Bücher der Reihe The MIT Press

The influential Dutch architect's long-awaited manifesto on the everyday environment as the first and best ground for establishing the significance and coherence of architecture.According to N. J. Habraken, intimate and unceasing interaction between people and the forms they inhabit uniquely defines built environment. The Structure of the Ordinary, the culmination of decades of environmental observation and design research, is a recognition and analysis of everyday environment as the wellspring of urban design and formal architecture. The author's central argument is that built environment is universally organized by the Orders of Form, Place, and Understanding. These three fundamental, interwoven principles correspond roughly to physical, biological, and social domains.Historically, "ordinary" environment was the background against which architects built the "extraordinary." Drawing upon extensive examples from archaeological and contemporary sites worldwide, the author illustrates profound recent shifts in the structure of everyday environment. One effect of these transformations, Habraken argues, has been the loss of implicit common understanding that previously enabled architects to formally enhance and innovate while still maintaining environmental coherence. Consequently, architects must now undertake a study of the ordinary as the fertile common ground in which form- and place-making are rooted. In focusing on built environment as an autonomous entity distinct from the societies and natural environments that jointly create it, this book lays the foundation for a new dialogue on methodology and pedagogy, in support of a more informed approach to professional intervention.

This groundbreaking collection of thirteen original essays analyzes connections between film and two highly influential twentieth-century movements.

This monograph addresses the problem of real-time curve fitting in the presence of noise, from the computational and statistical viewpoints. It examines the problem of nonlinear regression, where observations are made on a time series whose mean-value function is known except for a vector parameter. In contrast to the traditional formulation, data are imagined to arrive in temporal succession. The estimation is carried out in real time so that, at each instant, the parameter estimate fully reflects all available data. Specifically, the monograph focuses on estimator sequences of the so-called differential correction type. The term differential correction refers to the fact that the difference between the components of the updated and previous estimators is proportional to the difference between the current observation and the value that would be predicted by the regression function if the previous estimate were in fact the true value of the unknown vector parameter. The vector of proportionality factors (which is generally time varying and can depend upon previous estimates) is called the gain or smoothing vector. The main purpose of this research is to relate the large-sample statistical behavior of such estimates (consistency, rate of convergence, large-sample distribution theory, asymptotic efficiency) to the properties of the regression function and the choice of smoothing vectors. Furthermore, consideration is given to the tradeoff that can be effected between computational simplicity and statistical efficiency through the choice of gains.Part I deals with the special cases of an unknown scalar parameter-discussing probability-one and mean-square convergence, rates of mean-square convergence, and asymptotic distribution theory of the estimators for various choices of the smoothing sequence. Part II examines the probability-one and mean-square convergence of the estimators in the vector case for various choices of smoothing vectors. Examples are liberally sprinkled throughout the book. Indeed, the last chapter is devoted entirely to the discussion of examples at varying levels of generality. If one views the stochastic approximation literature as a study in the asymptotic behavior of solutions to a certain class of nonlinear first-order difference equations with stochastic driving terms, then the results of this monograph also serve to extend and complement many of the results in that literature, which accounts for the authors' choice of title. The book is written at the first-year graduate level, although this level of maturity is not required uniformly. Certainly the reader should understand the concept of a limit both in the deterministic and probabilistic senses (i.e., almost sure and quadratic mean convergence). This much will assure a comfortable journey through the first fourth of the book. Chapters 4 and 5 require an acquaintance with a few selected central limit theorems. A familiarity with the standard techniques of large-sample theory will also prove useful but is not essential. Part II, Chapters 6 through 9, is couched in the language of matrix algebra, but none of the classical results used are deep. The reader who appreciates the elementary properties of eigenvalues, eigenvectors, and matrix norms will feel at home. MIT Press Research Monograph No. 42

Using the computer industry as an example, this work develops a theory of design and industrial revolution. It argues that the industry has experienced previously unimaginable levels of innovation and growth because it embraced the concept of modularity.

The conclusive volume of the Brandeis University Summer Institute lecture series of 1970 on theories of interacting elementary particles consisting of five sets of lectures.

A collection of papers exploring why children acquire speech easily yet bog down when it comes to learning to read.

The book summarizes a large literature in a quick, thorough way and adds a useful glossary and rich bibliography.

In a daring revisionist history of modern architecture, Mark Wigley opens up a new understanding of the historical avant-garde. He explores the most obvious, but least discussed, feature of modern architecture: white walls. Although the white wall exemplifies the stripping away of the decorative masquerade costumes worn by nineteenth-century buildings, Wigley argues that modern buildings are not naked. The white wall is itself a form of clothing—the newly athletic body of the building, like that of its occupants, wears a new kind of garment and these garments are meant to match. Not only did almost all modern architects literally design dresses, Wigley points out, their arguments for a modern architecture were taken from the logic of clothing reform. Architecture was understood as a form of dress design.Wigley follows the trajectory of this key subtext by closely reading the statements and designs of most of the protagonists, demonstrating that it renders modern architecture's relationship with the psychosexual economy of fashion much more ambiguous than the architects' endlessly repeated rejections of fashion would suggest. Indeed, Wigley asserts, the very intensity of these rejections is a symptom of how deeply they are embedded in the world of clothing. By drawing on arguments about the relationship between clothing and architecture first formulated in the middle of the nineteenth century, modern architects in fact presented a sophisticated theory of the surface, modernizing architecture by transforming the status of the surface.White Walls, Designer Dresses shows how this seemingly incidental clothing logic actually organizes the detailed design of the modern building, dictating a system of polychromy, understood as a multicolored outfit. The familiar image of modern architecture as white turns out to be the effect of a historiographical tradition that has worked hard to suppress the color of the surfaces of the buildings that it describes. Wigley analyzes this suppression in terms of the sexual logic that invariably accompanies discussions of clothing and color, recovering those sensuously colored surfaces and the extraordinary arguments about clothing that were used to defend them.

A study in the systematic policy analysis of the MIT Libraries. The study identifies two principal missions for the MIT library system: provide material for students' course work and provide material in general support of research at MIT. The problem is how to organize future library resources into a set of programs that best fulfill these objectives.

In a highly engaging style, Rheingold tells the story of what he calls the patriarchs, pioneers, and infonauts of the computer, focusing in particular on such pioneers as J. C. R. Licklider, Doug Engelbart, Bob Taylor, and Alan Kay.

Nathan Glazer has called Marshall Kaplan the best social planner of the 1960s and asserts that this book does for 1973 what Herbert Gans's People and Plans did for 1963. Kaplan states at the outset that it can be said that one need not look far for evidence, even if anecdotal, to show that the impact of the planning profession on the quality of urban life has been marginal at best and, at times, negative. Certainly, twenty years of federal planning assistance programs have not visibly built up the planning capacity of local governments or improved the quality of local life. Indeed, the prime beneficiaries of such aid seem to be, not local governments or local residents, but local and national consultants.Most plans prepared by most city planners have failed to pay heed to the many culturally and economically determined differences in life style of residents of the nation's cities and suburban areas. Plans, when heeded, have often either led to an allocation of scarce resources away from the least advantaged members of urban society or, as in urban renewal, had a directly negative effect on their lives. Somewhat surprisingly, even the more affluent members of society have not found their legitimate needs and their observed behavior patterns reflected in most community plans.

Mathematicians, science historians, and general readers will find this book a lively history; women will find it a reminder of a proud tradition and a challenge to take their rightful place in academic life today.

A collection of Fidel Castro's chief statements-letters, articles, interviews, press releases, proclamations, and decrees-from the late 1940s to the fall of the Batista regime in 1959.

Georg Lukács's most recent work of literary criticism, on the Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn, hails the Russian author as a major force in redirecting socialist realism toward the level it once occupied in the 1920s when Soviet writers portrayed the turbulent transition to socialist society.In the first essay Lukács compares the novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich to short pieces by bourgeois writers Conrad and Hemingway and explains the nature of Solzhenitsyn's criticism of the Stalinist period implied in the situation, characters, and their interaction. He also briefly describes Matriona's House, An Incident at the Kretchetovka Station, and For the Good of the Cause--stories that depict various aspects of life in Stalinist Russia. In the second, longer section, Lukács greets Solzhenitsyn's novels The First Circle and Cancer Ward, which were published outside Russia, as representing a new high point in contemporary world literature. These books mark Solzhenitsyn as heir to the best tendencies in postrevolutionary socialist realism and to the literary tradition of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Moreover, from the point of view of the development of the novel, Lukács finds the Russian author to be a successful exponent of innovative methods originating in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain.The central problem of contemporary socialist realism is a predominant theme in the book: how to come to critical terms with the legacy of Stalin. The enthusiasm with which Lukács acclaims Solzhenitsyn will not surprise those who have followed his persistent refusal to endorse the so-called socialist realist writers of the Stalinist era. He outlines the aspects of Solzhenitsyn's creative method that allows him to cross the ideological boundaries of the Stalinist tradition, yet he finds a basic pessimism in Solzhenitsyn's work that makes him a plebeian rather than a socialist writer. Of Ivan Denisovich and the future of socialist realist literature, Lukács urges: If socialist writers were to reflect upon their task, if they were again to feel an artistic responsibility towards the great problems of the present, powerful forces could be unleashed leading in the direction of relevant socialist literature. In this process of transformation and renewal, which signifies an abrupt departure from the socialist realism of the Stalin era, the role of landmark on the road to the future falls to Solzhenitsyn's story.

An objective, comprehensive, and accessible examination of today's most crucial problem: preserving the environment in the face of society's insatiable demand for energy.In Energy at the Crossroads, Vaclav Smil considers the twenty-first century's crucial question: how to reconcile the modern world's unceasing demand for energy with the absolute necessity to preserve the integrity of the biosphere. With this book he offers a comprehensive, accessible guide to today's complex energy issues—how to think clearly and logically about what is possible and what is desirable in our energy future.After a century of unprecedented production growth, technical innovation, and expanded consumption, the world faces a number of critical energy challenges arising from unequal resource distribution, changing demand patterns, and environmental limitations. The fundamental message of Energy at the Crossroads is that our dependence on fossil fuels must be reduced not because of any imminent resource shortages but because the widespread burning of oil, coal, and natural gas damages the biosphere and presents increasing economic and security problems as the world relies on more expensive supplies and Middle Eastern crude oil.Smil begins with an overview of the twentieth century's long-term trends and achievements in energy production. He then discusses energy prices, the real cost of energy, and "energy linkages"—the effect energy issues have on the economy, on quality of life, on the environment, and in wartime. He discusses the pitfalls of forecasting, giving many examples of failed predictions and showing that unexpected events can disprove complex models. And he examines the pros and cons not only of fossil fuels but also of alternative fuels such as hydroenergy, biomass energy, wind power, and solar power. Finally, he considers the future, focusing on what really matters, what works, what is realistic, and which outcomes are most desirable.

This work attempts to describes the ultimate discrete components of language, their specific structure, and their articulatory, acoustic, and perceptual correlates, and surveys their utilization in the language of the world. First published in 1951, this edition contains an added paper on Tenseness and Laxness.

Joyce Fletcher's research shows that emotional intelligence and relational behavior are often viewed as inappropriate because they collide with powerful, gender-linked images.

A genuine Copernican turn in Kantian and Marxist theory and practice.

Analyzes privacy policy instruments available to contemporary industrial states, from government regulations and transnational regimes to self-regulation and privacy enhancing technologies.

How to design a world in which we rely less on stuff, and more on people.

Variations on the theme of the ornament in Kracauer's urban writings, suggesting ways in which the subjective can reappropraite urban life.For Siegfried Kracauer, the urban ornament was not just an aspect of design; it was the medium through which city dwellers interpreted the metropolis itself. In Ornaments of the Metropolis, Henrik Reeh traces variations on the theme of the ornament in Kracauer's writings on urbanism, from his early journalism in Germany between the wars to his "sociobiography" of Jacques Offenbach in Paris. Kracauer (1889-1966), often associated with the Frankfurt School and the intellectual milieu of Walter Benjamin, is best known for his writings on cinema and the philosophy of history. Reeh examines Kracauer's lesser-known early work, much of it written for the trendsetting newspaper Frankfurter Zeitung in the 1920s and early 1930s, and analyzes Kracauer's continuing reflections on modern urban life, through the pivotal idea of ornament. Kracauer deciphers the subjective experience of the city by viewing fragments of the city as dynamic ornaments; an employment exchange, a day shelter for the homeless, a movie theater, and an amusement park become urban microcosms.Reeh focuses on three substantial works written by Kracauer before his emigration to the United States in 1940. In the early autobiographical novel Ginster, Written by Himself, a young architect finds aesthetic pleasure in the ornamental forms that are largely unused in the profession of the time. The collection Streets of Berlin and Elsewhere, with many essays from Kracauer's years in Berlin, documents the subjectiveness of urban life. Finally, Jacques Offenbach and the Paris of His Time shows how the superficial—in a sense, ornamental—milieu of the operetta evolved into a critical force during the Second Empire. Reeh argues that Kracauer's novel, essays, and historiography all suggest ways in which the subjective can reappropriate urban life. The book also includes a series of photographs by the author that reflect the ornamental experience of the metropolis in Paris, Frankfurt, and other cities.

Provides an analytical framework for assessing the impact of NGOs on intergovernmental negotiations on the environment and identifying the factors that determine the degree of NGO influence, with case studies that apply the framework to negotiations on climate change, biosafety, desertification, whaling, and forests.

Experts discuss moving beyond the notion of electronic government and its focus on technology and efficiency to a broader concept of "information government" that incorporates the role of information flows within government, between government and citizens, and among citizens themselves.

Energy in Nature and Society is a systematic and exhaustive analysis of all the major energy sources, storages, flows, and conversions that have shaped the evolution of the biosphere and civilization. Vaclav Smil uses fundamental unifying metrics (most notably for power density and energy intensity) to provide an integrated framework for analyzing all segments of energetics (the study of energy flows and their transformations). The book explores not only planetary energetics (such as solar radiation and geomorphic processes) and bioenergetics (photosynthesis, for example) but also human energetics (such as metabolism and thermoregulation), tracing them from hunter-gatherer and agricultural societies through modern-day industrial civilization. Included are chapters on heterotrophic conversions, traditional agriculture, preindustrial complexification, fossil fuels, fossil-fueled civilization, the energetics of food, and the implications of energetics for the environment. The book concludes with an examination of general patterns, trends, and socioeconomic considerations of energy use today, looking at correlations between energy and value, energy and the economy, energy and quality of life, and energy futures. Throughout the book, Smil chooses to emphasize the complexities and peculiarities of the real world, and the counterintuitive outcomes of many of its processes, over abstract models. Energy in Nature and Society provides a unique, comprehensive, single-volume analysis and reference source on all important energy matters, from natural to industrial energy flows, from fuels to food, from the Earth's formation to possible energy futures, and can serve as a text for courses in energy studies, global ecology, earth systems science, biology, and chemistry. Vaclav Smil is Distinguished Professor at the University of Manitoba and the author of many books, including Energy at the Crossroads (2003), The Earth's Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change (2002), and Energies: An Illustrated Guide to the Biosphere and Civilization (1998), all of which are published by The MIT Press.

Sunk Costs and Market Structure bridges the gap between the new generation of game theoretic models that has dominated the industrial organization literature over the past ten years and the traditional empirical agenda of the subject as embodied in the structure-conduct-performance paradigm developed by Joe S. Bain and his successors.

Harnessing the power of software platforms: what executives and entrepreneurs must know about how to use this technology to transform industries and how to develop the strategies that will create value and drive profits.

A vision of architecture that transcends concerns of form and function and finds the connections between the architect's wish to design a beautiful world and architecture's imperative to provide a better place for society.The forced polarity between form and function in considerations of architecture—opposing art to social interests, ethics to poetic expression—obscures the deep connections between ethical and poetical values in architectural tradition. Architecture has been, and must continue to be, writes Alberto Pérez-Gómez, built upon love. Modernity has rightly rejected past architectural excesses, but, Pérez-Gómez argues, the materialistic and technological alternatives it proposes do not answer satisfactorily the complex desire that defines humanity. True architecture is concerned with far more than fashionable form, affordable homes, and sustainable development; it responds to a desire for an eloquent place to dwell—one that lovingly provides a sense of order resonant with our dreams. In Built upon Love Pérez-Gómez uncovers the relationship between love and architecture in order to find the points of contact between poetics and ethics—between the architect's wish to design a beautiful world and architecture's imperative to provide a better place for society.Eros, as first imagined by the early lyric poets of classical Greece, is the invisible force at the root of our capacity to create and comprehend the poetic image. Pérez-Gómez examines the nature of architectural form in the light of eros, seduction, and the tradition of the poetic image in Western architecture. He charts the ethical dimension of architecture, tracing the connections between philia—the love of friends that entails mutual responsibility among equals—and architectural program. He explores the position of architecture at the limits of language and discusses the analogical language of philia in modernist architectural theory. Finally, he uncovers connections between ethics and poetics, describing a contemporary practice of architecture under the sign of love, incorporating both eros and philia.