Christopher Beanland

A smooth ride through the golden age of car travel, looking at both its cultural and architectural impact on the world.The culture of road travel and the road trip is arguably best reflected in the stationary spots found along the way. Christopher Beanland journeys through these built environments the world over, whose sole purpose is to cater to cars and those who drive them, and examines what makes them so alluring.Illustrated with 65 stunning photographs, Architecture For Cars explores everything from the brutalist fashions of listed UK petrol stations to the quirky and colourful drive-thrus found across the US. If you're interested in the autobahn churches of Germany, why Ed Ruscha felt drawn to painting gas stations, or you just enjoy the aesthetics of car-centric architecture across the globe, this book is for you.Also included are essays on wider topics such as roadside signs, drive-in malls and retail parks, cars on film, and roads that never were. This latest architectural deep-dive from Christopher Beanland focuses mainly on the 20th century, with an additional optimistic look towards the future: hopefully an electric vehicle-led existence will herald a new, greener 'golden age' for cars.

A glorious global celebration of modern railway architecture in the mid-20th century and beyond.Many railway books are about nostalgia for the steam age, but this one is different: a global study of railway architecture from the 1950s onwards and into the future. In 50 fascinating entries, renowned travel and architecture writer Christopher Beanland looks primarily at stations but also covers starkly brutalist signal boxes and depots, charming art-adorned undergrounds and international examples of pioneering signage and design.Station explores LA's iconic Union Station, the verdant Atocha Station in Madrid and Warsaw's spectacular modernist stations, but it also includes less familiar examples such as Saudi Arabia’s high-speed Haramain Line, the joyous monorail at Walt Disney World Resort and Mexico's anticipated Tren Maya. The book also contains essays on topics including hanging railways in Germany and Japan, the intriguing architecture and design of Berlin's U-Bahn stations and the joy of interrailing.Illustrated with glorious photographs throughout, this stylish and contemporary book is a celebration of modern railway architecture at its best and will appeal to rail enthusiasts and architecture aficionados alike.

A visually stunning and beautifully written celebration of park life around the world. Parks are an absolutely essential part of modern life. From the author who brought you Lido, here are 50 of the world's greatest parks – but not just a list of the examples we already know. Yes, we'll tell you about those storied greats such as Central Park in New York and Phoenix Park in Dublin, but we'll also take you to the Philippines, to Australia, to provincial Britain and around the world to show you the most historic and the most interesting, the newest and most cutting-edge that mix the best of nature and architecture. We'll explore what you can find there, who goes there, why they are important, and how parks respond to their environments, including ones over a road, on old rail lines or in Berlin's former airport. Examples include: • Freeway Park, Seattle, USA: a bizarre and brilliant brutalist park over a motorway. • Ibirapuera Park, São Paulo, Brazil: this one contains amazing galleries and theatres. • Holyrood Park, Edinburgh, UK: mountains within a city. • Adelaide's parks, Australia: unique in that the entire city centre is enclosed by parks. and many, many more. Illustrated with glorious photographs throughout, this book is a fascinating record of the world's most interesting and innovative parks, and the people who use them – you'll want to visit them all.

Unbuilt tells the stories of the plans, drawings and proposals that emerged during the 20th century in an unparalleled era of optimism in architecture. Many of these grand projects stayed on the drawing board, some were flights of fancy that couldn't be built, and in other cases test structures or parts of buildings did emerge in the real world. The book features the work of Buckminster Fuller, Geoffrey Bawa, Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright and Archigram, as well as contemporary architects such as Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid, Will Alsop and Rem Koolhaas. Richly illustrated with photographs, drawings, maps, collages and models from all over the world, it covers everything from Buckminster Fuller's plan for a 'Domed city' in Manhattan to Le Corbusier's utopian dream of skyscraper living in central Paris, from a proposed network of motorways ploughing through central London to a crazy-looking scheme for 'rolling pavements' in post-war Berlin. This is an important book, not just for the rich stories of what might have been in our built world, but also to give understanding to the motivations and dreams of architects, sometimes to build a better world, but sometimes to pander to egos. It includes plans that pushed the boundaries – from plug-in cities, moving cities, space cities, domes and floating cities to Maglev, teleportation and rockets. Many ideas were just ahead of their time, and some, thankfully, we were always better without.

A celebration of outdoor swimming – looking at the history, design and social aspect of pools. The 1930s architecture of the pools is often sleek and elegant, evoking speed and efficiency. And the pools themselves are great social levellers – a public space where everyone is stripped down to a bathing suit. The book begins with a history of the pools – their grand beginnings after the buttoned-up Victorian era, their falling popularity in the 20th century, and the newfound appreciation for the outdoor pool, or lido, and outdoor swimming in the 21st century. Journalist and architectural historian Christopher Beanland picks the very best of the outdoor pools around the world, including the Icebergs Pool on Bondi Beach, Australia; the 137m seawater pool in Vancouver, Canada; Siza's concrete sea pools in Porto, Portugal; the restored art deco pool in Saltdean, UK, and the pool at the Zollverein Coal Mines in Essen, Germany. The book will also feature the lost lidos and the fascinating history behind the architecture of the pools, and essays on swimming pools in art, and the importance of pools in Australia. In addition there are interviews with pool users around the globe about why it is they swim. The book is illustrated throughout with beautiful colour photography, as well as archive photography and advertising and a map with the pool locations.

A celebration of outdoor swimming â?? looking at the history, design and architecture of pools, as well as the social aspect. Architectural historian and travel writer Christopher Beanland leaps into pools around the world and finds out why it is that people love to swim outdoors.

Donald's wife Belinda died. So he tried to kill himself. But it didn’t work out the way he planned.Grief-stricken and still alive, he reluctantly returns to his job as a scriptwriter on a regional TV station. But then an idea comes up that might just save him – and Belinda's legacy.The Wall in the Head is a love story and a black comedy – about bad architecture and bad TV, bad jokes and bad luck. Set among our fading brutalist behemoths, it's about grand plans and failures, hope and the human spirit. But mostly, it’s about endings.