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In "Architectures of Time", Sanford Kwinter offers a critical guide to the modern history of time and to the interplay between the physical sciences and the arts. Tracing the transformation of twentieth-century epistemology to the rise of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, Kwinter explains how the demise of the concept of absolute time, and of the classical notion(...)
Architectures of time : toward a theory of the event in modernist culture
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In "Architectures of Time", Sanford Kwinter offers a critical guide to the modern history of time and to the interplay between the physical sciences and the arts. Tracing the transformation of twentieth-century epistemology to the rise of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, Kwinter explains how the demise of the concept of absolute time, and of the classical notion of space as a fixed background against which things occur, led to field theory and a physics of the "event." He suggests that the closed, controlled, and mechanical world of physics gave way to the approximate, active, and qualitative world of biology as a model of both scientific and metaphysical explanation. Kwinter examines theory of time and space in Einstein's theories of relativity and shows how these ideas were reflected in the writings of the sculptor Umberto Boccioni, the town planning schema of the Futurist architect Antonio Sant'Elia, the philosophy of Henri Bergson, and the writings of Franz Kafka. He argues that the writings of Boccioni and the visionary architecture of Sant'Elia represent the earliest and most profound deployments of the concepts of field and event. In discussing Kafka's work, he moves away from the thermodynamic model in favor of the closely related one of Bergsonian durée, or virtuality. He argues that Kafka's work manifests a coherent cosmology that can be understood only in relation to the constant temporal flux that underlies it.
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June 2001, Cambridge
Architectural Theory
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To be outside allows one a fresh perspective on the inside. In these essays, philosopher Elizabeth Grosz explores the ways in which two disciplines that are fundamentally outside each another--architecture and philosophy--can meet in a third space to interact free of their internal constraints. "Outside" also refers to those whose voices are not usually heard in(...)
Architecture from the outside : essays on virtual and real space
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To be outside allows one a fresh perspective on the inside. In these essays, philosopher Elizabeth Grosz explores the ways in which two disciplines that are fundamentally outside each another--architecture and philosophy--can meet in a third space to interact free of their internal constraints. "Outside" also refers to those whose voices are not usually heard in architectural discourse but who inhabit its space--the destitute, the homeless, the sick, and the dying, as well as women and minorities. Grosz asks how we can understand space differently in order to structure and inhabit our living arrangements accordingly. Two themes run throughout the book: temporal flow and sexual specificity. Grosz argues that time, change, and emergence, traditionally viewed as outside the concerns of space, must become more integral to the processes of design and construction. She also argues against architecture’s historical indifference to sexual specificity, asking what the existence of (at least) two sexes has to do with how we understand and experience space. Drawing on the work of such philosophers as Henri Bergson, Roger Caillois, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, and Jacques Lacan, Grosz raises abstract but nonformalistic questions about space, inhabitation, and building. All of the essays propose philosophical experiments to render space and building more mobile and dynamic.
Architectural Theory
Architecture goes wild
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In his writings, architect Kas Oosterhuis bridges the gap between theory and practice. His observations are based on the principle of concrete science fiction. He is convinced that every construct - hardware or software - that can be formulated as a consistent set of rules is realizable within the social constraints of our present-day culture. In his essay(...)
Architecture goes wild
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In his writings, architect Kas Oosterhuis bridges the gap between theory and practice. His observations are based on the principle of concrete science fiction. He is convinced that every construct - hardware or software - that can be formulated as a consistent set of rules is realizable within the social constraints of our present-day culture. In his essay 'Space_Time_Volume' Kas Oosterhuis places himself in the local and temporary delamination point between the micro- and macroworlds. He speculates on a seamless continuity of these worlds where the instrumental human position is only one of many possible positions. Our perception of the universe is based on observations made by instruments. Language is seen as such an instrument. In 'Wild Bodies' Oosterhuis asserts that all true architecture inevitably will be programmed to perform in real time. This point of view is based on the observation that traditional fixed and static architecture is a highly unlikely state among all possible ones. An architectural construct is regarded as a body with real-time behaviour that is always in motion. Computer programs speak the new instrumental language in which potential new worlds are described. 'Automotive Styling' declares the human driver of the automobile to be the voluntary prisoner of the physical car-road communications network. In 'Vectorial Bodies' the human driver is nothing less than fuzzy software programming the car to lead it to his destinations. There is no place for romantic ideas such as freedom of movement, but there is the overwhelming desire of carbon-based life forms to exchange data with industrial and digital life forms.
Architectural Theory
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"The lonely crowd" is considered by many to be the most influential book of the twentieth century. Its now-classic analysis of the “new middle class” in terms of inner-directed and other-directed social character opened exciting new dimensions in our understanding of the psychological, political, and economic problems that confront the individual in contemporary American(...)
The lonely crowd: a study of the changing American character
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"The lonely crowd" is considered by many to be the most influential book of the twentieth century. Its now-classic analysis of the “new middle class” in terms of inner-directed and other-directed social character opened exciting new dimensions in our understanding of the psychological, political, and economic problems that confront the individual in contemporary American society. The 1969 abridged and revised edition of the book is now reissued with a new foreword by Todd Gitlin that explains why the book is still relevant to our own era.
Architectural Theory
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The dream of the twentieth century was the construction of mass utopia. As the century closes, this dream is being left behind; the belief that industrial modernization can bring about the good society by overcoming material scarcity for all has been challenged by the disintegration(...)
Dreamworld and catastrophe : the passing of mass utopia in East and West
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The dream of the twentieth century was the construction of mass utopia. As the century closes, this dream is being left behind; the belief that industrial modernization can bring about the good society by overcoming material scarcity for all has been challenged by the disintegration of European socialism, capitalist restructuring, and ecological constraints. The larger social vision has given way to private dreams of material happiness and to political cynicism. Developing the notion of dreamworld as both a poetic description of a collective mental state and an analytical concept, Susan Buck-Morss attempts to come to terms with mass dreamworlds at the moment of their passing. She shows how dreamworlds became dangerous when their energy was used by the structures of power as an instrument of force against the masses. Stressing the similarities between the East and West and using the end of the Cold War as her point of departure, she examines both extremes of mass utopia, dreamworld and catastrophe. The book is in four parts. "Dreamworlds of Democracy" asks whether collective sovereignty can ever be democratic. "Dreamworlds of History" calls for a rethinking of revolution by political and artistic avant-gardes. "Dreamworlds of Mass Culture" explores the affinities between mass culture's socialist and capitalist forms. An "Afterward" places the book in the historical context of the author's collaboration with a group of Moscow philosophers and artists over the past two tumultuous decades. The book is an experiment in visual culture, using images as philosophy, presenting, literally, a way of seeing the past. Its pictorial narratives rescue historical data that with the end of the Cold War are threatened with oblivion and challenge common conceptions of what this century was all about.
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January 1900, Cambridge
Architectural Theory
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A polemical look at how architectural knowledge is produced, disseminated, and received. The essays collected in this groundbreaking volume address the current state of architecture as an academic and professional discipline. Often critical of the current paradigm, these essays offer a provocative challenge to accepted assumptions about the production, dissemination,(...)
Architectural Theory
January 2001, Minneapolis
The discipline of architecture
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A polemical look at how architectural knowledge is produced, disseminated, and received. The essays collected in this groundbreaking volume address the current state of architecture as an academic and professional discipline. Often critical of the current paradigm, these essays offer a provocative challenge to accepted assumptions about the production, dissemination, and reception of architectural knowledge. Contributors: Sherry Ahrentzen, Stanford Anderson, Carol Burns, W. Russell Ellis, Thomas Fisher, Linda N. Groat, Kay Bea Jones, David Leatherbarrow, A. G. Krishna Menon, Garth Rockcastle, Michael Stanton, Sharon Egretta Sutton, David J. T. Vanderburgh, and Donald Watson.
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January 2001, Minneapolis
Architectural Theory
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Eccentric spaces
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Like all of Robert Harbison's works, "Eccentric Spaces" is a hybrid, informed by the author's interests in art, architecture, fiction, poetry, landscape, geography, history, and philosophy. The subject is the human imagination and the mysterious interplay between the (...)
Eccentric spaces
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Like all of Robert Harbison's works, "Eccentric Spaces" is a hybrid, informed by the author's interests in art, architecture, fiction, poetry, landscape, geography, history, and philosophy. The subject is the human imagination and the mysterious interplay between the imagination and the spaces it has made for itself to live in: gardens, rooms, buildings, streets, museums and maps, fictional topographies, and architectures. The book is a lesson in seeing and sensing the manifold forms created by the mind for its own pleasure. Palaces and haunted houses, Victorian parlors, Renaissance sculpture gardens, factories, hill-towns, ruins, cities, even novels and paintings constructed around such environments: these are the spaces over which the author broods. Brilliantly learned, deliberately remote in form from conventional scholarship, "Eccentric Spaces" is a magical book, an intellectual adventure, a celebration. Originally published in 1977.
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April 2000, Cambridge, Mass.
Architectural Theory
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Disciple, ami et associé de le Corbusier, André Wogenscky a mis en pratique sa vision d'une architecture active, vivante, puisant ses formes dans la vie de l'homme et de son milieu physique à travers ses nombreuses constructions.
André Wogenscky : raisons profondes de la forme
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Disciple, ami et associé de le Corbusier, André Wogenscky a mis en pratique sa vision d'une architecture active, vivante, puisant ses formes dans la vie de l'homme et de son milieu physique à travers ses nombreuses constructions.
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October 2000, Paris
Architectural Theory
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The architect and theorist Walter Curt Behrendt (1884-1945) worked on public housing and urban development as a designer and administrator for the German government after World War I. From 1925 to 1926 he edited the journal "Die Form" for the German Werkbund (...)
The victory of the new building style
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The architect and theorist Walter Curt Behrendt (1884-1945) worked on public housing and urban development as a designer and administrator for the German government after World War I. From 1925 to 1926 he edited the journal "Die Form" for the German Werkbund and led an articulate and well-orchestrated campaign in support of the Modern Movement. A friend and colleague of Lewis Mumford, he immigrated in 1934 to the United States, where he taught courses on city planning and housing at Dartmouth College and the University of Buffalo. "The Victory of the New Building Style" (1927)—his principal theoretical work in German and the precursor to Modern Building, which he wrote in English—presents a revisionist conception of style that places equal emphasis on form and function. Behrendt calls for architects to return to basic geometries and to articulate explicitly the new social and economic realities. Now available in English for the first time, this incisive treatise boldly advocates international modernism to the general public. Introduction by Detlef Mertins and translation by Harry Francis Mallgrave
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January 2000, Los Angeles
Architectural Theory
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Although both are central to architecture, siting and construction are often treated as separate domains. In "Uncommon Ground", David Leatherbarrow illuminates their relationship, focusing on the years between 1930 and 1960, when utopian ideas about the role of technology in (...)
Architectural Theory
October 2000, Cambridge, Mass.
Uncommon ground : architecture, technology, and topography
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Although both are central to architecture, siting and construction are often treated as separate domains. In "Uncommon Ground", David Leatherbarrow illuminates their relationship, focusing on the years between 1930 and 1960, when utopian ideas about the role of technology in building gave way to an awareness of its disruptive impact on cities and culture. He examines the work of three architects, Richard Neutra, Antonin Raymond, and Aris Konstantinidis, who practiced in the United States, Japan, and Greece respectively. Leatherbarrow rejects the assumption that buildings of the modern period, particularly those that used the latest technology, were designed without regard to their surroundings. Although the prefabricated elements used in the buildings were designed independent of siting considerations, architects used these elements to modulate the environment. Leatherbarrow shows how the role of walls, the traditional element of architectural definition and platform partition, became less significant than that of the platforms themselves, the floors, ceilings, and intermediate levels. He shows how frontality was replaced by the building's four-sided extension into its surroundings, resulting in frontal configurations previously characteristic of the back. Arguing that the boundary between inside and outside was radically redefined, Leatherbarrow challenges cherished notions about the autonomy of the architectural object and about regional coherence. Modern architectural topography, he suggests, is an interplay of buildings, landscapes, and cities, as well as the humans who use them. The conflict between technological progress and cultural continuity, Leatherbarrow claims, exists only in theory, not in the real world of architecture. He argues that the act of building is not a matter of restoring regional identity by re-creating familiar signs, but of incorporating construction into the process of topography's perpetual becoming.
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October 2000, Cambridge, Mass.
Architectural Theory