Leading urbanist Carole Rifkind takes readers on an illuminating tour through half a century of design in this comprehensive and lavishly illustrated book. From private homes and public housing to museums, religious and educational edifices, shopping centers, malls, and office buildings, the accessible text demonstrates the interplay between form and function, and how the uses of space, mass, materials, and ornament have evolved to produce the structures that surround us today. Rifkind also discusses the development of style and analyzes the contributions of more than two hundred architects, as well as the political and economic forces that influenced their work. Filled with over four hundred photographs and line drawings, A Field Guide to Contemporary American Architecture is an essential reference for both casual observers and serious scholars. Its in-depth exploration of the postwar intellectual, social, and artistic environment offers a unique perspective on our recent past and the forces that shape our modern landscape.

More than fifteen years after the success of the first edition, this sweeping introduction to the history of architecture in the United States is now a fully revised guide to the major developments that shaped the environment from the first Americans to the present, from the everyday vernacular to the high style of aspiration. Eleven chronologically organized chapters chart the social, cultural, and political forces that shaped the growth and development of American towns, cities, and suburbs, while providing full description, analysis, and interpretation of buildings and their architects. The second edition features an entirely new chapter detailing the green architecture movement and architectural trends in the 21st century. Further updates include an expanded section on Native American architecture and contemporary design by Native American architects, new discussions on architectural education and training, more examples of women architects and designers, and a thoroughly expanded glossary to help today's readers. The art program is expanded, including 640 black and white images and 62 new color images. Accessible and engaging, American Architecture continues to set the standard as a guide, study, and reference for those seeking to better understand the rich history of architecture in the United States.

American Houses is a historical guide to the architecture of the American home. While other architectural field guides show only façades, this book includes floor plans, showing how the form of a house arises from its function. Photographs and drawings of exteriors illustrate the significant field marks of each style and help pinpoint the key elements that can identify a house even when it has been remodeled beyond recognition. Beautifully illustrated, clearly written, and impeccably researched, American Houses is an essential reference for anyone interested in the history of American residential architecture.

Defines and illustrates architectural terms relating to building style, structural components, and architectural ornaments.

Have you ever been intrigued by a beautiful building and wondered when it was built? Identifying American Architecture provides the answer to such questions in a concise handbook perfect for preservationists, architects, students, and tourists alike. With 214 photographs, it allows readers to associate real buildings with architectural styles, elements, and orders. Identifying American Architecture was designed to be used--carried about and kept handy for frequent reference. Every photograph is keyed to an explanatory legend pointing out characteristic features of each building's style. Trade bookstores order from W.W. Norton, NY

Incisive, jargon-free and a pleasure to read, A Field Guide To American Architecture presents an exceptionally comprehensive view of American architecture from the 1940s to the present. Plentiful photographs and graphic representations, carefully interwoven with succint text and informative captions, make this volume ideal for browsing as well as serious study.Like Carole Rifkind's earlier book, this one investigates buildings by type, taking a fresh vantage point for each--houses, housing projects, public buildings, art museums, churches and synagogues, schools and colleges, tall office buildings, and shopping centers. Encompassing the works of two hundred architects, from the little known to the famous, it builds a diverse and fascinating panorama of recent American architecture.

Drawing from the nearly half a million photographs and documents comprising the Historic American Buildings Survey held in the US Library of Congress, this book constructs a fictional ?one-way road trip? across the United States, weaving north and south across the Mason-Dixon line while tacking west. In A Field Measure Survey of American Architecture, Jeffrey Ladd uses the HABS archive as a surrogate in order to manifest a portrait of his former country at a moment when its democracy seems imperiled.00Inspired equally by the social documentary work of Walker Evans and the architectural interventions of Gordon Matta-Clark and others, Ladd embraces the muteness of photographs to create an ambiguous space where the sculptural, political, forensic, and fictional coalesce within a landscape of both beauty and fragility. What initially appears to be a single voice is revealed to belong to dozens of makers; what seems a description of the distant past is revealed to be closer to the present than expected. A Field Measure Survey sheds light not only on this remarkable archive but on the proliferate meanings that can be shaped from its images.