Book cover of Icons and Aliens: Law, Aesthetics, and Environmental Change

Book description

Costonis (law, Vanderbilt U.) bridges the fields of law and design and probes the task of legal aesthetics what the law can and cannot do in response to architectural development that radically changes the environment. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

1 author picked Icons and Aliens as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I love this short lively book because it brings clarity and criticism of ideas about preservation and landmarks that were new when first published in 1989 yet hold true just as strongly today.

It’s not visual beauty alone that should define what gets preserves, the argument goes, but rather the associations or symbolic meanings that hold for residents of a place. Passionate about the subject, the author makes some of his points with photographs and cartoons sure to delight the reader.

If you love Icons and Aliens...

Book cover of These Blue Mountains

These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas,

A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

Want books like Icons and Aliens?

Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like Icons and Aliens.

Browse books like Icons and Aliens

Book cover of Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change
Book cover of The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811-2011
Book cover of Capital City: New York City and the Men Behind America's Rise to Economic Dominance, 1860-1900

Share your top 3 reads of 2025!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,340

readers submitted
so far, will you?

📚 If you like Icons and Aliens, you might also like...

Book cover of Foxfire in the Snow

Foxfire in the Snow by J.S. Fields,

It's a time of change, between magic and alchemy.

Born the heir of a master woodcutter in a queendom defined by guilds and matrilineal inheritance, nonbinary Sorin can’t quite seem to find their place. At seventeen, an opportunity to attend an alchemical guild fair and secure an apprenticeship with the…

Book cover of The Main Gate

The Main Gate by Yvonne Kjorlien,

Dr. Elise Marquette has spent years burying the past—until the past refuses to stay buried.

Hired to join Earth’s first interstellar contact team, she hopes the vastness of space will finally offer distance from the ghosts of war and the wounds left by a mother who never let her be…

5 book lists we think you will like!