Dimensions; Space, Shape & Scale in Architecture

Moore, Charles and Allen, Gerald

ISBN 10: 0070023360 / ISBN 13: 9780070023369

Published by Architectural Record Books, New York, 1976

About this Item

viii, 183, [1] pages. Frontispiece. Illustrations (drawings, maps, photographs). Reference Notes. Index. Charles Willard Moore (October 31, 1925 - December 16, 1993) was an American architect, educator, writer, Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and winner of the AIA Gold Medal in 1991. He is often labeled as the father of postmodernism. His work as an educator was important to a generation of American architects who read his books or studied with him at one of the several universities where he taught. Design features (historical detail, ornament, fictional treatments, ironic significations) made Moore one of the chief proponents of postmodern architecture, along with Robert Venturi, Michael Graves, Stanley Tigerman, and Charles Jencks. Gerald Pitman Allen, 73, of Spring Lake, NC, died on Sunday, November 1, 2015, from heart failure. Mr. Allen attended Episcopal High School in Alexandria, VA, and Yale University. After studying English at Cambridge University in England and returning to Yale to study architecture, he worked in New York for Philip Johnson and Architectural Record before starting his own firm, Gerald Allen & Associates. Gerald Allen (in later life) Mr. Allen's architectural career spanned a broad scope of work. He wrote several books with Charles Moore and taught in various universities, including Yale, Harvard, North Carolina State University, and Carnegie Mellon. He also designed sets for the Santa Fe Opera. In 1982, he and Kent Bloomer designed the lights currently in Central Park, and he designed the restoration of the Bethesda Fountain, both projects as part of an effort to revitalize the park. Later in his career, his work focused on church design and renovation and included projects in Manhattan at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, the Church of the Heavenly Rest, and Riverside Church, as well as projects in Larchmont and Oyster Bay and Wilson, NC. Dimensions and their architectural products - space, shape and scale - are essential concepts, the basic stuff of everyday design. Architect-authors Charles Moore and Gerald Allen feel that these terms are basically misunderstood among architects and laymen alike, and have written this book not only for architects who design new buildings, but also for all who want to learn to appreciate architecture and who must live their lives with what architects have built. Dimensions, the authors show, are not just the familiar ones of height, width, and depth which designers so often focus on, but in fact include any variable which can be changed without affecting any of he others. thus the temperature in a room , or the amount of sunlight, or the color, or the psychic pleasure that they all create are all dimensions, too--and all of them must be the necessary concern of architecture.

Seller Inventory # 87063

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Dimensions; Space, Shape & Scale in Architecture
• Publisher: Architectural Record Books, New York
• Publication Date: 1976
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0070023360
• ISBN 13: 9780070023369
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Robert Hazzon (Author photograph)
• Edition: Fourth printing [stated].
• Condition: Very good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Space
  • Discrimination

About this title

Synopsis

Dimensions and their architectural products - space, shape and scale - are essential concepts, the basic stuff of everyday design. Architect-authors Charles Moore and Gerald Allen feel that these terms are basically misunderstood among architects and laymen alike, and have written this important new book not only for architects who design new buildings, but also for all who want to learn to appreciate architecture and who must live their lives with what architects have built.

Dimensions, the authors show, are not just the familiar ones of height, width and depth which designers so often focus on, but in fact include any variable which can be changed without affecting any of the others. Thus the temperature in a room, or the amount of sunlight, or the color, or the psychic pleasure that they all create are all dimensions, too - and all of them must be the necessary concern of architect.

In concise opening essays, Allen and Moore describe space (that celebrated but often illusory product of architecture), shape (which carries the meaning of things) and scale (the relative size and importance of things) with a clarity that gives as good a definition of these abstract concepts as exists today. They then go on to a broad range of case studies, "walking tours" of individual buildings and places, which show how these concepts can be applied (and sometimes misapplied) in the man-made world.