In this age of ever-increasing environmental awareness, the issue of sustainability is set to become the dominant factor in architectural design. At a time when, like most professions, architectural practice is increasingly governed by legal guidelines and requirements, competing policy demands require architects to aim for economic, social and environmental sustainability whilst also trying to effect social progress. Sustaining Architecture in the Anti-Machine Age asks whether these two ambitions can be reconciled. Featuring contributions from architects, journalists, academics and legal consultants, the book takes a balanced look at the subject, giving the full range of sometimes opposing views. Examining all the key issues, it considers why the industrial development of town and country is considered unsustainable rather than socially imperative, and whether the aim of raising the level, standard and performance of arhcitectural production conflicts with the promotion of sustainability. Over the last decade the profession and practice of architecture has changed rapidly. Sir Michael Latham's 'Constructing the team' and Sir John Egan's 'Rethinking Construction' attempted to turn the building industry from labour-intensive trade contracting the capital intensity of manufacturing. Paul Hyett, the current president of the Royal Institue of british architects, has a mandate to establish an environmental duty of care. Sustaining Architecture in the Anti-Machine Age considers what these initiatives mean for architects.

The SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory documents and builds upon some of the most innovative developments in architectural theory over the last two decades. Bringing into dialogue a range of geographically, institutionally and historically competing positions, the book examines and explores parallel debates in related fields. The book is divided into eight sections: Power/Difference/Embodiment Aesthetics/Pleasure/Excess Nation/Spectacle/Modernity History/Memory/Tradition Design/Practice/Production Technology/Science/Virtuality Nature/Landscape/Sustainability City/Metropolis/Territory Creating openings for future lines of inquiry and establishing the basis for new directions for education, research and practice, the book organizes itself around specific case studies to provide a critical, interpretive and speculative enquiry into the relevant debates in architectural theory. A methodical, authoritative and comprehensive addition to the literature, the Handbook is suitable for academics, researchers and practitioners in architecture, urban geography, cultural studies, sociology and geography.

Environmentalism and social sciences appear to be in a period of disorientation and perhaps transition. In this innovative collection, leading international thinkers explore the notion that one explanation for the current malaise of the “politics of ecology” is that we increasingly find ourselves negotiating “technonatural” space/times. International contributors map the political ecologies of our technonatural present and indicate possible paths for technonatural futures. The term “technonatures” is in debt to a long line of environmental cultural theory from Raymond Williams onwards, problematizing the idea that a politics of the environment can be usefully grounded in terms of the rhetoric of defending the pure, the authentic, or an idealized past solely in terms of the ecological or the natural. In using the term “technonatures” as an organizing myth and metaphor for thinking about the politics of nature in contemporary times, this collection seeks to explore one increasingly pronounced dimension of the social natures discussion. Technonatures highlights a growing range of voices considering the claim that we are not only inhabiting diverse social natures but that within such natures our knowledge of our worlds is ever more technologically mediated, produced, enacted, and contested.

More than a century after its inception, the skyscraper has finally come of age. Though it has long been lampooned as a venal and inhospitable guzzler of resources, a revolutionary new school of skyscraper design has refashioned the idiom with buildings that are sensitive to their environments, benevolent to their occupants, and economically viable to build and maintain. Designed by some of the best-known architects in the world, these towers are as daring aesthetically as they are innovative environmentally. Big and Green is the first book to examine the sustainable skyscraper, its history, the technologies that make it possible, and its role in the future of urban development. The book examines more than 40 of the most important recent sustainable skyscrapers-including Fox & Fowle's Reuters Buildings in New York, Norman Foster's Commerzbank in Frankfurt, and MVRDV's spectacular Dutch Pavilion from Expo 2000 in Hanover-with project descriptions, photographs, and detailed drawings. Interviews with such leaders in the field as Sir Richard Rogers, William McDonough, and Kenneth Yeang are also included.

This book contains a selection of nine detailed and varied research papers in the area of environment-behaviour studies. The papers are based on presentations at the 4th UK Environmental Psychology (EPUK4) conference that was held in Glasgow, Scotland in September 2005. The conference theme centred on a recurring debate in Environmental Psychology and one which had recently been ‘reopened’ by Prof. Christopher Spencer (University of Sheffield), namely: “how can we ensure that the findings from high quality environment-behaviour research are put into practice in ‘real-world’ applications”? This book outlines current views on the debate along with suggestions on how we might more effectively address this ‘research-practice’ relationship. EPUK is an informal organisation that brings together environmental psychologists and other professionals working in the area of environment-behaviour research. EPUK4 was jointly organised by Dr. Edward Edgerton (University of Paisley) and Dr. Ombretta Romice (University of Strathclyde), and was attended by around sixty international experts in the field.

For many commentators, global civil society is revolutionising our approach to global politics, as new non-state-based and border-free expressions of political community challenge territorial sovereignty as the exclusive basis for political community and identity. This challenge 'from below' to the nation-state system is increasingly seen as promising nothing less than a reconstruction, or a re-imagination, of world politics itself. Whether in terms of the democratisation of the institutions of global governance, the spread of human rights across the world, or the emergence of a global citizenry in a worldwide public sphere, global civil society is understood by many to provide the agency necessary for these hoped-for transformations. Global Civil Society asks whether this idea is such a qualitatively new phenomenon after all; whether the transformation of the nation-state system is actually within its reach; and what some of the drawbacks might be.

The problem of protecting the built environment in earthquake-prone regions of the world involves not only the optimal design and construction of new facilities, but also the upgrading and rehabilitation of existing structures and infrastructures. The latter is a laborious and expensive task, which can be accomplished only gradually. However, the inestimable loss of life and the colossal costs following a major earthquake in a metropolitan area provide sufficient reason to make it an important challenge for the scientific and technical community.Containing papers presented at the Sixth International Conference on Earthquake Resistance and Engineering Structures, this book will be invaluable to engineers, scientists and managers working in industry, academia, research organizations and governments. The book encompasses a wide range of topics such as: Site Effects and Geotechnical aspects; Earthquake resistant design; Seismic Behaviour and Vulnerability; Structural Dynamics; Monitoring and Testing; Bridges; Heritage Buildings; Masonry Construction; Retrofitting; Passive Protection Devices and Seismic Isolation; Lifelines; Design Codes and Response Spectre.