Fetch Materials And Meaning In Architecture: Essays On The Bodily Experience Of Buildings Narrated By Nathaniel Coleman Shown In Document

architecture, philosophy and cultural history, Materials and Meaning in Architecture develops a rich and multidimensional exploration of materials and materiality, in an age when architectural practice seems otherwise preoccupied with image and visual representation.




Arguing that architecture is primarily experienced by the whole body, rather than chiefly with the eyes, this broadranging study shows how the most engaging built works are as tactile as they are sensuous, communicating directly with the bodily senses, especially touch.
It explores the theme of 'material imagination' and the power of establishing 'place identity' in an architect's work, to consider the enduring expressive possibilities of material use in architecture.


The Materials and Meaning in Architecture's chapters can be dipped into, each individual chapter providing close readings of built works by selected modern masters Scarpa, Zumthor, Williams and Tsien, insights into key texts and theories Ruskin, Loos, Bachelard, or short cultural histories of materials wood, brick, concrete, steel, and glass.
And yet, taken together, the chapters build to a powerful booklength argument

about how meaning accrues to materials through time, and about the need to reinsert the bodily experience of materiality into architectural design.
It is thus also, in part, a manifesto: arguing for architecture to act as a bulwark against the tide of an increasingly depersonalised built environment.


With insights for a wide range of readers, ranging from students through to researchers and professional designers, Materials and Meaning in Architecture will cause theorists to rethink their assumptions and designers to see new potential for their projects.
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