Books with category 📐 Architecture
Displaying 12 books

The Cartographers

2022

by Peng Shepherd

What is the purpose of a map? Nell Young’s whole life and greatest passion is cartography. Her father, Dr. Daniel Young, is a legend in the field and Nell’s personal hero. But she hasn’t seen or spoken to him ever since he cruelly fired her and destroyed her reputation after an argument over an old, cheap gas station highway map. But when Dr. Young is found dead in his office at the New York Public Library, with the very same seemingly worthless map hidden in his desk, Nell can’t resist investigating. To her surprise, she soon discovers that the map is incredibly valuable and exceedingly rare. In fact, she may now have the only copy left in existence...because a mysterious collector has been hunting down and destroying every last one—along with anyone who gets in the way. But why? To answer that question, Nell embarks on a dangerous journey to reveal a dark family secret and discovers the true power that lies in maps.

The Cartographers is an ode to art and science, history and magic—a spectacularly imaginative, modern story about an ancient craft and places still undiscovered.

Take Me Home Tonight

2021

by Morgan Matson

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off meets Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist in this romp through the city that never sleeps from the New York Times bestselling author of Since You’ve Been Gone, Morgan Matson. Two girls. One night. Zero phones.

Kat and Stevie—best friends, theater kids, polar opposites—have snuck away from the suburbs to spend a night in New York City. They have it all planned out. They’ll see a play, eat at the city’s hottest restaurant, and have the best. Night. Ever. What could go wrong? Well. Kind of a lot? They’re barely off the train before they’re dealing with destroyed phones, family drama, and unexpected Pomeranians.

Over the next few hours, they’ll have to grapple with old flames, terrible theater, and unhelpful cab drivers. But there are also cute boys to kiss, parties to crash, dry cleaning to deliver (don’t ask), and the world’s best museum to explore. Over the course of a wild night in the city that never sleeps, both Kat and Stevie will get a wake-up call about their friendship, their choices…and finally discover what they really want for their future. That is, assuming they can make it to Grand Central before the clock strikes midnight.

System Design Interview - An insider's guide

2020

by Alex Xu

The system design interview is considered to be the most complex and most difficult technical job interview by many. This book provides a step-by-step framework on how to tackle a system design question. It includes many real-world examples to illustrate the systematic approach with detailed steps that you can follow.

What's inside?

  • An insider's take on what interviewers really look for and why.

  • A 4-step framework for solving any system design interview question.

  • 15 real system design interview questions with detailed solutions.

  • 188 diagrams to visually explain how different systems work.

Feminist City: A Field Guide

2019

by Leslie Kern

Feminist City is an ongoing experiment in living differently, living better, and living more justly in an urban world.

We live in the city of men. Our public spaces are not designed for female bodies. There is little consideration for women as mothers, workers or carers. The urban streets often are a place of threats rather than community. Gentrification has made the everyday lives of women even more difficult. What would a metropolis for working women look like?

In Feminist City, through history, personal experience and popular culture Leslie Kern exposes what is hidden in plain sight: the social inequalities built into our cities, homes, and neighborhoods. Kern offers an alternative vision of the feminist city. Taking on fear, motherhood, friendship, activism, and the joys and perils of being alone, Kern maps the city from new vantage points, laying out an intersectional feminist approach to urban histories and proposes that the city is perhaps also our best hope for shaping a new urban future. 

Invisible Women

Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez is a groundbreaking book that brings to light the gender bias that permeates our society. The book reveals how the world is largely built for and by men, leading to a systemic disregard for women's experiences. This bias manifests itself in various aspects of life, from medical research to technology, workplaces, and even urban planning.

The author compiles an array of case studies, stories, and new research from around the globe, illustrating the 'invisible' ways in which women are consistently overlooked, and the significant consequences this has on their lives. Invisible Women uncovers the 'gender data gap,' which has led to widespread and systemic discrimination against women, affecting their health, safety, and economic well-being.

Through this compelling narrative, Perez advocates for change, urging us to view the world through a more equitable lens. This book is not just an eye-opener but a call to action for a more just society where both men and women are equally considered.

Building Together

Building Together: Case Studies in Participatory Planning and Community Building offers a comprehensive exploration of neighborhood developments across various regions including North and South America, Europe, and Africa, covering a span of over forty years. This book is a seminal work on the community-based design practices of participatory planning and advocacy architecture.

Through a series of case studies, the authors, Roger Katan and Ron Shiffman, illustrate the challenges, opportunities, and rewards that come with grassroots collaboration. These case studies are carefully selected for their practical lessons and range in scale from regional urban planning to smaller architectural projects, covering areas as diverse as Harlem, Greenpoint, and the greater New York Metropolitan region to sites in coastal Colombia, southern France, and Burkina Faso, Africa.

Designed to appeal to a wide audience, including community development specialists, faculty and students of planning, architecture, community health, and the social sciences, as well as practicing professionals and decision-makers in economic development and community-based organizations, Building Together is a crucial resource for those interested in creating a more humane and healthy city through participatory democracy.

Vita

Zones of social abandonment are emerging everywhere in Brazil's big cities—places like Vita, where the unwanted, the mentally ill, the sick, and the homeless are left to die. This haunting, unforgettable story centers on a young woman named Catarina, increasingly paralyzed and said to be mad, living out her time at Vita.

Anthropologist João Biehl leads a detective-like journey to know Catarina; to unravel the cryptic, poetic words that are part of the "dictionary" she is compiling; and to trace the complex network of family, medicine, state, and economy in which her abandonment and pathology took form. As Biehl painstakingly relates Catarina's words to a vanished world and elucidates her condition, we learn of subjectivities unmade and remade under economic pressures, pharmaceuticals as moral technologies, a public common sense that lets the unsound and unproductive die, and anthropology's unique power to work through these juxtaposed fields.

Vita's methodological innovations, bold fieldwork, and rigorous social theory make it an essential reading for anyone who is grappling with how to understand the conditions of life, thought, and ethics in the contemporary world.

Loving Frank

2013

by Nancy Horan

I have been standing on the side of life, watching it float by. I want to swim in the river. I want to feel the current. So writes Mamah Borthwick Cheney in her diary as she struggles to justify her clandestine love affair with Frank Lloyd Wright. Four years earlier, in 1903, Mamah and her husband, Edwin, had commissioned the renowned architect to design a new home for them. During the construction of the house, a powerful attraction developed between Mamah and Frank, and in time the lovers, each married with children, embarked on a course that would shock Chicago society and forever change their lives.

In this ambitious debut novel, fact and fiction blend together brilliantly. While scholars have largely relegated Mamah to a footnote in the life of America’s greatest architect, author Nancy Horan gives full weight to their dramatic love story and illuminates Cheney’s profound influence on Wright. Drawing on years of research, Horan weaves little-known facts into a compelling narrative, vividly portraying the conflicts and struggles of a woman forced to choose between the roles of mother, wife, lover, and intellectual. Horan’s Mamah is a woman seeking to find her own place, her own creative calling in the world. Mamah’s is an unforgettable journey marked by choices that reshape her notions of love and responsibility, leading inexorably ultimately lead to this novel’s stunning conclusion.

Elegantly written and remarkably rich in detail, Loving Frank is a fitting tribute to a courageous woman, a national icon, and their timeless love story.

Graffiti Moon

2012

by Cath Crowley

Graffiti Moon is an intense and exhilarating journey that unfolds over the course of a single night. It captures the story of four teenagers on the cusp of adulthood. Lucy is determined to find Shadow, a mysterious and elusive graffiti artist whose work she's fallen in love with. Ed, who Lucy has been avoiding since an awkward date that ended with a broken nose, might just know how to find him.

As the night progresses, Lucy and Ed embark on an all-night adventure through the city, searching for places where Shadow's art of heartbreak and escape reverberate on the walls. What Lucy doesn't realize is that the very thing she's looking for might be closer than she thinks.

Cath Crowley has woven a lyrical narrative that explores the themes of self-discovery, art, and the complexities of young love.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

2010

by Haruki Murakami

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is Haruki Murakami's deep dive into the very nature of consciousness. This new translation presents a narrative that intertwines two parallel stories to draw readers into a mind-bending universe. The tale features an eclectic mix of characters including Lauren Bacall, Bob Dylan, a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his shockingly undemure granddaughter, and a host of thugs, librarians, and subterranean monsters.

The novel emerges as a work that is both hilariously funny and a deeply serious meditation on the nature and uses of the mind. Murakami's inventive storytelling zooms between Wild Turkey Whiskey and unicorn skulls, John Coltrane and Lord Jim, uniting East and West, tragedy and farce, compassion and detachment, slang and philosophy.

The Fountainhead

1996

by Ayn Rand

The revolutionary literary vision that sowed the seeds of Objectivism, Ayn Rand's groundbreaking philosophy, and brought her immediate worldwide acclaim. The Fountainhead is the story of intransigent young architect Howard Roark, whose integrity was as unyielding as granite...of Dominique Francon, the exquisitely beautiful woman who loved Roark passionately, but married his worst enemy...and of the fanatic denunciation unleashed by an enraged society against a great creator. As fresh today as it was then, Rand’s provocative novel presents one of the most challenging ideas in all of fiction—that man’s ego is the fountainhead of human progress.

Hopscotch

Hopscotch is a novel by Julio Cortazar, translated by Gregory Rabassa, that revolutionized the narrative structure with its non-linear approach. The story follows Horacio Oliveira, an Argentinian writer living in Paris with his mistress, La Maga, amid a group of bohemian friends known as "the Club." After a series of personal tragedies, Oliveira returns to Buenos Aires, where his life takes a series of unexpected turns as he takes on various odd jobs.

The novel is famous for its unique structure, allowing readers to navigate through its chapters in a non-conventional order. This innovative layout mirrors the book’s thematic exploration of life's complexity and the search for meaning. Cortazar drew inspiration from a variety of sources, including Henry Miller's quest for truth, Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki's Zen Buddhism teachings, and the aesthetics of Modernist writers like Joyce. Additionally, the novel reflects influences from Surrealism, the French New Novel, jazz music, and New Wave Cinema.

Gregory Rabassa's translation of Hopscotch won the National Book Award in 1966, marking a significant moment for the recognition of translation in literature. Cortazar's approval of Rabassa's work led to the translator's collaboration with Gabriel García Márquez on One Hundred Years of Solitude, further cementing Rabassa's reputation as a master translator.

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