Architecture, Well-being and the Built Environment

An Essay in Quest of Cultural Balance

By: Almantas Samalavičius

From £31.99

This book explores the link between well-being and the built environment, arguing that industrial design has harmed humans and nature. But we can reverse this decline. It revisits powerful, non-mainstream ideas that offer a more balanced approach than relying on technology alone.

This book explores the link between well-being, society, and the built environment. The author argues that urban living has deteriorated globally, particularly over the past…

This book explores the link between well-being, society, and the built environment. The author argues that urban living has deteriorated globally, particularly over the past 200 years, due to industrial architectural and urban designs that harm both human and natural environments. However, existing intellectual tools can counter and reverse this decline by challenging mainstream industrial design. The book revisits a range of approaches that emerged in the last century, offering insights into urban and architectural challenges. These include architectural phenomenology, cognitive architecture, biophilic design, and the reassessment of traditional architectural and urban practices. By reflecting on what urban historian Lewis Mumford called the “uses of the past,” the author suggests that revisiting “alternative modernisms” and other non-mainstream ideas may offer a more balanced approach than relying solely on technological progress.

Dr Almantas Samalavičius is an architectural historian and critic whose interests cover a wide range of architectural, urban and landscape issues. Currently, he is a professor at the School of Architecture of Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Lithuania, and Chief Research Associate at its Institute of Architecture. He is the author of more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters as well as the author and editor of no less than two dozen books and collections of essays. Some nine of them have been published internationally, including Ideas and Structures: Essays in Architectural History (2011), Rethinking Modernism and the Built Environment (2017), Lithuanian Architecture and Urbanism (2019), and Site, Symbol and Cultural Landscape (2022). He has taught at a number of American, European and Asian universities as a visiting professor and also serves as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Architecture and Urbanism and the Chicago-based Lituanus Quarterly. His writings have been translated into 15 languages and won him eight awards in his home country.

Hardback

ISBN: 1-0364-1791-3
ISBN13: 978-1-0364-1791-8
Date of Publication: 2024-12-20

Ebook

ISBN: 1-0364-1792-1
ISBN13: 978-1-0364-1792-5
Date of Publication: 2025-09-16

Paperback

ISBN: 1-0364-5874-1
ISBN13: 978-1-0364-5874-4
Date of Publication: 2025-09-16

Category: Social Sciences, History, History

Pages: 193

Subject Codes:

BIC: HBLH, HBLL, HBTB
THEMA: NH(3MD), NHTB(3MG)

Pages: 193

Meet The Author

Almantas Samalavičius

Baltic Postcolonial Narratives

Literature and Power

By: Almantas Samalavičius

From £29.99

This book explores postcolonialism’s difficult entry into the Baltic literary domain. It provides timely insights by analyzing Lithuania’s best postcolonial novels from the last decade of the Soviet period and the more recent post-Soviet era.

Lithuanian Architecture and Urbanism

Essays in History and Aesthetics

By: Almantas Samalavičius

£61.99

This book offers a critical overview of Lithuania’s architecture and urbanism since 1990. It explores how the Soviet legacy and the new challenges of a market economy and commercialism have reshaped the country’s cities and public spaces.

Architecture, Well-being and the Built Environment

Hardback

Ebook

Paperback

Subject Codes:

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Meet The Author