this book is essential reading for every architect.

Sample pages

Exercises in Architecture

Architecture is a doing word. You can learn a great deal about the workings of architecture through analysing examples but a fuller understanding of its powers and potential comes through practice, by trying to do it. As you learn a language you need to practise using it; and as you practise you learn more about what you can do with the language. It is the same with architecture… This book offers student architects a series of twelve exercises that will develop their capacity for doing architecture. Each exercise is divided into a short series of tasks aimed at developing a particular theme or area of architectural capacity, providing prompts for practice. The exercises deal with themes such as place-making, learning through drawing, framing, light, uses of geometry, stage-setting, the genetics of detail and many more.

Exercises in Architecture builds on and supplements the methodology for architectural analysis presented in the author's previous book Analysing Architecture (third edition, Routledge, 2009) and demonstrated in his Twenty Buildings Every Architect Should Understand (Routledge, 2010). Together, the three books deal with the three aspects of acquiring any creative discipline: Analysing Architecture provides a methodology for analysis that develops an understanding of the way architecture works; Twenty Buildings explores and extends that methodology through analysis of examples as case studies; and Exercises in developing capability in architecture by following rudimentary exercises.

Sample pages