Experiencing Architecture, second edition / Edition 2

by Steen Eiler Rasmussen

Overview

Profusely illustrated with fine instances of architectural experimentation through the centuries, Experiencing Architecture manages to convey the intellectual excitement of superb design. From teacups, riding boots, golf balls, and underwater sculpture to the villas of Palladio and the fish-feeding pavilion of the Peking Winter Palace, the author ranges over the less-familiar byways of designing excellence.

At one time, writes Rasmussen, "the entire community tool part in forming the dwellings and implements they used. The individual was in fruitful contact with these things; the anonymous houses were built with a natural feeling for place, materials and use and the result was a remarkably suitable comeliness. Today, in our highly civilized society, the houses which ordinary people are doomed to live in and gaze upon are on the whole without quality. We cannot, however, go back to the old method of personally supervised handicrafts. We must strive to advance by arousing interest in and understanding of the work the architect does. The basis of competent professionalism is a sympathetic and knowledgeable group of amateurs, of non-professional art lovers."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	2900262680027
Publication date:	03/15/1964
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Steen Eiler Rasmussen was Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and Visiting Professor at M.I.T., Yale, Pennsylvania, and the University of California, Berkeley, and lectured widely at universities in Europe and the United States. He was author of London: The Unique City, called "the best book on London as a town,” and other books.

Table of Contents

Preface p.7
I. Basic Observations p.9
II. Solids and Cavities in Architecture p.35
III. Contrasting Effects of Solids and Cavities p.56
IV. Architecture Experienced as Color Planes p.83
V. Scale and Proportion p.104
VI. Rhythm in Architecture p.127
VII. Textural Effects p.159
VIII. Daylight in Architecture p.186
IX. Color in Architecture p.215
X. Hearing in Architecture p.224
Index p.241

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"A book of great charm and broad understanding." Architectural Forum

The MIT Press

"...so lucid and clear that every layman and beginner will be able to understand and to enjoy it." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

The MIT Press

Editorial Reviews

Lively, without ever becoming condescending...learned without ever becoming dull. A book of great charm and broad understanding.

Architectural Forum

A book of great charm and broad understanding.—Architectural Forum—

...so lucid and clear that every layman and beginner will be able to understand and to enjoy it.

—Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism—

From the Publisher

...so lucid and clear that every layman and beginner will be able to understand and to enjoy it.

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

...so lucid and clear that every layman and beginner will be able to understand and to enjoy it.

—Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

Reviews