Vitruvius was a Roman architect and engineer during the 1st century BC, known for his multi-volume work titled De architectura. As the only treatise on architecture to survive from antiquity, it has been regarded since the Renaissance as the first book on architectural theory, as well as a major source on the canon of classical architecture. It is not clear to what extent his contemporaries regarded his book as original or important.
Walter Adolph Georg Gropius was a German-American architect and founder of the Bauhaus School, who, along with Alvar Aalto, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modernist architecture. He was a founder of Bauhaus in Weimar (1919). Gropius was also a leading architect of the International Style.
Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, The Buildings of England (1951–74).
Ernst Alfred Cassirer was a German philosopher. Trained within the Neo-Kantian Marburg School, he initially followed his mentor Hermann Cohen in attempting to supply an idealistic philosophy of science.
Sebastiano Serlio was an Italian Mannerist architect, who was part of the Italian team building the Palace of Fontainebleau. Serlio helped canonize the classical orders of architecture in his influential treatise variously known as I sette libri dell'architettura or Tutte l'opere d'architettura et prospetiva.
Sir Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich was an Austrian-born art historian who, after settling in England in 1936, became a naturalised British citizen in 1947 and spent most of his working life in the United Kingdom.
Sir Peter Cook is an English architect, lecturer and writer on architectural subjects. He was a founder of Archigram, and was knighted in 2007 by the Queen for his services to architecture and teaching. He is also a Royal Academician and a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the French Republic. His achievements with Archigram were recognised by the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2004, when the group was awarded the Royal Gold Medal.
Architectural theory is the act of thinking, discussing, and writing about architecture. Architectural theory is taught in all architecture schools and is practiced by the world's leading architects. Some forms that architecture theory takes are the lecture or dialogue, the treatise or book, and the paper project or competition entry. Architectural theory is often didactic, and theorists tend to stay close to or work from within schools. It has existed in some form since antiquity, and as publishing became more common, architectural theory gained an increased richness. Books, magazines, and journals published an unprecedented number of works by architects and critics in the 20th century. As a result, styles and movements formed and dissolved much more quickly than the relatively enduring modes in earlier history. It is to be expected that the use of the internet will further the discourse on architecture in the 21st century.
Paul Karl Wilhelm Scheerbart was a German author of speculative fiction literature and drawings. He was also published under the pseudonym Kuno Küfer and is best known for the book Glasarchitektur (1914).
Bruno Zevi was an Italian architect, historian, professor, curator, author, and editor. Zevi was a vocal critic of "classicizing" modern architecture and postmodernism.
Camillo Sitte was an Austrian architect, painter and urban theorist whose work influenced urban planning and land use regulation. Today, Sitte is best remembered for his 1889 book, City Planning According to Artistic Principles, in which he examined and documented the traditional, incremental approach to urbanism in Europe, with a close focus on public spaces in Italy and the Germanic countries.
Ernst Neufert was a German architect who is known as an assistant of Walter Gropius, as a teacher and member of various standardization organizations, and especially for his widely disseminated reference book Architects' data.
Structuralism is a movement in architecture and urban planning that evolved around the middle of the 20th century. It was a reaction to Rationalism's (CIAM-Functionalism) perceived lifeless expression of urban planning that ignored the identity of the inhabitants and urban forms.
DETAIL is the international professional journal for architecture and construction details produced by Detail publishers. Each issue deals with a specific aspect of building, such as concrete construction, roof structures or refurbishment, whereby emphasis is placed on the quality of the building details. Up-to-date examples are selected from schemes around the world, and these are illustrated with plans and details drawn to a consistent scale as well as with photographs. The journal focuses on the depiction of new developments in the form of descriptive texts, constructional drawings and photos. The target group comprises above all architects, engineers and other specialists from the field of construction.
Dominique Gauzin-Müller is a French architect and architectural critic, focusing on wood and sustainability in architecture and urbanism. She is the author of several books on these subjects, which have been translated into several languages. She wrote Construire avec le Bois (1999), L'architecture écologique (2001), 25 maisons en bois (2003) and 25 maisons écologique (2005).
Architectural and environmental psychology developed within the German-speaking world in the 1970s. In 1972, W.F.E. Preiser stated: “What is of special interest to environmental psychologists are the rules by which person-environment relationships are determined and adjustments to changing environmental conditions are enabled within cultural realms. Designers of environments, in particular architects and city planners, need measurements on how the variables they have manipulated affect users.” Early concepts revolved around the psychosocial roles of public and private space, interpersonal conflict, quality of living, and noise pollution. Later concepts explore the relationship between built environments and climate change.
Andreas Neufert is a German art historian.
Ernst Wasmuth Verlag GmbH & Co. is a publisher based in Tübingen, in southern Germany. The themes of architecture, archaeology, art and design are the key topics of the publishing house, which was established in Berlin in 1872.
Steffen Ahrends was an architect. His father is the architect Bruno Ahrends. Peter Ahrends, son of Steffen Ahrends, is also an architect, based in Dublin, Republic of Ireland.
The Hütte - Das Ingenieurwissen is a reference work for engineers of various disciplines. It was compiled for the first time in 1857 by the Akademischer Verein Hütte of the Königliches Gewerbe-Institut in Berlin, from which the association of German engineers Verein Deutscher Ingenieure (VDI) emerged. The authors were members of the association. The technical illustrations were created in woodcut technique by Otto Ebel. It is published in constantly revised editions to this day and is therefore the oldest German reference work still available today.
