Lifescapes Beyond Bigness

Author : Khaled Alawadi
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781911339267
Total Pages : 416 pages
Book Rating : 4.65/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Lifescapes Beyond Bigness written by Khaled Alawadi and published by . This book was released on 2018-10-31 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world is becoming more urban and recent forms of development have had numerous negative environmental, energy, social, and economic consequences. New approaches are necessary, urgently, in what we can consider humanity s rst urban century. At a fundamental level, new developments in cities should be comfortable for people as well as safe, healthy, relatable, and stimulating. The Arabian Gulf, in particular, faces amazing opportunities and challenges in the face of rapid urbanisation. The Gulf states have the providence of abundant oil and gas supplies that generate wealth in the cities. Meanwhile, the region is arid hot and dry with limited prime farmland. Lifescapes Beyond Bigness explores alternative ways to make cities in the United Arab Emirates, a nation well-known for its large-scale and ambitious building endeavors. Khaled Alawadi and his colleagues advocate a smaller, more human scale. Their ideas are deeply rooted in nature and culture. Their goal is nothing less than a radical rethinking and re-orientation of the cities in the UAE away from the bigness of its recent past. In many regards, this is a bold undertaking, even more audacious than the muscular high rises that dominate the skylines of Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Author : Rana AlMutawa
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520395069
Total Pages : 293 pages
Book Rating : 4.60/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Everyday Life in the Spectacular City written by Rana AlMutawa and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2024-01-09 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyday Life in the Spectacular City is a groundbreaking urban ethnography that reveals how middle-class citizens and longtime residents of Dubai interact with the city's so-called superficial spaces to create meaningful social lives. Rana AlMutawa shows that inhabitants adapt themselves to top-down development projects, from big malls to megaprojects. These structures serve residents' evolving social needs, transforming Dubai's spectacular spaces into personally important cultural sites. These practices are significant because they expand our understanding of agency as not only subversive but also adaptive. Through extensive fieldwork, AlMutawa, herself an Emirati native to Dubai, finds a more nuanced story of belonging. This story does not seek to uncover the "real" city that lies beneath the veneer of the spectacle, but rather to demonstrate that social meanings and forms of belonging take place within the spectacle itself. By offering an alternative to the discourse of authenticity and elucidating the dynamics of ambivalent belonging, AlMutawa belies stereotypes that portray Dubai's developments as alienating and inherently disempowering. Everyday Life in the Spectacular City speaks beyond the Middle East to a globalized phenomenon, for Dubai's spectacles are unexceptional in today's changing world.

Author : Khaled Alawadi
Publisher : Actar D, Inc.
ISBN 13 : 1638401497
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.90/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Rethinking Suburbs written by Khaled Alawadi and published by Actar D, Inc.. This book was released on 2024-04-11 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rethinking suburbs provides answers to how can we design and plan neighborhoods in which non-motorized mobility is a viable and efficient alternative; and how the street systems and alleys of neighborhoods can be designed and retrofitted to make their urban fabrics more efficient and integrated. Streets play significant roles in meeting multiple sustainability objectives. This research addresses Abu Dhabi’s and Dubai’s street connectivity at the neighborhood (local) and city (global) scales. It focuses on two parameters of street network analysis: efficiency and centrality. Efficiency is evaluated in terms of directness, noting that network designs that provide short and direct access between origins and destinations are more efficient. Centrality is evaluated using graph theory metrics that enable the identification of high- and low-accessibility locations within networks. The conventional suburban model of low-density, automobile-centric development with fragmented streets cannot foster high levels of accessibility within neighborhoods. This study offers an alternative, evidence-based suburban design model for future cities.

Author : Billie Faircloth
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3031363205
Total Pages : 917 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Design for Climate Adaptation written by Billie Faircloth and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2024-01-01 with total page 917 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book provides new perspectives from leading researchers accentuating and examining the central role of the built environment in conceiving and implementing multifaceted solutions for the complex challenges of climate change, revealing critical potentials for architecture and design to contribute in more informed and long-term ways to the urgent transition of our society. The book offers a compilation of peer-reviewed papers that uniquely connects knowledge broadly across practice and academia, from the newest technologies and methods to indigenous knowledge, community engagement, techniques for ecosystem regeneration, nature-based solutions, and more. The book is part of a series of six volumes that explore the agency of the built environment in relation to the SDGs through new research conducted by leading researchers. The series is led by editors Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen and Martin Tamke in collaboration with the theme editors: - Design for Climate Adaptation: Billie Faircloth and Maibritt Pedersen Zari - Design for Rethinking Resources: Carlo Ratti and Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen (Eds.) - Design for Resilient Communities: Anna Rubbo and Juan Du (Eds.) - Design for Health: Arif Hasan and Christian Benimana (Eds.) - Design for Inclusivity: Magda Mostafa and Ruth Baumeister (Eds.) - Design for Partnerships for Change: Sandi Hilal and Merve Bedir (Eds.)

Author : Robert A. Caro
Publisher : Knopf
ISBN 13 : 0394480767
Total Pages : 1338 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Power Broker written by Robert A. Caro and published by Knopf. This book was released on 1974-07-12 with total page 1338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • A modern American classic, this huge and galvanizing biography of Robert Moses reveals not only the saga of one man’s incredible accumulation of power but the story of his shaping (and mis-shaping) of twentieth-century New York. One of the Modern Library’s hundred greatest books of the twentieth century, Robert Caro's monumental book makes public what few outsiders knew: that Robert Moses was the single most powerful man of his time in the City and in the State of New York. And in telling the Moses story, Caro both opens up to an unprecedented degree the way in which politics really happens—the way things really get done in America's City Halls and Statehouses—and brings to light a bonanza of vital information about such national figures as Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt (and the genesis of their blood feud), about Fiorello La Guardia, John V. Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller. But The Power Broker is first and foremost a brilliant multidimensional portrait of a man—an extraordinary man who, denied power within the normal framework of the democratic process, stepped outside that framework to grasp power sufficient to shape a great city and to hold sway over the very texture of millions of lives. We see how Moses began: the handsome, intellectual young heir to the world of Our Crowd, an idealist. How, rebuffed by the entrenched political establishment, he fought for the power to accomplish his ideals. How he first created a miraculous flowering of parks and parkways, playlands and beaches—and then ultimately brought down on the city the smog-choked aridity of our urban landscape, the endless miles of (never sufficient) highway, the hopeless sprawl of Long Island, the massive failures of public housing, and countless other barriers to humane living. How, inevitably, the accumulation of power became an end in itself. Moses built an empire and lived like an emperor. He was held in fear—his dossiers could disgorge the dark secret of anyone who opposed him. He was, he claimed, above politics, above deals; and through decade after decade, the newspapers and the public believed. Meanwhile, he was developing his public authorities into a fourth branch of government known as "Triborough"—a government whose records were closed to the public, whose policies and plans were decided not by voters or elected officials but solely by Moses—an immense economic force directing pressure on labor unions, on banks, on all the city's political and economic institutions, and on the press, and on the Church. He doled out millions of dollars' worth of legal fees, insurance commissions, lucrative contracts on the basis of who could best pay him back in the only coin he coveted: power. He dominated the politics and politicians of his time—without ever having been elected to any office. He was, in essence, above our democratic system. Robert Moses held power in the state for 44 years, through the governorships of Smith, Roosevelt, Lehman, Dewey, Harriman and Rockefeller, and in the city for 34 years, through the mayoralties of La Guardia, O'Dwyer, Impellitteri, Wagner and Lindsay, He personally conceived and carried through public works costing 27 billion dollars—he was undoubtedly America's greatest builder. This is how he built and dominated New York—before, finally, he was stripped of his reputation (by the press) and his power (by Nelson Rockefeller). But his work, and his will, had been done.

Author : Roberto Fabbri
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780367741969
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Urban Modernity in the Contemporary Gulf written by Roberto Fabbri and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Urban Modernity in the Contemporary Gulf offers a timely and engaging discussion on architectural production in the modernization era in the Arabian Peninsula. Focusing on the 20th century as a starting point, the book explores the display of transnational architectural practices resulting in different notions of locality, cosmopolitanism and modernity. Contextually, with an eye on the present, the book reflects on the initiatives that recently re-engaged with the once ville moderne which, meanwhile, lost its pivotal function and meaning. A city within a bigger city, the urban fabric produced during the modernization era has the potential to narrate the social growth, East-West dynamics, and citizens' memories of the recent past. Reading obsolescence as an opportunity, the book looks into this topic from a cross-country perspective. It maps, reads and analyses the notion of modern heritage in relation to the contemporary city and looks beyond physical transformations to embrace cultural practices and strategies of urban re-appropriation. It interrogates the value of modern architecture in the non-West, examining how academic research is expanding the debate on Gulf urbanism and describes how practices of reuse could foster rethinking neglected areas, also addressing land consumption in the GCC. Presenting a diverse and geographically inclusive authorship, which combines established and up and coming researchers in the field, this is an important reference for academics and upper-level students interested in heritage studies, post-colonial urbanism and architecture in the non-West"--

Author : Hammad Nasar
Publisher : Mousse Magazine & Publishing
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.14/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Rock, Paper Scissors written by Hammad Nasar and published by Mousse Magazine & Publishing. This book was released on 2017 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The artists in Rock, Paper, Scissors--Nujoom Alghanem, Sara Al Haddad, Vikram Divecha, Ramin & Ronki Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, Hind Mezaina, Deepak Unnikrishnan, WTD magazine, Lantian Xie and Mohamed Yousif--enact the habitation of home through playful gestures and acts.

Author : Susan Greenwood
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000189821
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.27/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Nature of Magic written by Susan Greenwood and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-06-03 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how and why practitioners of nature religion - Western witches, druids, shamans - seek to relate spiritually with nature through 'magical consciousness'. 'Magic' and 'consciousness' are concepts that are often fraught with prejudice and ambiguity respectively. Greenwood develops a new theory of magical consciousness by arguing that magic ultimately has more to do with the workings of the human mind in terms of an expanded awareness than with socio-cultural explanations. She combines her own subjective insights gained from magical practice with practitioners' in-depth accounts and sustained academic theory on the process of magic. She also tracks magical consciousness in philosophy, myth, folklore, story-telling, and the hi-tech discourse of postmodernity, and asks important questions concerning nature religion's environmental credentials, such as whether it as inherently ecological as many of its practitioners claim.

Author : Hans Ulrich Obrist
Publisher : Walther Konig Verlag
ISBN 13 : 9783863352202
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Herzog and de Meuron / Ai Weiwei: Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2012 written by Hans Ulrich Obrist and published by Walther Konig Verlag. This book was released on 2012-06-20 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The design team responsible for the celebrated Beijing National Stadium, which was built for the 2008 Olympic Games, comes together again in London in 2012 for the Serpentine's acclaimed annual commission, being presented as part of the London 2012 Festival, the culmination of the Cultural Olympiad. The Pavilion is Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei's first collaborative built structure in the UK.This year's Pavilion will take visitors beneath the Serpentine's lawn to explore the hidden history of its previous Pavilions. Eleven columns characterising each past Pavilion and a twelfth column representing the current structure will support a floating platform roof 1.4 metres above ground.The Pavilion's interior is clad in cork, a sustainable building material chosen for its unique qualities and to echo the excavated earth.

Author : Marina Otero Verzier
Publisher : Hatje Cantz Verlag
ISBN 13 : 9783775744256
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.58/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Work, Body, Leisure written by Marina Otero Verzier and published by Hatje Cantz Verlag. This book was released on 2018-05-30 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This catalog documents the Dutch Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, which gathers contributions from architects, designers, historians and theorists exploring the emerging technologies of automation. Contributors include Amal Alhaag, Beatriz Colomina, Marten Kuijpers, Victor Muñoz Sanz, Simone C. Niquelle and Mark Wigley.