Author Robert Adam, a member of the ICA & CA�s Council of Advisors, concisely summarizes the elements of the classical tradition and their application. For the novice studying the classical orders, this book offers a succinct overview and is an effective primer. For those already familiar with the material, it is an excellent desk reference book and source of inspirational drawings.

Beautifully illustrated magnum opus of the great Renaissance theorist who reintroduced the glories of ancient architecture and applied musical and mathematical principles to achieve perfection of proportion in architectural design.

The second of three books published by the Center for Environmental Structure provides a “working alternative to our present ideas about architecture, building, and planning”. Extraordinarily thorough, coherent, and accessible, A Pattern Language offers a practical language for building and planning based on natural considerations.

Volume 1 of Alexander’s important trilogy lays out the philosophy of The Timeless Way, with numerous illustrative examples. The essence is that the people who are to live in the buildings should be closely involved in their design, and that buildings should grow naturally, rather than be planned. He discusses desirable patterns — common features abstracted from many successful buildings — and about a pattern language for describing and combining these patterns into built form.

The Grand Tour of the great monuments of Europe was once considered obligatory for a young architect. As a recipient of the Prix de Rome, Graves made this journey studying and recording the masterworks he observed. Delicate pencil sketches and striking ink washes show the deep connection Graves had to the places he visited. They also tell something of the education of an architect, bringing to light the classical buildings that caused him to reexamine his early devotion to modernism.

This imaginative book offers architecture students over 100 examples of visual problem-solving in architectural design. Before-and-after illustrations demonstrate real-life situations showing how designers can manipulate form, space,and material to achieve important aesthetic effects.

Architectural Ornament reveals the fascinating interplay of art, society, politics, and commerce from antiquity through modernism and explains ornament’s near demise and recent revival. It is a stunningly documented argument against artistic chauvinism and a lively survey of modern architecture.

William Chambers studied architecture in Italy and France before finally settling in London. His Treatise, originally published in 1759, was reprinted 32 years later with additional illustrations, articles, and an introduction discussing the qualifications and duties of an architect. The 53 beautifully engraved, fine line plates display ornate compartments for coved ceilings; plans and elevations of pilaster capitals; pedestals for columns; arches; balusters; and other architectural features.

An outspoken critic of the failures of modern city planning, Prince Charles makes a personal plea for urban development that preserves what he sees as the unique character and tradition of British towns and cities.

This book gives a clear introduction to the classical genre, assisting designers with the quality of their buildings. This book illustrates both 100-part and 96-part systems of proportion, underpinned by an essay on James Gibbs – one of the 18th century authors of standardized proportioning systems – and his influence in America.

This richly illustrated book illuminates the principles and elements of classical architecture which have been at the heart of the Western experience for over two millennia. It explores Greek and Roman architecture and the architecture of eras that found in antiquity a basis for their own design.

Strongly influenced by Gaudet’s “Elements et Theorie de l’Architecture” amongst other studies on composition, Curtis’ volume emphasizes the role of the plan in architectural composition. 250 diagrams, drawings and plans accompany the text.

With the intense revival of interest in classical design, New Classicism offers an in-depth look at approximately thirty projects by classically oriented firms currently practicing in the United States and Britain. Professor Dowling, a member of the ICA & CA’s Council of Advisors, examines the many varieties of traditional classical design. The book covers residential, institutional and other project types.

This encyclopedia of congregations and religious buildings in Manhattan is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in religion and architecture in the city. Published in collaboration with the New-York Historical Society, the book offers fascinating lore. Arranged alphabetically rather than by typology or faith, it is a unique handbook on religious architecture in Manhattan.

The many influences on Edwardian architects, including new methods and techniques, a mixture of tradition and progress, as well as the influence of the arts and crafts movement, are here analyzed in this engaging study of a unique period in design. This book shows how the civic qualities most admired in Edwardian architecture were achieved, in order to encourage those engaged in the process of building design and procurement to recapture the spirit, if not the style, of the period around the turn of the century.

In the words of Sir Banister Fletcher, ‘The study of architecture opens up the enjoyment of buildings with an appreciation of their purpose, meaning, and charm.’ These words aptly summarize what this fully illustrated and enduring classic has become for generations of students and architects.

This massive compendium by a noted architectural historian contains over 2000 line drawings, and clear, concise definitions for over 5000 important
terms relating to the architectural achievements of a great variety of world cultures, ancient to modern. It includes cutaway views, close-ups of intricate details, and precisely rendered plans for many important structures.

The author contends that philology and formalism have drained architecture of much of its poetry. By analyzing this poetry — the tropes founded on the Greek terms for ornamental detail — he reconstructs a classical theory about the origin and meaning of the orders, one that links them to ancient sacrificial ritual and myth. His touchstone is Vitruvius, author of the only surviving classical treatise on architecture, whose stories about Dorus, Ion, and the Corinthian maiden, describe the orders as records or remembrances of sacrifice.

From the golden age of American architecture, this splendid survey, documents scores of masterpieces built between 1900 and 1930. Designs of the highest quality and most originality, represent the greatest achievements in memorials, museums, churches, and more. Each structure is introduced with notes from its architect.

Noted author Krier, a member of the ICA & CA’s Council of Advisors, outlines a profound and at the same time sensible approach to the built
environment. This engaging polemic is essential reading for anyone concerned with the state of architecture and urban planning today. Krier explains the fate that awaits us if we allow the status quo to remain unchecked, and illustrates achievable alternatives that can make cities agreeable and pleasant places to live.

At the height of the academic, or Beaux Arts, period in Western architecture, books on architectural composition abounded, spreading the gospel of academic design from Paris to the hinterlands. This book harkens back to this period, parsing its approach into discrete operations and elements based on tested precedent.

The foremost author writing about the architecture of America’s South has produced a series of seven volumes covering individual states. This volume contains the series’ highpoints, lavishly illustrated with color photographs and numerous period drawings and watercolors. Organized chronologically through the Romantic styles of the mid-19th century, the book provides stunning examples from each period and region, ranging from modest frontier cabins to sumptuous state capitals.

Letarouilly’s original folio edition has long been regarded as one of the most beautiful architectural books ever published. Meticulously drafted plans, elevations, profiles and perspective views in this compact reprint edition document the buildings of Renaissance Rome like no other book before or since.

From the homes of the early settlers to the estates of the landed gentry of the eighteenth century and the baronial mansions of the captains of industry of the nineteenth century, the Hudson River Valley boasts some of the finest houses in America. In newly taken photographs, this sumptuous volume presents 33 exemplary or historically-important houses in the region.

Covering the full range of building in the early South from 1607 to the 1820s, this glossary is the first book of its kind to identify and define the language of building during this formative period of architectural development. Abundantly illustrated with over 300 photographs and drawings, it also defines more than 1,500 terms ranging from building types to methods of construction.

The Pantheon in Rome is one of the grand architectural statements of all ages. This richly illustrated book isolates the reasons for its extraordinary impact on Western architecture, discussing the Pantheon as a building in its time but also as a building for all time.

Thirty-nine fact-filled chapters describe the identifying features and historic significance of American dwellings. Hundreds of black and white photographs and detailed drawings illustrate building types ranging from Native American folk houses to geodesic domes. An accompanying narrative explains the historic development of each style featured.

Over the course of a thousand years, the urban realm in Italy was the theater where the best civic aspirations were played out. The author reveals how Rome, Venice, Florence, Siena, and Pienza emerged from the cultural ideas of humanism that characterized Italian society from late antiquity to the eighteenth century. Taking the reader on a tour of these five cities he describes the cultural beliefs and ideas behind the buildings in the course of which he explains why these city-building ideas remain relevant today.

Even when Modernism dimmed interest in classical architecture, Palladio’s opus never ceased to attract attention. This book sets his work in context. It discusses the theory of the orders, proportions, spatial composition and facade design. This material is presented for practicing architects and students, so that the ideas can be applied in their architectural work today.

ICA & CA Fellow Morrone’s book on the amazing architecture of New York City’s largest borough is the most comprehensive book on its subject, and is written strongly from the perspective of an architectural traditionalist.

American architecture has been influenced by Spanish and Italian motifs since the early days of the Republic. Spanish Colonial architecture, in particular, made its way into the southern reaches of the United States. Rexford Newcomb selected some of the finest American houses in this “Mediterranean” style to illustrate his 1928 survey which focuses on 77 estates and residences, and one hotel. Each building is illustrated by plan and photographs.

From their first appearance in ancient Greece through their codification in Renaissance Italy, the orders were made to serve expressive purposes, engaging the viewer in a continuing visual dialogue. Today, as classical fundamentals are being sought as a refuge from the disordered philosophies of the recent past, this book provides a welcome and lively illustrated account of the range of meanings that Western culture has assigned to the classical orders.

American architecture has been influenced by Spanish and Italian motifs since the early days of the Republic. Spanish Colonial architecture, in particular, made its way into the southern reaches of the United States. Rexford Newcomb selected some of the finest American houses in this “Mediterranean” style to illustrate his 1928 survey which focuses on 77 estates and residences, and one hotel. Each building is illustrated by plan and photographs.

In a loosely configured essay, Professor Rybczynski, a member of the ICA & CA’s Council of Advisors, discusses the idea of comfort and the Western cultural attitudes that have shaped it since the end of the middle ages. He reviews such cultural variables as intimacy and privacy, domesticity, ease, and ideas about light, air, and efficiency as they have changed over time. Rybczynski’s plea for the primacy of cultural ideals as a basis for creating psychologically comfortable homes is a refreshing counterpoint to the quasi-theoretical positions which diminish much architectural discourse today.

One of the most original, accessible, and stimulating writers on architecture builds on some of his earlier publications to offer an appreciation of the residential work of Andrea Palladio. Professor Rybczynski, a member of the ICA & CA’s Council of Advisors, points out that much of the most persistent architectural symbolism associated with houses derives from Palladio’s villas. The book provides a detailed analysis, both historical and architectural, of ten of the 30 villas attributed to the architect.

British philosopher, Roger Scruton, establishes architecture’s distinguishing features that separate it from art for his aesthetic inquiry. Function, site specificity, architecture’s character as a public object, and its continuity with the decorative arts and the vernacular are examined in this insightful study.

In his challenging essays on architecture, Scruton anatomizes the spatial imagination of the age by analysis and comparison. The essays explore the nature and meaning of architecture, defending architecture without architects, and the ‘vernacular tradition’, that ‘vulgar tongue’ which is the natural language of space, proportion and light. He provides a comprehensive critique of modernism from a serious intellectual perspective, and based on a philosophy of aesthetics.

Author Thomas Gordon Smith, a member of the ICA & CA’s Council of Advisors, provides a new translation of the five books most relevant to contemporary architecture. Using new drawings and watercolors he illustrates, for the first time since ancient days, Vitruvius’ methods of proportion and composition. This edition is intended for practical application, as an indispensable reference for classical studies, and as an incontrovertible example of the enduring value of the architecture of antiquity for contemporary education and practice.

This book examines the development of Roman temple architecture from the sixth century BC to second century AD. John Stamper analyzes the temple’s formal qualities, the public spaces in which they were located and, most importantly, the authority of precedent in their designs. He also traces Rome’s temple architecture as it evolved over time accommodating changing political and religious contexts, and new stylistic influences.

This book is the second volume of a four-part work and is specifically devoted to the evolution of New York’s architecture and urbanism in the period around the turn of the century. Author Robert Stern, a member of the ICA & CA’s Council of Advisors, and his two co-authors analyze the cultural and economic forces that shaped and influenced some of New York City’s most important architectural works.

This highly acclaimed volume – the ultimate reference on this period – closely documents the alternately giddy and depressed decades between the two world wars when New York first transformed itself into a skyscraper city. Author Robert Stern, a member of the ICA & CA’s Council of Advisors, documents every important building of the era with vital background information and ample archival photographs.

New York City’s Chrysler Building remains one of the most spectacular and recognizable features of the city’s skyline. Author Stravitz here presents a visual record of the construction of the art deco masterpiece, as documented by stock photographers of the day, in more than 100 black-and-white images.

This book sets out as simply and vividly as possible the exact grammatical workings of the classical architectural language. Less concerned with its development in Greece and Rome than with its expansion and use in the centuries since the Renaissance, it explores the development of the tradition even up to modern times.

Architectural historian Sir John Summerson describes the rise of neoclassicism after 1750. Making the point that the transition from Baroque was marked by “a plurality of styles,” he provides a historical context for the changeover, examines town-planning and looks at individual buildings, museums, libraries, prisons, theaters and banks. The final chapter focuses on Washington, D.C., which he judges to be the triumph of urban planning in 18th century America.

A classic of architectural history and theory, Heavenly Mansions interprets architecture as a reflection of the age in which it flowers. It traces the alternating themes of fantasy and functionalism as exemplified in various styles and in the works of a number of influential men, including Wren, Viollet-le-Duc, William Butterfield, and Le Corbusier. Succinctly summarizing 800 years of viewpoints about architecture, it ranges from Gothic architecture to the Renaissance to the influence of modern abstract art on twentieth-century architecture.

Through hundreds of inspiring photographs and engaging text, the author describes what gives traditional homes their enduring appeal. Versaci, a member of the ICA & CA’s Council of Advisors, identifies Eight Pillars of Traditional Design that create a solid foundation for combining authentic, traditional design with livability to create homes that feel old yet live new. Featuring a vast array of new, old-house styles the book illustrate the creative work of architects, builders, and craftsmen who are forging the movement toward building new homes that capture an old-home sensibility.

Vitruvius Pollio’s treatise De Architectura, was written circa 27 BC and is the only book of its kind to survive from antiquity. Arguably the most famous text in the history of western landscape architecture, architecture, engineering and town planning, it shaped architecture and the image of the architect from the Renaissance to the present.. Elaborating on the architect’s role as a “chief technician”, the book addresses varied aspects of engineering, including harbors, site planning, clocks, aqueducts, pumps and siege engines as well as more conventional building works.

In this original book Mark Wilson Jones explores for the first time how the architects of ancient Rome approached design. Drawing on new archaeological discoveries and his own analyses of Roman monuments, the author discusses how the ancient architects dealt with the principles of architecture and the practicalities of construction as they engaged in the creative process.

The AIA’s Guide to New York City is a descriptive and interesting look at the city’s architecture. Composed of over 2000 photographs, 100 maps, and short entries, this useful guide is arranged geographically by borough, to facilitate a walking tour. An extensive index and glossary are included for reference.

Marked by dignified symmetry, large column-supported porticoes, and Palladian windows, Colonial Revival architecture is found in virtually every city across the United States. This book features 40 of the finest examples of the Colonial Revival, illustrating its evolution, from its earliest sources, as well as its regional variations. Examples by many of America’s greatest domestic architects, including McKim, Mead & White and Robert A.M. Stern are documented in this survey.

Focusing on the principal architects of that time – from Alberti to Palladio – this best-selling classic explains the true significance of certain architectural forms, bringing to light the connections between the architecture and culture of the period.

The Regency period was one of the great ages of architectural draftsmanship. The drawings chosen for this beautiful volume illustrate a range of architecture, from the grandest public building to the most humble terraced house. The book includes work of the period’s well known architects as well as projects by unidentified designers.