This book, by architectural writer Irénée Scalbert, bears witness to some of the more significant developments in architecture during the last 25 years. The essays alternate between detailed studies of major buildings, written while these were being designed or as they were being rediscovered after a period of oblivion, and broader historical surveys that seek out the origin of contemporary architectural ideas. More than their extent, however, what distinguishes these essays is that they draw from direct experience--from interviews with architects, clients, engineers and users, and from the pleasurable, at times rapturous, contemplation of architecture.

The book analyzes the evolution of antebellum literary explorations of sympathy and human contact in the 1850s and 1860s. It will appeal to undergraduates and scholars seeking new approaches to canonical American authors, psychological theorists of sympathy and empathy, and philosophers of moral philosophy.

In this exceptional book on the London based studio 6a architects, architecture critic Irenee Scalbert looks at the role of narrative, history, appropriation and craft in the work of Tom Emerson and Stephanie Macdonald. The book traces an architectural approach avoiding style, signature, theory and even concept in favour of metis, an ancient form of intelligence combining 'flair, wisdom, forethought, subtlety of mind, deception, resourcefulness, vigilance, opportunism, varied skills, and experience.' Structured around notions of situation, intervention, making, comedy, bricolage, chance and anthropology, the text is mirrored in a visual essay of archive photographs, artworks, film stills and recent projects by the practice.

A compelling biography of the Polish painter and writer Józef Czapski that takes readers to Paris in the Roaring Twenties, to the front lines during WWII, and into the late 20th-century art world. Józef Czapski (1896–1993) lived many lives during his ninety-six years. He was a student in Saint Petersburg during the Russian Revolution and a painter in Paris in the roaring twenties. As a Polish reserve officer fighting against the invading Nazis in the opening weeks of the Second World War, he was taken prisoner by the Soviets. For reasons unknown to this day, he was one of the very few excluded from Stalin’s sanctioned massacres of Polish officers. He never returned to Poland after the war, but worked tirelessly in Paris to keep alive awareness of the plight of his homeland, overrun by totalitarian powers. Czapski was a towering public figure, but painting gave meaning to his life. Eric Karpeles, also a painter, reveals Czapski’s full complexity, pulling together all the threads of this remarkable life.

This book tackles questions about the metaphysical and ethical foundations of our concern for our planet, and about educational and pedagogical implications. It pursues answers to urgent questions such as: should educational policy and practice be informed by a concern for nature and the environment for our (human) purposes? Or should we teach and learn for the natural environment in and for itself? Chapters in this volume contribute towards the unmasking and undoing of the various kinds of denialism and pernicious relativism (cultural, moral and epistemological) that have held us in their grip and that continue to thwart attempts to establish a sane and morally sustainable set of relationships between us, human beings, and other animals and the animate and inanimate environment. Education, the Environment and Sustainability provides educators and interested laypersons with tools for critical reflection and interrogation of their own and others’ assumptions, preconceptions, and practices affecting nature and the environment. This volume was originally published as a special issue of Ethics and Education.

Napier demonstrates how non-Western exchange practices and beliefs can redress the ills of contemporary economic systems in which our relationship to material things transforms animate elements of social life into inanimate commodities. Such processes separate objects from domains of deep meaning and release individuals from the moral relationships on which feelings of attachment, community responsibility, and a sense of place depend.

We live in increasingly troubled times, with social and political instability everywhere on the globe. It is a time of breakdown, of massive transition whose end is far from sight. Incessant change, fragmentation, loss of moorings, sporadic violence, even in the Western societies, threaten many who seek to live meaningful lives, especially in terms of inward growth. To the media-driven observer the world is in turmoil and globalization by no means a friendly word. Similar conditions have prevailed at certain times in the past. Reinsmith’s port of entry is just at those periods of crisis, those transition periods when social cohesion has all but disintegrated. A Harmony Within explores five such points in the history of Western civilization: the breakdown of the ancient Greek city-state; the last days of the Roman Empire; the religious wars in France during the sixteenth century; the transition to the Industrial Age in nineteenth century America; the cataclysm of World War I in Europe. Within each historical frame the author charts the life and times of one individual who even in the midst of discord finds a way of living fruitfully, of making a profound connection which transcends the uncertainties of his particular age. In ancient Greece the philosopher Epicurus withdrew from Athens to teach inner tranquility (ataraxia) to his friends. At the end of the Roman era St. Benedict founded a safe haven at Monte Casino where he created the Rule which offered spiritual security to his monks. With strife all around him Michel Montaigne quit public life and retreated to his Tower to mingle with the great minds of the past. Viewing the desperation drudgery of his fellow citizens, Henry David Thoreau repaired to Walden Pond – there to live alone with Nature for almost two years. In a Europe slowly moving toward war Albert Einstein found refuge in the Cosmos where he could contemplate the laws of the physical universe. The names of these five individuals are known to the educated general reader. Each of them lived in a different era, discovered a different track. Yet they had one thing in common: They chose neither to grapple with their own society nor directly aid in the coming of the next. They did something more radical: They withdrew - they chose to walk away, to take refuge and follow a path where inner harmony could be attained. They took arms against the troubles of their age not by encounter, but by creative withdrawal. Epicurus - The Refuge of Philosophy St. Benedict - The Refuge of Religion Montaigne - The Refuge of Letters Thoreau - The Refuge of Nature Einstein - The Refuge of Pure Science For each of these figures their refuge proved life enhancing. Yet a great paradox ensued. Though they withdrew from the society of their times what they accomplished reached far beyond them into the future: Epicurean communities spread throughout the ancient Mediterranean world and lasted for five hundred years; Benedictine monasticism provided Western Europe with spiritual direction down to the Middle Ages; Montaigne’s Essays have found their place among the annals of great literature; Thoreau’s stay at Walden Pond - immortalized in his journal, Walden - became the exemplar for living with Nature and a guide for achieving radical simplicity; Einstein’s four papers written during his years in a Swiss Patent office would be the foundation for the theories of special and general relativity, as well as quantum physics, all of which would change our view of the universe. Each chapter opens with a brief sketch of the age in which a protagonist lives and against which he reacts. To this extent, A Harmony Within presents a rough outline of Western civilization in crisis. But the heart of the book lies in portraying how these five great spirits nursed a calling which brought inner harmony to their lives, a harmony which seems to elude most humans at any period, reg