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Fire and Memory: On Architecture and Energy (Writing Architecture) | 
 enlarge | Author: Luis Fernandez-galiano
Creator: Gina Carino
Publisher: The MIT Press
Category: Book
List Price: $30.00
Buy New: $4.94
You Save: $25.06 (84%)
New (23) Used (13) from $4.94
Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 824507
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Pages: 340
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.8
ISBN: 0262561336
Dewey Decimal Number: 720.47209
EAN: 9780262561334
ASIN: 0262561336
Publication Date: December 26, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In Fire and Memory, Luis Fernandez-Galiano reconstructs the movement from cold to warm architecture, from building fire to building a building with and for fire, through what he calls a "metaphorical plundering" of disciplines as diverse as anthropology and economics, and in particular of ecology and thermodynamics. Beginning with the mythical fire in the origins of architecture and moving to its symbolic representation in the twentieth century, Galiano develops a theoretical dialogue between combustion and construction that ranges from Vitruvius to Le Corbusier, from the mechanical and organic to time and entropy. Galiano points out that energy, so important to the origin of architectural theory in Vitruvius's time, has been absent from architectural theory since the introduction of the "dictatorship of the eye" over that of the skin. With Fire and Memory, he reintroduces energy to the discussion of architecture and reminds us that the sense of touch is as necessary to an understanding of the environment as the sense of sight.
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| Customer Reviews:
 architecture must burn March 16, 2007
archaalto (colorado)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A very dense and stimulating read. One-third of the book is footnotes & references, so it takes a while to grasp just an entire paragraph. But if you like to be ultimately challenged, pick this book up. From caveman to modern man, this book explains how energy (Fire) has evolved through architecture & influenced the way we perceive & use that space (Memory). Also-using two of the most prominent architects: FLW & Corbu, it compares & contrasts the internal & external energy of architecture. Utilizing the laws of thermodynamics, it speaks about architecture alongside an inevitable process of the universe: entropy.
 Physical Architecture comes of age, finally! July 28, 2004
Joao Leao (Cambridge, Mass., United States)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is a welcomed variant in the MIT series "Writing Architecture" whose other tomes are, for the most part, examples of postmodernistic self-emphatuated drivel! Fernandez-Galiano instead takes up the theme of Energy and Entropy in Architecture and he does so with considerable skill and rare insight. His choice of illustrations alone is worth the price of the book!
However his grasp of Physics and its History is quite sophomoric and hampered by his reliance on secondary, contentious and dubious sources, such as Morin, Rifkin and Georgescu-Roentgen. His recounting of Thermodynamics as an ideological contest between "mechanistic and organismic" schools mascarades the actual facts of this interesting history which he largely
mishandles (he should read Maxwell, Helmholtz, Gibbs and Planck instead. And Boltzmann too, of whom he only mentions the suicide)! Much of his references to the interesting ideas of Prigogine is also marginal at best! On the side of architecture proper he misses the very crucial appraisals by authors such as Mumford, Giedion, Tuan and Mitchell which cover much of his territory. Yet this is a book stll makes better reading than about anything on this subject, (mostly because there is so little written on this worthy subject)!
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