Episodes Backward and Forward in Time
Rowe's third volume on Eastern architecture explores modern architecture and urban planning in China from the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912 to Xi Jinping's "Chinese Dream." It examines the relationship between architecture and national transformation, showcasing influential buildings and designs while providing historical context.
Deals with two specific periods in urban development in Beirut. The first coincides with the government intervention of the 1950s and 60s, and the second episode is about the increasing private-sector involvement in planning and reconstruction after the civil war, dating from the early 1990s.
A study of traditional and modernist attitudes toward architecture in China from the 1840s to the present.
In "Design Thinking," Peter Rowe offers a systematic exploration of the design process in architecture and urban planning, highlighting the methodologies and principles that guide effective design practices.
"In 1987, Peter G. Rowe published his pioneering book Design Thinking. In it, he interrogated conceptual approaches to design in terms of both process and form. Thirty years later, in a lecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Rowe offered a reappraisal of his earlier work, describing ways in which the capacities of the digital age have changed the way we perceive and understand creative problem-solving in architectural design. In this new account of 'design thinking' based on that memorable talk, Rowe charges that ideas about the 'precision' and 'incompleteness' of information have become exaggerated and made more manifest. He dives into the crucial role of schema theory and the heuristics that flow from it, but concedes that the 'ineffable characteristics of design problems and of design thinking also appear to have remained'"--Back cover
For centuries, a war has raged between singers, musicians, bands--and the authorities. The conflict comes to life in Music vs The Man. What is it about musicians like John Lennon, Billie Holiday, Paul Robeson, Michael Jackson and Pussy Riot that has put them so frequently in the cross-hairs of the police, immigration officials, city councils, the FBI, and the Kremlin? Music vs The Man explores the question in chapters featuring artists from Strauss and Shostakovich to Sinatra and the Stones. Music wields the type of revolutionary power that politicians and authorities only dream of. Music has the power to open hearts, change minds, and motivate people to stand up for what they believe in. That's why, through the centuries, authorities have been trying to censor it, by throwing musicians in prison, raiding their homes and sometimes even killing them. In Music vs The Man acclaimed filmmaker and author Peter Rowe tells the wild stories of the efforts of a wide group of musical artists to make their voices heard, and the bold and forceful efforts of the authorities to shut them up.
The years 1800-1940 were the heyday of the independent explorer--free-spirited, mostly European adventurers who took incredible risks in pursuit of discovery and fame. Some lit out for the mysterious city of Timbuktu, others the source of the Nile River, or the elusive Northwest Passage over Canada, or the fabled lost cities of Latin America, or the North or South Poles--quests that obsessed nineteenth-century explorers and hardly matter today. They were a special breed of traveller: courageous and determined, gluttons for punishment, frequently self-financed, and often horrendously misinformed and ill-prepared. While a lucky few returned home in glory, far more starved or froze or succumbed to cannibalism or died of malaria or dysentery or at the hands of angry locals or wild beasts or were simply never heard from again. In equal parts eye-opening, shocking, and hilarious, Out There is a totally original account of their extraordinary exploits.
From Roots to Contemporary Turns
Peter Rowe and Yun Fu's second volume on the modernization of architecture in the Far East deals with Southeast Asia and Austronesia, including the 12 nation states of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei, East Timor, Philippines and Taiwan, as well as the ocean peoples of Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia. The modern architecture of these culturally and nationally heterogenous regions echoes local vernacular traditions and colonial as well as postcolonial hegemonies from both the East and the West. The book tells the stories of these separate roots and their culmination into contemporary architectural production, analyzing the distinctiveness and quality of approx. 65 building projects that have emerged in the past half century.