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This article analyses major constituents of the poetics of the constructed environment in James Graham Ballard's novel High-Rise (1975). The novel's high-rise is contextualised within the framework of contemporary architectural development as well as Ballard's overall work, with its particular emphasis on novels dealing with prototypically modern urban constructions. The interpretation of Ballard's narrative seeks to examine the chief aspects of the space of the tower block as well as the tenants' response to it. The paper endeavours to highlight the author's tendency to examine the interconnected relationships between humans and contemporary architectural structures in his fiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, an edition of a manuscript on perspective has been published. It is both a curious and unexplained work, which provides new elements for the knowledge of our scientific and artistic history. But if such a publication always means a remarkable event and, consequently, a reason for scholars to rejoice, it is even more due to the fact that both its edition and final study could be connected, to a great extent, with the Architectural Graphic Expression. Something that increases its value is the fact that the manuscript has been, long since, swirling around specialized publications, sometimes without presenting its true content. The "Artes excelencias de la perspectiva" is preserved at the Fundación Casa de Medina Sidonia in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Cadiz, which also commissioned the facsimile edition to the Consejería de Cultura of Murcia. With colophon in June 2010, and distributed the following year, this edition was published in two volumes, and comprises the studies and transcriptions by three authors who will be quoted from now on: Andrés Martín Pastor, Domingo Beltrán Corbalán, and Francisco Reyes Marsilla de Pascual. Thus, it seems necessary to present a short chronicle of the vicissitudes of this peculiar work, to give a full insight into historic Spanish perspective experiences -nowadays underrated- together with the not always simple ways of approaching them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the use of environmental imagination in the literary works of Willa Cather. The author suggests that symbolic language in literature brings an understanding of the landscape, agriculture, and settlement of nature. The books "A Lost Lady" and "The Professor's House," both by Cather, are compared for their descriptions of architecture of homes and their surroundings. The author argues that Cather depicts prairie dwellings that harmonize with their environments, much in the same way that architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed modern homes for their surroundings.

The article discusses the images made for architectural publications. It points out that architectural drawings, models and casts have been conserved as objects in archives and collections. It looks at cultural institutions of architecture and how they make architectural representation public. It defines figuration as the psycho-social conditions governing the production of the object.

This article shares the author's thoughts on Robert Fludd's architectural drawing called "The Temple of Music." The bizarre design is an elaborate mnemonic device in which three sorts of hexachords, “soft, natural, and hard” are depicted by three sets of organ pipes, round, pointed, and square, surmounted in turn by three towers, also round, pointed, and square. It is noted that the combination of bizarre architecture with music strongly suggests a Miltonic reminiscence of Fludd.

The article presents a bibliography of the architectural works of Iakov Chernikhov that are published within the issue. The articles include "Chernikhov and constructivism," by Arthur R. Sprague, brief note and English translation of short passages from "The Construction of Architectural and Machine Forms," by John Bowlt and "Iakov Chernikhov: What lies behind the fantasies?," by Catherine Cooke.