There are treatises like, "James Gibbs' ~ Rules for Drawing the Several Parts of Architecture..." which go into detail with all the particular relationships and proportions of his orders. But this is but only one set of many sets of the orders who are all trying to arrive at the most harmonious method. Some use the column diameter as a measure, some use divisions of height, or other fractional measures (e.g. 100 or 96 part-systems). Some architects prefer one method over another, think some are just plain erroneous, or supplement their own methods and are free to develop their own treatise. The variability of proportion has historically been wildly varied.

The traditions of architecture are not handed down to us to be taken verbatim, rather they are OUR tradition and subject to our own rationality and convictions. Further more, these rules that are described respect an overarching grammar and syntax of form. Treatises of those like Gibbs take for granted that architects understand this language and are only giving the details of particular elements and some arrangements. They are much more like descriptions of keys on a piano and basic chords, not illustrating how to compose particular songs, or even the theory of music in general. Likewise, the classical orders are systems of organization like music theory provides a framework for creating good music.

For an attempt at understanding the language of classical architecture you will have to invest time and reading as it is a huge topic. A great start would be reading Classical Architecture: An Introduction to Its Vocabulary and Essentials, with a Select Glossary of Terms as well as The Classical Language of Architecture by Summerson. The question you pose is a bit like asking for a good book to read on the topic of creating good music, or becoming a great chef. Architecture, like the others, is an art after all, and most learning comes from doing.

Very cool how much you want to support him.

The biggest misconception about the industry is probably how little math we actually use. There is of course a spectrum to our field that spans from sculptors and artists to programmers and engineers. By and large, however, we are visual people who hone our skills by practicing art. I was happily surprised in my first term of college to find out how much time we'd spend sketching and drafting. Hopefully that's appealing to him!

As far as what skills to learn: I took a CAD drafting class in high school that gave me a good head start in college. Sketchup is easy to pick up and I'd encourage him to get comfortable with Rhino to really be able to model digitally. I would not recommend Revit at this early stage as it's extremely technical. Physical modeling is also helpful. I grew up on Legos before moving to paper / cardstock / cardboard sketch modeling. Messy and fast and gives three-dimensional insight you can't get from a page or a screen, plus having the ability to make clean models is a great way to impress professors early on.

Regarding reading material. These books made an enormous impression on me:

• 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School
  
• The Fast Guide to Architectural Form
  
• Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language
  
• Francis D.K. Ching's Form, Space, Order
  
• and Architect? A Candid Guide to the Profession
  
  I would highly recommend each and every one to him. All very approachable reading for a 14 year old already sketching commercial spaces.
  
  And Bjark Ingel's Yes is More is a fun read in graphic novel form.
  
  Lastly— reach out to your local AIA chapter. They can connect you and your brother with resources specific to your area including firms to check out / potentially shadow at, scholarships to apply for, and summer programs and other workshops to attend.
  
  ​
  
  Best of luck to you both! It's quite a journey and a rewarding one if it fits.
  I'm happy to talk more if you'd like to message me.

Well I studied in the UK, so not sure. However, I did go to Kuwait University one summer and I met with the head of the architecture department. I was spending time there and wanted to study traditional Islamic architecture, and I had a family contact to the department head. Anyway he was surprised and said sorry, we don't have any classes on that. So I asked.. 'well.. what do you teach here?' He responded: 'You know... Corbusier, Alvar Aalto, Frank Lloyd Wright...'

So that's not a good sign.

Regarding architectural trends, my feeling is that the GCC states are going through a phase of tribal modern. My own theory is that in the 50s and 60s, Gulf nations were building in what can be called Islamic Classicism. Iraqi architect Mohamed Makkiya designed Kuwait's Grand Mosque. He used Abbasid and Moorish elements in the design, and he was extremely popular across the new oil-rich states. You see other examples, such as this Islamic centre in Doha. It's based on the 9th century Samarra Mosque in Iraq, and the Ibn Tulun mosque in Cairo from the same century. In general, the architecture of the GCC states was a schizophrenic development - famous foreign architects building straightforward modernist cities and buildings, with local architects following more classical Islamic style.

After a few decades, these states began to exert more focus on their own sovereignty and heritage. So you start to see lots of buildings rejecting Islamic architecture, and basing their design on sand dunes, dhows, pearling, waves, and most of all, malqafs (wind towers), and crenellations. If you visit Kuwait or especially the UAE, you'll see wind towers on everything - shopping malls, garages, gas stations, bridges. Look at Souq Sharq in Kuwait. Of course these aren't real wind towers. Just decorative. In Oman, everything has crenellations. Because Oman is famous for its forts and fortified villages, very similar to Qasbahs and crenellated mosques in the Maghreb and Andalusia (because they were actual military structures). So now everything has to have crenellations. Qatar has gone the same route, just check out the new Ministry of Interior building. I'm not sure whether the famous Qatari forts are even Qatari, or whether they are Ottoman built.. but whatever. The point is that each state is exerting its own style evoking a patriotic national bedouin past. Kuwait's parliament building was designed by Danish architect Jorn Utzon, and is one of the earliest examples of this in my opinion. It's based on the bedouin tent.

In terms of domestic architecture, traditional Arabic-Islamic design is non-existent. The building regulations and codes don't allow for the density needed for vernacular architecture of the region, and the masterplans that created the codes were all done by European, mainly British, architects.

In terms of sources, it depends on what your main interest is. I mainly used academic papers, because the topic of urban transformation of the GCC isn't well researched at all. There are a few interesting academics writing about the tragedy of urbanism in the GCC. Like Saleh al-Hathloul, Ashraf Salama, Yasser Mahgoub, and Fadl al-Buainain. I relied heavily on the Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, and the now defunct Mimar magazine and Muqarnas journal.

This is an excellent book by a Tunisian author, but it's very dry and academic, and the pictures all black and white, so not sure that's what you're looking for.

Arts and Crafts of the Islamic Lands is an excellent book. It covers geometry and calligraphy and has lots of instructional stuff. Not really about architecture.

Contemporary Architecture In the Arab States is a classic. It looks at the best MENA architecture from the 70s to the 90s. Doesn't talk about urbanism though.

The book I linked to previously, Kuwait Transformed, by Farah al-Nakib, is a great book, but focuses entirely on Kuwait.

This is an absolutely fantastic book, but I could only find it at the uni library. It's a collection of research papers from a conference in the 1980s. I even contacted the organization in SAudi to try to find out if they have any copies i could get, but predictably, didn't get a response.

If you're interested in regular traditional architecture of the MENA region, with some nice pictures (hand sketches), that covers each country, then this is absolutely fantastic.

I could go on forever with these sources, but I think mine may be too specific for your interest. Something like this or this cover general Islamic architecture well, but they focus always on mosques and monuments. That's why I really enjoy Raguette's book, because it focuses on domestic and vernacular architecture.

Sorry for the long rambly reply.

> What I meant to point out was that having "many super famous" users of some method doesn't mean it has any merit.

When we're talking about aesthetics, and the method in question is using a very specific ratio very explicitly in their work, then yes that does show that it can have merit, if the work becomes widely admired.

>Think about how many pro athletes and actors have crazy rituals like wearing the same socks, carrying around a lucky charms, etc.

I don't think this analogy makes any sense. If we were talking about Le Corbusier's hatred of mechanical pencils, and I was saying that his refusal to use mechanical pencils aided his work, then we could draw an analogy to sports superstition. But we're talking about architects and artists using a very specific geometric ratio in their work. A better sports analogy might be the specific way a certain pitcher ices his arm after every outing, but that wouldn't really be spot on either because, again, aesthetics are far more murky and difficult to define or judge than pitching is.

>Why are you bringing up that it's "ludicrous to imagine that you know more about architecture"?

>Do you actually think that Le Corbusier is infallible unless somebody that knows more about architecture tells you that he's wrong? I don't think you actually believe that. This is your worst argument yet.

What I think is ludicrous is writing off his interest in the golden ratio and his use of it in his work, since he's considered a great master and he explicitly used the ratio in many of his building designs. You've basically suggested that, sure anybody can use it, but it has no more merit than 1 : 1.984 or 1 : 2.366 or any other made up ratio. Okay, but the Fibonacci sequence isn't just some random ratio. It's one of the simplest and most innate mathematical patterns there is, so I don't see why we should be so incredibly skeptical that its pattern may be of innate interest and aesthetic value.

You suggested that it's ridiculous to imagine that Leonardo may have incorporated it into things like the Vitruvian Man or the Mona Lisa, but Leonardo in fact illustrated a book specifically about the golden section and used anatomical drawings overlaid with the geometric pattern: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_divina_proportione

Did he intentionally incorporate it into Vitruvian Man? I don't know, but it's not exactly ridiculous to think that he was intrigued by it, since, pretty objectively, he was.


>You said there are many "respected scholars and architects" that are proponents of the golden things. Who are they? And much more importantly, what did they say?

Here's a somewhat extensive list.


And here's a pretty good book on the subject. To be honest, I haven't read the book yet. A friend recently recommended it to me though, after my discussion with him sparked my interest in the subject. That friend, for what it's worth, is a practicing architect who graduated undergrad from Harvard and who is extremely skeptical in general. Probably the biggest skeptic I know. But he thinks the golden section has merit, and he got me interested in it. That probably sounds like the soldier copypasta (I have 38 confirmed kills and I graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 3 years!) so you can choose to believe me or not. Does he think it's everywhere, in all things, and that it's the only aesthetic design tool we should care about? Obviously not.

I'm no expert on it - far from it. I just think that, if we want to know about it, we should default to people who are experts. It's silly to write it off because some random blogger made a post about it and he's clearly reaching for connections that aren't there. You didn't give any solid argument that it's bullshit. The post way up above where the guy shot it down in every form and application was also extremely biased against it and insisted that it doesn't exist even in places where we can plainly measure that it does. And he's not exactly Le Corbusier or Dali, nor did he particularly source or give measurements on his assertions.

I totally love the Christopher Alexander books. Definitely check out his The Timeless Way of Building which is a great companion piece to A Pattern Language. You should know that his works, while great in my opinion, are sort of considered idiosyncratic and not really in the mainstream of architecture/urban design.

Here's a short reading list you should look at:

The Smart Growth Manual and Suburban Nation by Andres Duany & Jeff Speck. Another set of sort-of-companion works, the Manual has a concrete set of recommendations inspired by the critique of modern town planning in Suburban Nation and might be more useful for your purposes.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs is probably the most famous and influential book on city planning ever and contains a lot of really original and thoughtful insights on cities. Despite being over half-a-century old it feels very contemporary and relevant.

The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler is similarly mostly a critique of modernist planning principles but is both short and very well written so I'd definitely recommend checking it out.

Makeshift Metropolis by Witold Rybczynski: I can't recommend this entire book, but it does contain (in my opinion) the best summary of the history of American urban planning. Really useful for a historical perspective on different schools of thought in city design over the years.

The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup is the book on parking policy. It's huge (700+ pages) and very thorough and academic, so it might be harder to get through than the other, more popular-audience-oriented titles on the list, but if you want to include parking as a gameplay element, I really can't recommend it highly enough. It's a problem that's thorny enough most city games just ignore it entirely: Simcity2013's developers say they abandoned it after realizing it would mean most of their players' cities would be covered in parking lots, ignoring that most actual American cities are indeed covered in parking lots.

Finally there's a bunch of great blogs/websites out there you should check out: Streetsblog is definitely a giant in transportation/design blogging and has a really capable team of journalists and a staggering amount of content. Chuck Marohn's Strong Towns blog and Podcast are a great source for thinking about these issues more in terms of smaller towns and municipalities (in contrast to Streetsblog's focus on major metropolitan areas). The Sightline Daily's blog does amazing planning/transpo coverage of the Pacific Northwest. Finally [The Atlantic Cities] (http://www.theatlanticcities.com/) blog has incredible coverage on city-issues around the world.

I hope this was helpful and not overwhelming. It's a pretty big (and in my opinion, interesting) topic, so there's a lot of ground to cover even in an introductory sense.

Sure. Most people assume that newspapers are dying because of the Internet, but that isn't the whole picture. Even before the rise of the Internet, newspaper subscriptions were declining. Why? Well, here is another thing that has been declining in step with newspapers--memberships in groups like Shriners and other community organisations. It's not that young people are now getting their news from the Internet instead of the daily paper, it's that they aren't getting their news at all. It's not just that technology has upended the traditional business model of news; our national psyche has changed and our attitudes about things like community and social responsibility have as well.

If you go to any college that teaches journalism, there is a good chance that "mass communication" is in the title of the school as well. But this is an outdated term. There is no longer any broadcasting but rather only narrowcasting. The country is so fractured, people essential flock to their own little islands of constructed realities. In the old days--when there were only 3 broadcast stations--people had to share a common culture: people had to watch the same t.v. shows, watch the same movies, read the same newspaper. Now you can find a magazine for any particular interest, a website that reaffirms any kind of beliefs you have, watch television from a huge array of sources and at any time you want--and your day-to-day experience and interpretive lens of daily events will be completely different than the guy who leaves across the street from you.

Not only have the markets for mass media been dismantled through media fragmentation--which need to take advantage of economies of scale to be cost-efficient--but also the supply side has been degraded as well. It's now so cheap to produce information, both in terms of fixed and marginal cost, that anyone can do it. That's why you see so many pundits on cable talk shows who seem to have no qualifications other than they just have a certain opinion. And the laws of economics tells us that when supply is high and demand is low, prices drop (or in the case of labor, people exit the market).

So, that's probably a longer answer than you wanted, and I could probably go on all day about it, but I'll end with this: the problem really boils down to that our modern democratic process is a product of the enlightenment, and journalism is a profession dedicated to that process. Our modern era, the post-modern period, represents the death of the enlightenment and journalism goes with it. If you want a good book on the subject, I recommend this.

**Edit: I forgot to mention something: Obama's acceptance speech did give me a glimmer of hope when he used the word "citizenship." Hopefully that word will come back into the national consciousness, but only time will tell how things pan out.

>did some research

If you have data on the economic and circulation-numbers state of community weekly newspapers in the U.S., please let me know. I'd love to read it.

I can only base my viewpoints on Pew's State of the News Media analysis on print news circulation, as well as generalized surveys and studies.

I have no doubt that print weeklies will survive for a while longer -- especially in some markets, like the rural midwest and in areas with a much older-than-average population base. But it's not an economically viable medium for transmitting news in the long term.

A book you should check out, when you get the chance, is David Mindich's Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don't Follow the News

>People still know they have to pay for my newspaper.

I'm sure that business model will last you well into the future.

>And web advertisement is worthless.

Yet somehow start-up online news sites and popular blogs have managed to make it work by developing new ways to metric ads, reach audiences for increased presence, and other ways of innovation. Interesting.

> get so tired of academics and people looking at the industry from on high saying print is dying.

Because by every available metric, print is dying. Please note here that "Print" means simply the publication of news using ink and paper. I am well aware that newspaper organizations do most of the original news production and reporting in the country. Which is why I highly support their turn to better online presences -- so they can reach the audience they want to reach, and we can all benefit from a properly informed society.

>Based on the big, national dailies you're trending an industry that includes weeklies, magazines, free papers on and on.

All of which are faltering, economicly, on the national scale.

I have nothing against your standpoint that community weeklies are important. They are where I got my start in journalism, where I did almost all of my professional work in journalism.

My problem comes at your dismissive approach toward blogging, self-reporting and entrepreneurial journalism. They are the nature of the modern market. They are how people get clips now, how people prove themselves, and how people cover a community and give voices to people in an era of failed print platforms.

It's a silly -- and frankly incorrect -- opinion to have toward the facts of a changing news audience and a changing news structure.

I'm lucky I'm the one teaching the journalists of the future.

In my humble opinion, the following are great and important reads for a newcomer into the subject.

Experiencing Architecture by Rasmussen

Any and ALL of Frank Ching's books, starting with Form, Space and Order

Sun, Wind, and Light is a timeless reference book.

The Dynamics of Architectural Form by Rudolf Arnheim is a great study on environmental psychology.

Also, Pattern Language if you're a complete masochist and really want to go DEEP into the subject.

I've got more if you're interested, but that should keep you busy for quite a while haha. Best of luck and I hope you find them as enjoyable as I have.

Oh sorry. My bad. Muller-Brockmann is a legend. I haven't read his book. Is it any good?

I suggested Alan Fletcher's "The Art of Looking Sideways". It's good for replenishing the creative juices. Also, "False Flat" by Aaron Betsky is awesome. And you can't go wrong with Phillip "Meggs' History of Graphic Design". Far too many people don't have that book.

EDIT: I haven't read Muller-Brockmann's book but I imagine it's a great take on the modernist/rationalist grid. Though, times are a-changin' my friend. If you look at the top design programs out there, say Yale MFA Graphic Design, Werkplaats or KABK for example, things aren't exactly the way they used to be. The only name we have for what's happening right now is Contemporary Graphic Design. I love it. It's an amazing time to be practicing Graphic Design. Though most web design doesn't even come close to interesting, unfortunately.

The world heritage of gardens by Dusan Ogrin is a great one. Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/World-Heritage-Gardens-Dusan-Ogrin/dp/0500236666

It takes a historic perspective and goes through all of the important eras of garden design, describing how basic design principles such as contrast, harmony, rythm etc. were used to convey different messages. It won't provide you with any recepies for designing but it is still great to understand historical significance of landscape structures. Highly recommended to anyone dealing with landscape design.

Another one I would recommend, but which is more general is The cultured landscape. https://www.amazon.com/Cultured-Landscape-Designing-Environment-Century/dp/0419250409
This one is a bit more philosophical but great to understand where landscape architecture is moving in general.

Enjoy your reading.

The books mentioned so far are great ones to start with. The Geography of Nowhere is also a good primer for the amateur; Kunstler's style is provocative and interesting to read.

I've always found good planning histories to be pretty accessible as well (for those interested in the subjects). Here are some recommendations that aren't the "main offenders" people normally reference:

Bourgeois Utopias is an interesting history of "suburbia", and the various forms "suburban development" has taken throughout history.

Sprawl by Robert Bruegeman is a good "contrast" to a lot of books about planning. His essential premises are that sprawl isn't bad, that underlies our economic growth, and that people want it.

Just graduated with a master's in planning (in Canada). The first thing you should know is that you cannot go into this field for the money or for great job prospects. Getting a job right out of school is extremely difficult in both the US and Canada right now unless you have the right prior experience and skills (which school will not give you). Many people take unpaid internships (which is disgusting on the part of employers in my opinion) or have a long wait ahead of them for an entry-level job.
So if you do pursue planning for grad school make sure you are in no financial difficulties and that you have a backup plan or money to spare in case.

There is also a difference between what skills jobs want and what you'll learn in planning school. Planning school will focus heavily on "issues" in urban planning (social science, econ, history, etc). So you'll be writing term papers just like you are now in poli sci. You'll also learn a bit about planning law and the planning system but not nearly enough of what jobs want. And lastly, planners need to know some software, but this greatly depends on what type of job you have. Some typical programs include ArcGIS, AutoCAD and Adobe Illustrator/Indesign.

Learning about the urban issues part of planning is not too difficult in comparison and there are a lot of great books.
The best one's I've read so far are also the books that are best to introduce anyone to the major issues in planning:

• The Geography of Nowhere
  
• Walkable City
  
• Straphanger
  
  
  If you have any more questions, I'd be happy to answer!

Well, the kitchen is pretty far from the garage, and through a lot of doors and a tiny room. This makes carrying groceries inside suck.

and, as many others have mentioned, the dining room is too far from the kitchen to be functional. Does anybody actually USE a formal dining room anymore? I'd suggest a flex-space addendum to the living room where a formal table can be set in the event of guests, but is normally a nice part of the living room or a usable space between the kitchen & living area.

Overall, it seems messy and inelegant.

If you don't want to scrap the design completely, I would suggest clustering the bedroom/office on the left behind the garage, making the entry central next to the garage, and positioning the kitchen, dining & living areas on the right side. I also like to cluster water-walls for ease of plumbing.

The mudroom is a wonderful idea, but it needs to be big enough to set down groceries, remove shoes & coats, put them away. Also a great place for a laundry/dog sink.

I am not understanding the "dressing" room. Do people dress outside of their bedrooms?

Personally, I'd start over.

I love reading this book for refining ideas.

As a political theory undergrad who transferred to architecture school because of the fascinating interplay between political structures, power, and the built environment, I have to say your question isn't fluffy at all. Quite a bit of excellent work covers the subject you're exploring.

Sigfried Gideon's Space, Time, and Architecture is a good place to start.

Foucault talks extensively about how liberating machines can be turned into machines of oppression. It's an interview he gave in the 70's (I think), I'll have to look it up when I head home.

The Ethical Function of Architecture discusses how value systems are translated into the built environment.

I think you can easily create an analytic framework that says something along the lines of "the built environment is the political environment, made physical". As another poster suggests, you could look at Speer and Terragni and contrast them with Corbusier, Mies, Rem, and even Vitruvius; you could easily identify departure points where the 'dictators' made aesthetic decisions to re-enforce the hegemony of the state, and the 'democrats' made decisions to promote liberty, the church, capitalism etc.

Senior Level Software Engineer Reading List

Read This First

1. Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment
   
   

   Fundamentals
   

   
   

2. Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture
   
3. Enterprise Integration Patterns: Designing, Building, and Deploying Messaging Solutions
   
4. Enterprise Patterns and MDA: Building Better Software with Archetype Patterns and UML
   
5. Systemantics: How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail
   
6. Rework
   
7. Writing Secure Code
   
8. Framework Design Guidelines: Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reusable .NET Libraries
   
   

   Development Theory
   

   
   

9. Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests
   
10. Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications
    
11. Introduction to Functional Programming
    
12. Design Concepts in Programming Languages
    
13. Code Reading: The Open Source Perspective
    
14. Modern Operating Systems
    
15. Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change
    
16. The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles
    
17. Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
    
    

    Philosophy of Programming
    

    
    

18. Making Software: What Really Works, and Why We Believe It
    
19. Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think
    
20. The Elements of Programming Style
    
21. A Discipline of Programming
    
22. The Practice of Programming
    
23. Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective
    
24. Object Thinking
    
25. How to Solve It by Computer
    
26. 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts
    
    

    Mentality
    

    
    

27. Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age
    
28. The Intentional Stance
    
29. Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes In The Age Of The Machine
    
30. The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures
    
31. The Timeless Way of Building
    
32. The Soul Of A New Machine
    
33. WIZARDRY COMPILED
    
34. YOUTH
    
35. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
    
    

    Software Engineering Skill Sets
    

    
    

36. Software Tools
    
37. UML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modeling Language
    
38. Applying UML and Patterns: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and Iterative Development
    
39. Practical Parallel Programming
    
40. Past, Present, Parallel: A Survey of Available Parallel Computer Systems
    
41. Mastering Regular Expressions
    
42. Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools
    
43. Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice in C
    
44. Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book
    
45. The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security
    
46. SOA in Practice: The Art of Distributed System Design
    
47. Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques
    
48. Data Crunching: Solve Everyday Problems Using Java, Python, and more.
    
    

    Design
    

    
    

49. The Psychology Of Everyday Things
    
50. About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design
    
51. Design for Hackers: Reverse Engineering Beauty
    
52. The Non-Designer's Design Book
    
    

    History
    

    
    

53. Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality
    
54. Death March
    
55. Showstopper! the Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft
    
56. The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth
    
57. The Business of Software: What Every Manager, Programmer, and Entrepreneur Must Know to Thrive and Survive in Good Times and Bad
    
58. In the Beginning...was the Command Line
    
    

    Specialist Skills
    

    
    

59. The Art of UNIX Programming
    
60. Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment
    
61. Programming Windows
    
62. Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X
    
63. Starting Forth: An Introduction to the Forth Language and Operating System for Beginners and Professionals
    
64. lex & yacc
    
65. The TCP/IP Guide: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Internet Protocols Reference
    
66. C Programming Language
    
67. No Bugs!: Delivering Error Free Code in C and C++
    
68. Modern C++ Design: Generic Programming and Design Patterns Applied
    
69. Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#
    
70. Pragmatic Unit Testing in C# with NUnit
    
    

    DevOps Reading List
    

    
    

71. Time Management for System Administrators: Stop Working Late and Start Working Smart
    
72. The Practice of Cloud System Administration: DevOps and SRE Practices for Web Services
    
73. The Practice of System and Network Administration: DevOps and other Best Practices for Enterprise IT
    
74. Effective DevOps: Building a Culture of Collaboration, Affinity, and Tooling at Scale
    
75. DevOps: A Software Architect's Perspective
    
76. The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, and Security in Technology Organizations
    
77. Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems
    
78. Cloud Native Java: Designing Resilient Systems with Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, and Cloud Foundry
    
79. Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation
    
80. Migrating Large-Scale Services to the Cloud

Architecture, Liberty and Civic Order: Architectural Theories from Vitruvius to Jefferson and Beyond.

From a the preface:
>The topic here is the modern city within the classical tradition that runs back almost three millennia. In this tradition the good city imitates the order, harmony, and proportionality of nature, which is the same source that is imitated by an architecture that seeks beauty as a compliment to the good and understands that architecture is a civic art.
>Today architecture is considered a fine art and the architect a creative artist who obeys the irresistible influences of the Zeitgeist to make a building that is “of its time” while fulfilling the demands of the client. This scheme absolves the architect for what he produces.

check out A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander. Great book for corralling up all the elements you'll want in a home. It's a collection of 'patterns' or elements that make Architecture work well for human life. A lot of great stuff that's often taken for granted, but very simple. And often cheap!

The nyTimes did a story on this fellow a while back- he's pioneered interior vertical garden walls. Very neat stuff.
http://www.verticalgardenpatrickblanc.com You might find some inspiration there.

good luck!

Which are the last two? Assuming capitalist development and codes...

By far the most famous geographer studying global capitalism is David Harvey. He recently wrote The Enigma of Capital which is a pretty easy introduction to his work. I think his Spaces of Global Capitalism is a more useful summation. He's very famous for a few other books, but I think the most important work he's done is in The Limits to Capital. The last one is a tough, meticulous book. Also worth checking out is his protege Neil Smith, either his Uneven Development or for a focus on cities The New Urban Frontier.

There really are not many books that take up housing and building code specifically, though Ben-Joseph's The City of Code is a useful introduction. If you're looking for a good rant (and a reliable one) on how we got to the less-than-stellar spatial arrangements of American cities, James Howard Kunstler's Geography of Nowhere will get your blood pumping. If you're more interested in the cultural politics of place, one of my all time favorites is Landscapes of Privilege by the Duncan's.

Interaction Design

• About Face 3 by Alan Cooper
  
• Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge
  
• Designing Interfaces by Jenifer Tidwell
  
• Designing for the Digital Age by Kim Goodwin
  
• Making Things Talk: (2011) (2007) by Tom Igoe
  
  Interior Design
  
  
• The Decoration of Houses by Edith Wharton and Ogden, Jr. Codman
  
• Domino: The Book of Decorating by Deborah Needleman
  
• Design*Sponge at Home: A Guide to Inspiring Homes by Grace Bonney
  
• The Vintage/Modern Home by Katherine Sorrell
  
• The Fundamentals of Interior Design by Simon Dodsworth
  
  Landscape Architecture
  
  
• Landscape Architectural Graphic Standards by Leonard J. Hopper
  
• Landscape Design: A Cultural and Architectural History by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers
  
• Landscape Graphics by Grant W. Reid
  
• Cities for People by Jan Gehl
  
• Design with Nature by Ian L. McHarg
  
  Lighting Design
  
  
• Stage Lighting Design by Richard Pilbrow
  
• The Architecture of Natural Light by Henry Plummer
  
• Painting With Light by John Alton
  
• Made of Light by Anthony Tischhauser
  
• Color, Environment and Human Response by Frank H. Mahnke & Rudolf H. Mahnke
  
  Product Design
  
  
• Sketching: Drawing Techniques from Product Designers by Koos Eissen
  
• Design for the Real World by Victor Papanek
  
• The Craftsman by Richard Sennett
  
• Mythologies by Roland Barthes
  
• Cradle to Cradle. Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough & Michael Braungart
  
  Product Design
  
  
• In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World by John Thackara
  
• The Experience Economy by B. Joseph Pine II & James H. Gilmore
  
• Universal Methods of Design by Bruce Hanington & Bella Martin
  
• Cradle to Cradle. Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough & Michael Braungart
  
• Mental Models by Indi Young
  
  Sound Design
  
  
• Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice and Sound Effects in Cinema by David Sonnenschein
  
• Designing Sound by Andy Farnell
  
• Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen by Michel Chion
  
• The Sound Effects Bible by Ric Viers
  
• Sound Theory Sound Practice by Rick Altman
  
  Urban Design
  
  
• The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
  * Cities for People by Jan Gehl
  
• A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander
  
• The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler
  
• The Image of the City by Kevin Lynch
  
  Web Design
  
  
• Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug
  
• HTML & CSS: Design and Build Web Sites by Jon Duckett
  
• The Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird
  
• Responsive Web Design with HTML5 and CSS by Ben Frain
  
• Hardboiled Web Design by Andy Clarke
  

The Timeless Way of Building

This book, and the teachings of the author, is often cited as the inspiration for Design Patterns. I love this book. It's a great book on design in general, and reading it sheds light on how Design Patterns are best understood.

They won't teach the most, but for photography and history, check out these two books on the brilliant photographer Richard Nickel:

• They All Fall Down: Richard Nickel's Struggle to Save America's Architecture
  
• Photographs of a Lost City
  
  These are my most treasured sitting on the shelf, and convinced me more than anything else did to move here.
  
  His life story is really compelling. His wikipedia article is well worth a read.
  
  Edit: This photo is from They All Fall Down, showing him protesting the looming demolition of the Adler & Sullivan-designed Garrick Theater. Bummed WBEZ didn't include one of these two books on the list.

In this exact order:

1. Start with Suburban Nation by Duany, Zyberk, and Speck. It's super easy to read, totally skimmable, and has a lot of great graphics and diagrams that help explain things. It's not the deepest book out there, but it's the best place to start.
   
   
2. After that, try Geography of Nowhere by Kunstler. The author can be cranky and there are no diagrams, but he does a nice job of explaining how suburbia happened, why it made sense at the time, and why it's not so great anymore. Basically it's a primer on the key issue facing city planning today.
   
   
3. After them, you'll be ready for The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jacobs. This is the bible of urbanism, the most important and influential book written about the form of cities since the invention of the car. But it's not as accessible as the first two, so I wouldn't start here.
   
   
4. Walkable City by Speck. This is the newest of the bunch, and provides the data to back up the claims from the previous 3.
   
   
5. Image of the City by Lynch. This one is a series of case studies that will teach you how to "read" how a city functions based on its form. The examples are all woefully obsolete, which is too bad, but still teaches you an important skill.

> We're not demolishing the Coliseum here.

I think this sort of attitude is the issue. We are one of the youngest nations on earth, and I think part of the problem is that we dont yet have a collective appreciation of what we actually HAVE contributed to the world at large. Parisians have a shared sense of the importance of how music, art, food, language, and architecture has shaped their country. And those things are cherished and held very deeply, so much so that its embedded into what it means to be a citizen there. In the united states, the sense is that something from 100 years ago is disposable rather than something to be respected. We havent turned that corner yet. Americans are fascinated with newness, which in part has fueled our growth, but on the flipside is also an incredibly wasteful way to approach life. The homes we are referring to were built often with old growth timber, custom millwork, built ins, superior brick, stained glass windows, crown molding, etc...and they were attainable to the working class. This will probably never be repeated again. Chicago bungalows, 2 flats, enormous brick warehouses, greystones, etc are something we can claim as ours, and ours alone.

So we might not have the Coliseum. But we've demolished the Coliseum many times over. The Stock Exchange lays in ruins. The great movie palaces are gone. Look through a book of the kinds of buildings that we've demolished in Chicago. Its on a scale that most ancient cities would consider unimaginable, outside of war zones.
https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Chicago-David-Garrard-Lowe/dp/0226494322

We are in a constant cycle of trading down, and paying more for the privilege.

first book i had to read in architecture school was
"chambers for a memory palace"
http://www.amazon.com/Chambers-Memory-Palace-Donlyn-Lyndon/dp/0262621053

its a great introduction to design and spatial description

also Simon Unwin has a book called "Analysing Architecture" that is pretty standard in schools as well as a book called "20 buildings every architect should understand" that has some pretty iconic buildings in it.
I've been to a lecture of his and he is an amazing speaker and writer.

The political and marketing influence of the car industry played a huge part, but it's as much a cultural and urban planning thing as it is industry driven. Entire cities are built around catering to people in cars... there are vast swathes of strip malls and supercenters where there aren't even sidewalks but there are huge multi-story parking garages. Cities are zoned to have most of the population separated from areas where they participate in commerce... our entire life has become decentralized and auto-focused. Public railways serve a very small niche when both endpoints are, by design, far-removed from anything you'd want to explore. By contrast, in places in Europe and Asia, you get off the train and onto the bus or subway, and the bus stop or subway station is smack dab in the middle of shopping and business, and business is much more local.

A couple interesting books on this topic are Fighting Traffic (Peter Norton), Geography of Nowhere (James Kunstler) and Asphalt Nation (Jane Holtz Kay), worth a read if you're really interested in the topic.

Do you know if he'll actually be drafting by hand? A lot of schools are all digital now.

As an alternative, here's a set of items I would have loved to receive as a freshman in architecture school:

https://www.amazon.com/101-Things-Learned-Architecture-School/dp/0262062666/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539622984&sr=8-1&keywords=101+things+i+learned+in+architecture+school&dpID=51ktCo7dHTL&preST=_SX218_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch

https://www.amazon.com/Architecture-Francis-D-K-Ching/dp/1118745086/ref=pd_sim_14_10?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1118745086&pd_rd_r=31750c2b-d09c-11e8-a1fa-3b320cf86cd1&pd_rd_w=uX57r&pd_rd_wg=F1H8M&pf_rd_i=desktop-dp-sims&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=18bb0b78-4200-49b9-ac91-f141d61a1780&pf_rd_r=YP0989T1CKSAE842J6N0&pf_rd_s=desktop-dp-sims&pf_rd_t=40701&psc=1&refRID=YP0989T1CKSAE842J6N0

https://www.amazon.com/Sakura-Pigma-30062-Micron-Blister/dp/B0008G8G8Y/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1539623052&sr=8-3&keywords=micron+pen+set&dpID=51bMxXKP9NL&preST=_SY300_QL70_&dpSrc=srch

and a nice sketchbook. I'm a fan of the dot grid ones. The Frank Ching books are invaluable. I wish I still had my entire collection.

This isn't guitar specific, but maybe something like this would be of interest to you: https://www.amazon.com/Harmonic-Experience-Harmony-Natural-Expression/dp/0892815604 (Though it does cover just intonation extensively, and while that's something I find very interesting, it's not really directly applicable to guitar, except as a way of understanding equal temperament.)

The music book that I wish someone would write is to take the general idea and structure of this amazing book: https://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Language-Buildings-Construction-Environmental/dp/0195019199, and apply it to music instead of architecture.

I'm a big fan of Not so Big House by Sarah Susanka. The book doesn't really contain actionable information -- it's more about presenting and promoting her thesis that we should spend our housing budgets on well designed, well built homes with smaller footprints rather than using the same budget to build a larger house with worse design or materials.

I personally think you should use an architect if you have the budget. The knowledge they can bring to the process isn't really something a layperson can replicate well. If you do want to try designing your own, A Pattern Language would be an interesting read. It can provide some useful rules of thumb regarding specific design elements that you might not otherwise consider.

Also you should familiarize yourself with passive solar building design. If you consider the concepts when developing a design and choosing a site you'll be able to leverage them for cheaper heating/cooling at little or no additional design cost. Building a well-insulated structure (a big part of passive solar design) also makes for a more comfortable home in terms of thermal regulation, noise management, air quality management, etc.

The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape by James Howard Kunstler

I've probably read this book half a dozen times. A great summary of the problems with our car-centric built environment and how they came to be. Urban Planing and Development is a dry subject, but JHK has a good sense of humor in his writing and the book is an easy read.


( http://www.amazon.com/Geography-Nowhere-Americas-Man-Made-Landscape/dp/0671888250/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373057700&sr=1-1 - amazon link)

A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way of Building



The Designer Eye


How Buildings Learn


Thermal Delight In Architecture


These last ones may not exactly be what you are looking for but they go into the architectural aspects of specific types of architecture, japanese, malaysia and so I think are pretty interesting in that they show how specific types of houses work.

The Malay House


Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings


A Place of My Own

I'm already 13 years in AAA games industry. I went through the answers and I agree that Level Design books are not really great if you want to create something more than a tiny indie game. If you want to learn from the "sources", I highly recommend you:

- Environmental Psychology - You can skip parts about noise but perception and decision making in space is a crucial knowledge in Level Design.

- Architecture: Form, Space and Order - This book tells you all about how space is made and how it affects people.

This is a great start. When you'll be done with these books, come back for more ;)

The Art of Game Design - Jesse Schell is very very good.

Game AI (Millington and Funge new edition iirc) is very very good.

Some non-game-design books that are very useful for those doing game design:

Scott McLoud: Making Comics (the other two in the series are good but the section on plot, characterization, and development in this one is great)

Donald Norman: The Design of Everyday Things. (How design works and how people interact with technology and...)

Christopher Alexander et al A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, and Construction (Thinking about scale and design elements and modularity and...)

Kevin Lynch: The Image of the City (How do urban spaces work - essential if your game is set in a city - how do people actually navigate)

Polti: The 36 Dramatic Situations (old, quirky, examines how there are really only a few human plots)

Matt Frederick: 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School (how to think about and execute simple art, improve your design sense, ...)

Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language isn't just the best book on architecture I've ever read, but one of the best books I've read on any subject. It talks about architecture on both its highest and most basic levels—from the design of cities to the location of window seats—and it's remarkably wise, lucid, and insightful. It reflects a very particular philosophy of architecture and urban planning, but it influenced my views on countless topics, and I think about it almost every day.

I'm going to back track for you a bit, because I am not sure if you are aware of the larger context. When refering to Hypostyle halls, most often we are discussing the architecture of Egypt, Persia, etc., and those projects can be dated as far back as 1550 B.C. (New Kingdom, Egypt). Some examples of Hypostyle halls include the Temple of Amon at Karnak and The Temple of Abydos

Greek art & architecture was, without having to say, greatly influenced by art & architecture from Egypt. During the Classical & Hellenistic periods of Ancient Greece, you start to see this influence pop up in architecture, and hypostyle most often taking on the form of peristyle.

A quick note about the differences between peri & hypostyle: Both are colonnade construction around a central space. However Hypostyle construction used in Egypt was used primarily for religious purposes, whereas in Greece, peristyle was folded into common culture, and appeared frequently in the design/construction of the homes/villas of the wealthy. Additionally hypostyle halls tended to be enclosed within buildings, whereas peristyle were open air, constructed around courts, porches, etc.

As to your question, the oldest surviving examples of peristyle/hypostyle construction in Ancient Greece probably dates probably as far back as approx. 600 BC, and while peristyle is more common with the architecture of the Hellenistic Period, hypostyle continues to appear as well. You can see influences & usage of hypostyle throughout the period in many projects, including:

• Bouleuterion at Olympia approx 580 BC (with others similar in construction in Athens apx 400 BC & Miletus apx 175 BC).
  
• Heraion of Samos built around 510 BC - 460 BC
  
• The Parthenon built around 447 BC
  
• Hypostyle at Delos built around 200 BC
  
  Other Resources:
  
  Greek Architecture By Arnold Walter Lawrence
  
  A Global History of Achitecture by Jarzombek & Prakash
  
  
  Egyptian Influence on Ionic Architecture by Lucas Livingston
  
  Reminiscences of Egypt in Doric Architecture by Allan Marquand
  The American Journal of Archaeology and of the History of the Fine Arts
  Vol. 6, No. 1/2 (Mar. - Jun., 1890), pp. 47-58
  
  Great Architecture of the World by Julius Norwish

If you like what this guy had to say, then I highly recommend the book called "A Pattern Language" - the best $50 I ever spent on any book. It's considered to be the architects bible, and so easily understood by the layman.

http://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Language-Buildings-Construction-Environmental/dp/0195019199

I bought (another) one for my daughter when she graduated high school.

There's a surprising amount of crossover between LA and psych. Here are some links:

A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander

The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces by William H Whyte (video)

Environmental Psychology

Travel to places that you like and journal/sketch about what you like, how it makes you feel to be in the space, take note of elements like lighting, seating, fountains/sculptures, and materials. Find out who designed the space and check out more of their work.

Call up a local LA firm that does similar work to the type you want to do, and ask for a tour of their office, shadow them in the field, or ask for an internship.

I've read "Dwellings" by Paul Oliver. It's quite good. It only speaks to housing, but it is geographically diverse, speaks to a variety of issues including culture (spatial relations, ornamentation), construction techniques, environmental suitability, and informal settlements, for both urban cultures and very remote settlements. Amazon lists it at just under $30 (at Amazon.ca, they have 2 copies left, unlike Amazon.com). If cost is a major barrier, you could also consider trying to find it, or others, at a library.

Oliver's book is more of a catalogue. Academically, Bernard Rudofsky's "Architecture Without Architects" is a seminal text on the subject. I haven't read it personally, so I can't make a recommendation, but I will say that I would personally be interested in reading it. I imagine that this book would try to locate vernacular buildings within architectural discourse, and is probably less comprehensive geographically, culturally and historically than Oliver's. And it is almost within your price range.

I recommend reading The Geography of Nowhere. The book has its ups and downs and its points and non-points but I think it gets to the heart of what you are asking.

I'm somewhat skeptical about the "sprawl was planned" argument suggested here. There are plenty of decentralized cities all around the world, most more economically robust than the U.S. style of grid-city every 30-50 miles you see throughout the midwest. Take a look at a map of Germany and you'll be hard-pressed to find a vacant 100 square km.

As a city grows it envelops other cities, and it's easy to support development that fills in the vacant land between urban centers. That's very different from an official "plan" to create robust suburban dispersal.

Ironic, now -- cities may be the only way to create a decent sustainable future for humanity. Suburbs take too much energy to sustain. Read any work by J.B. Jackson or Geography of Nowhere by Kunstler to get a better sense of suburban hell.

This is a nice, concise book on the subject (as are most the Wooden Books imprint titles).

http://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Geometry-Wooden-Books-Miranda/dp/0802713823/

This book is very nice & has clear overlays that show the geometry so you can go see the geometry in the design & then also see the design by itself - at least the 1st edition had that, I can only assume the 2nd edition keeps this feature.

http://www.amazon.com/Geometry-Design-Revised-Updated-Briefs/dp/1616890363

I'd add The Timeless Way of Building ( www.amazon.com/dp/0195024028 ) to this list, especially for level design purposes - not only does it provide a fairly gentle introduction to the notion of design patterns, it's also a great way of understanding some of the specifics behind how architecture affects people emotionally and how particular building patterns evoke particular moods.

Francis D. K. Ching books would be a place to start.

D.K. Ching Books

I would suggest: Building Construction Illustrated and Architecture: Form, Space, and Order

Then maybe some more of his books as you are interested.

There is also a series of HomeDepot books: Plumbing 1-2-3 Wiring 1-2-3 etc that have lots of basic info: 1-2-3 Series

Feel free to ask if you are looking for anything more specific.

I'm currently in graduate school. Most of the textbooks I bought were for my technical classes like environmental technology or structures. I have used:

Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius. I used this in my theory class. It's a pretty neat book that offers classic principles of architecture.

The Ethical Function of Architecture This is another theory book that offers more contemporary architectural issues. I'm not the biggest fan of theoretical readings but it's not too bad.

Building Construction Illustrated by Francis Ching

Mechanical and Electrical Equipment for Buildings

Fundamentals of Building Construction: Materials and Methods

101 Things I Learned in Architecture School This is one I think every architecture student should own. Its very small and simple.

Understanding Architecture: Its Elements, History, and Meaning

A Global History of Architecture

A Visual Dictionary of Architecture

The Death and Life of Great American Cities


Bonus book because I like this firm's concepts:

Yes Is More: An Archicomic on Architectural Evolution - Bjarke Ingels Group

Found it! The Timeless Way Of Building was what I was looking for. Other interesting suggestions were A Pattern Language and The Design Of Everyday Things

SOLVED

There is a dearth of architecture media that is geared towards non-architects. It's a serious problem for our profession.

Here are some good resources though to get started:

• TED Talks about Architecture
  
• Rebel Architecture is a six-part documentary series profiling architects who are using design as a form of activism and resistance to tackle the world's urban, environmental and social crises. Also, Al Jazeera is an unexpectedly good resource for non-architects (and architects) to learn about architecture.
  
• Visual Acoustics is a documentary about the architecture photography of Julius Schulman and reveals a lot about the profession itself.
  
• [Urban Composition: Developing Community through Design] (http://www.amazon.com/Urban-Composition-Developing-Community-Architecture/dp/1616890525#) A terrific and easy to read book
  
• [Why Architecture Matters] (http://www.amazon.com/Why-Architecture-Matters/dp/0300168179/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421081280&sr=1-1&keywords=why+architecture+matters) Another terrific and easy to read book
  
  There is more, but this should keep you busy for a little while at least.
  
  
  
  
  
  

Coming back to this, I found my collection of research bookmarks...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circulation_(architecture)
http://portico.space/architecture-concepts
http://portico.space/journal//architectural-concepts-circulation
https://www.pinterest.nz/portico_/concepts-circulation/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095263514000375 <-- This one is promising
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architectural_plan

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195019199/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
and
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195024028/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 are the origins of software design patterns, but talk about physical architecture. There is a lot of good information in these books.

I disagree somewhat with that distinction. The reason I say this is that a few of the patterns in GoF where actually documented as idioms in Advanced C++ Programming Styles and Idioms and recast as patterns. On the other hand, some purists argue that the GoF patterns are not even real patterns in the Alexandrian sense, therefore they would all be idioms.

So if you are sticking to the GoF definition of patterns, they aren't much more than idioms. If you look at the Alexandrian patterns, then I might agree with you. A good distinction would be to limit idioms to language specific solutions and real patterns to solutions that arise independent of the language. I edited my reply above to reflect this.

Lost Chicago is a good book. It looks like you can get the hardcover for 98 cents! (Probably $28 shipping cost)

A Pattern Language

It makes basic considerations of design approachable and practical. I don't agree with everything in the book but the way they do it and the breadth of their study is admirable.

http://www.amazon.com/Chambers-Memory-Palace-Donlyn-Lyndon/dp/0262621053/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310663142&sr=8-1

I really can't recommend this book enough. It's filled with tons of wonderful sketches and very insightful commentary between two architects about how they and their predecessors create(d) buildings, and it isn't written in archispeak which makes it easily understood by non-architects.

They All Fall Down by Rich Cahan, about Richard Nickel's struggle to save classic Chicago buildings, particularly those by Louis Sullivan. The beginnings of the architectural preservation movement in Chicago. https://www.amazon.com/They-All-Fall-Down-Architecture/dp/0471144266

I was looking into being an architect before I got into Computer Engineering. It is very surprising how universal interaction design is.

The psychology of how humans work is just as useful in designing floorplans as it is in designing websites.

In Computer Science, the idea of "design patterns" actually originated from the writings of a building architect: http://www.amazon.com/The-Timeless-Building-Christopher-Alexander/dp/0195024028

Read the book A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander. It is actually a book for architecture, but you can use allot of it in game design. Another good book is Level design in games by Phil Co.

a global history of architecture is the best I can do. architecture websites thrive on republishing promotional photography and don't really carry the kind of weight your question suggests. I believe you need a book.

I'd like to recommend another book, with a more psychologically oriented approach to urban and architectural design: A Pattern Language

A real home is not just about the elevations or what it looks like.
I suggest reading something like Christophers Alexanders A Pattern Language

I'm surprised no one as mentioned this book yet; VERY good read on this subject...

"The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape"

http://www.amazon.com/The-Geography-Nowhere-Americas-Landscape/dp/0671888250/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333474570&sr=8-1

No Kunsler??? The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape by James Howard Kunstler is fantastic.

Looks like there are two books named "Why Architecture Matters", one by Paul Goldberger and one by Blair Kamin. Which one were you referring to?

A Pattern Language. This is my all-time favorite book on design and how we interact with our surroundings:
http://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Language-Buildings-Construction-Environmental/dp/0195019199/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369950438&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=A+Pattern+Lnaguage

Note: links are to amazon though any library or used book will do.

On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee

A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander

On War by Von Clausewitz

Influence by Robert Cialdini

Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky

Improving Performance: How to Manage the Whitespace in the Organization Chart by Geary Rummler

Books by Edward T. Hall

Books by Edward Tufte


Books by Jiddu Krishnamurti

The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action by Donald Schön

let me know if you want more....

I'd recommend taking this book out from the library:

http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Chicago-David-Garrard-Lowe/dp/0226494322

its just incredibly sad the history and beauty we've thrown in the garbage

Highly recommend Geometry of Design by Kimberly Elam.

Post modernism has largely come and gone, however Complexity & Contradiction in Architecture by Robert Venturi is excellent.

Also, Architecture without Architects....

and

Lessons for Students in Architecture

I'm coming from a game design perspective rather than architect, so take this with a grain of salt, but I've been told (numerous times) to check out the work Christopher Alexander, particularly A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way of Building.

I haven't read either one yet, but they are at the top of my "To Read" list.

Sounds like they are following the advice of A Pattern Language.

Apart from the landscape format, it sounds like Geometry of Design

I'd recommend any of the structures in this book: http://www.amazon.com/Architecture-Without-Architects-Introduction-Non-Pedigreed/dp/0826310044

That's fantastic. There's a design pattern* associated with balconies, and the vast majority of apartment complexes make them so small they are useless, and in some cases they make the space even less accessible. It looks like they got the proportions right, but i wonder if it feels crowded.

I don't remember the page # but here's the book:
https://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Language-Buildings-Construction-Environmental/dp/0195019199

You know, I don't really track such things on reddit so much, but the Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) is sort of a hub for these things.

For years I didn't really have words or terms to go with my sentiment regarding our built environments, but reading first Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Death of the American Dream and then ["The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Environment] (https://www.amazon.com/Geography-Nowhere-Americas-Man-Made-Landscape/dp/0671888250) were wonderfully informative and encompassing on the topic.

Check out James Howard Kunstler's TED talk, you'll probably laugh and feel sad in equal parts.

It's incredible how wide reaching the effects are of our built environment, and in the United States, it's mostly negative.

• Geometry of Design
  
• Graphic Design Manual: Principles and Practice

Three architecture books by Christopher Alexander:
A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction
The Timeless Way of Building
The Oregon Experiment

You could always check out A Pattern Language: http://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Language-Buildings-Construction-Environmental/dp/0195019199 or a Timeless Way of Building : http://www.amazon.com/The-Timeless-Building-Christopher-Alexander/dp/0195024028

http://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Language-Buildings-Construction-Environmental/dp/0195019199

Get yourself a copy of this book and you'll be set to do it yourself.

Palladio - The Four Books of Architecture

Vitruvius - the Ten Books of Architecture

da Vignola - Canon of the Five Orders of Architecture

Serlio - on Architecture, Volume 1,2

A Pattern Language

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0195019199/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=43848937162&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=16665708471552453648&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_1tl3jngmex_b

Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language

I'm going to assume you have this book, or have seen it, but if not, its a must have. Lost Chicago

Found it:
Geometry of Design, Revised and Updated (Design Briefs) Elam, Ki... https://www.amazon.com/dp/1616890363/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_awdo_t1_C4GcBb5B5X288

Handy little book on grid systems.

There is this wonderful book about design:

https://www.amazon.com/Timeless-Way-Building-Christopher-Alexander/dp/0195024028

The geography of nowhere.

Geometry of Design.

A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander. It's not a programming book; it's not an art/design book per se. But if you read it, and you grok it, it may change the way you think about code (and design).

"Pedestrian oriented neighbourhoods" are likely to have a lot of utility & are likely to undo a lot of the damage Automobiles have done to the urban environment as described in 'the Geography of Nowhere'. Particularly as they can afford automotive mobility to people who can't today drive on their own (elderly, children).

I don't think we'll get banning of manual vehicles, at least not quickly. There'll likely be a quickly rising standard of expected driving competence though. There's a 'pareto principle' in effect with car accidents, 20% of the drivers on the roads today cause about 80% of the accidents. When people have to drive to get to work, we let it go quite a bit. In the future, we're not gonna let that fly. Those people who still want to drive (& can drive) are still going to get there quicker than they did before, even with an expectation for them to give way to pedestrians, because most traffic is caused not by the limitations of the roads but by bad driving.