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In this volume of the Critical Spatial Practice series, Dennis Pohl locates the origin of Europe's dependency on carbon and nuclear power in the postwar architectural designs and energy policies of the European Community. Since the 1950s, architects have proposed territorial, regional, and urban development plans that served the European political project. They(...)
Building carbon europe: Coal, steel and nuclear power. Critical spatial practice
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In this volume of the Critical Spatial Practice series, Dennis Pohl locates the origin of Europe's dependency on carbon and nuclear power in the postwar architectural designs and energy policies of the European Community. Since the 1950s, architects have proposed territorial, regional, and urban development plans that served the European political project. They collaborated with the European Coal and Steel Community in an effort to render the steel building industry as efficient as the car industry; they incorporated the ideas of infinite nuclear energy, as promoted by the European Atomic Energy Community, into their designs. This book demonstrates how architecture served the political economy of postwar Europe as a means of turning coal, steel, and radioactivity into tools of European governance. Architectural design enabled EU institutions to support social policies and worker housing within the coal and steel industry as well as to promote a new pan-European lifestyle based on nuclear energy. In other words, architecture powered Europe's larger infrastructural, economic, and cultural network. Pohl's work not only sheds light on how architecture has contributed to the carbonization of Europe, it also highlights the environmental issue, which challenges both architectural criticism and historiography in the era of the Anthropocene.
Architectural Theory
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The past seventy-five years have been a time of extreme social and cultural transformations worldwide. Political and social upheaval, often contentious, disorienting and polarizing, is now a daily reality. Whether migration crises, territorial disputes, gender inequity, class divisions, racism, war, gun violence or environmental concerns, we live in a world rife with(...)
Flashpoint! Protest photography in print, 1950-present
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The past seventy-five years have been a time of extreme social and cultural transformations worldwide. Political and social upheaval, often contentious, disorienting and polarizing, is now a daily reality. Whether migration crises, territorial disputes, gender inequity, class divisions, racism, war, gun violence or environmental concerns, we live in a world rife with ideological and tribal conflicts. Since its inception, photography has captured defining historical moments, serving as either a tool or a document of protest—or both. In placing photobooks next to posters, DIY zines and independent journals, ''Flashpoint!'' explores the diverse roles and varying aesthetics that photography in print undertakes in its support of protest and resistance. Is it a “tool” conceived through an “aesthetic of urgency” to be used during events as they unfold, as in an anonymously designed poster or ink-stained fliers plastered on street walls? Or an elegantly designed photobook, published a year or more later, often with the help of well-known photographers, writers and designers, to document a past uprising? Whether outright rage or a more subtle artist-driven commentary, protest photography in print covers all of these formats and sometimes transcends rigid media definitions, as it blurs the lines between what constitutes a book, zine, journal, poster or newspaper.
Photography Collections
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“Propositions for Non-Fascist Living” begins from the urgent need to model a world decidedly void of fascisms during a time when the rise of contemporary fascisms threatens the very foundations of a possibility for common life. Borrowing from Michel Foucault's notion of “non-fascist living” as an “art of living counter to all forms of fascism,” including that “in us all…(...)
Propositions for non-fascist living: tentative and urgent
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“Propositions for Non-Fascist Living” begins from the urgent need to model a world decidedly void of fascisms during a time when the rise of contemporary fascisms threatens the very foundations of a possibility for common life. Borrowing from Michel Foucault's notion of “non-fascist living” as an “art of living counter to all forms of fascism,” including that “in us all… the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us,” the book addresses the practice of “living” rather than the mere object of life. Artists, theorists, activists, and scholars offer texts and visual essays that engage varied perspectives on practicing life and articulate methods that support multiplicity and difference rather than vaunting power and hierarchy. Architectural theorist Eyal Weizman, for example, describes an “unlikely common” in gathering evidence against false narratives; art historian and critic Sven Lütticken develops a non-fascist proposition drawn from the intersection of art, technology, and law; philosopher Rosi Braidotti explores an ethics of affirmation and the practices of dying. “Propositions for Non-Fascist Living” is the first in a BASICS series of readers from BAK, “basis voor actuele kunst”, Utrecht, engaging some of the most urgent problems of our time through theoretically informed and politically driven artistic research and practice.
Critical Theory
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With cover artwork specially created by Ruscha, this book documents hundreds of projects and miscellaneous ephemera produced by the artist alongside his main oeuvre—including installations, films, painted book covers, contour gauge profiles, and more. Introducing readers to the stunning breadth of Edward Ruscha’s (b. 1937) creative output over the course of his entire(...)
Ed Ruscha: An archive of projects
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With cover artwork specially created by Ruscha, this book documents hundreds of projects and miscellaneous ephemera produced by the artist alongside his main oeuvre—including installations, films, painted book covers, contour gauge profiles, and more. Introducing readers to the stunning breadth of Edward Ruscha’s (b. 1937) creative output over the course of his entire life, this book includes materials dating back to his childhood and extending to his present-day output. The projects featured here fall outside Ruscha’s production of paintings, drawings, prints, and artists’ books. Many of these are unknown and most are reproduced here for the first time. Composed of three sections—Projects and Ephemera; Contour Gauge Profiles; and Painted Book Covers—the book offers Ruscha enthusiasts and scholars a hitherto unknown aspect of Ruscha’s practice, while also showing how these projects coincide with, and sometimes even prefigure, the artistic work for which he is best known. The approximately 270 painted book covers, begun in 1990, utilize found books as support for small paintings and drawings. The 57 contour gauge profiles are silhouette-like profiles made using a mechanical device for reproducing contours. The largest section, Projects and Ephemera, consists of installations, sculpture and objects, films, book and poster design, utilitarian works, and more.
Contemporary Art Monographs
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From its invention in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century, the automobile crisscrossed the world, completely took over the cities, and became a feature of daily life. Considered basic to the American lifestyle, the car reflected individualism, pragmatism, comfort, and above all modernity. In Latin America, it served as a symbol of distinction, similar to jewelry(...)
The cultural life of the automobile: roads to modernity
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From its invention in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century, the automobile crisscrossed the world, completely took over the cities, and became a feature of daily life. Considered basic to the American lifestyle, the car reflected individualism, pragmatism, comfort, and above all modernity. In Latin America, it served as a symbol of distinction, similar to jewelry or fine clothing. In The Cultural Life of the Automobile, Guillermo Giucci focuses on the automobile as an instrument of social change through its "kinetic modernity" and as an embodiment of the tremendous social impact of technology on cultural life. Material culture--how certain objects generate a wide array of cultural responses--has been the focus of much scholarly discussion in recent years. The automobile wrought major changes and inspired images in language, literature, and popular culture. Focusing primarily on Latin America but also covering the United States, Europe, Asia, and Africa, Giucci examines how the automobile was variously adapted by different cultures and how its use shaped and changed social and economic relationships within them. At the same time, he shows how the "automobilization" of society became an essential support for the development of modern individualism, and the automobile its clearest material manifestation.
Transportation, Tourism, Migration
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272 pages : illustrations, maps ; 29 cm
Philadelphia : Casemate, 2010, ©2010.
Hitler's engineers : Fritz Todt and Albert Speer : master builders of the Third Reich / Blaine Taylor.
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272 pages : illustrations, maps ; 29 cm
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Philadelphia : Casemate, 2010, ©2010.
Prisons must fall
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From Mariame Kaba, New York Times-bestselling author of "We do this ‘til we free us," and social worker Jane Ball comes a powerful book showing the harm that prisons cause and exploring alternatives, illustrated by Olly Costello. On a moonlit road, tucked away from prying eyes, a child sees a prison complex-- cinder blocks, watch towers, barbed wire. Page by page, we come(...)
Prisons must fall
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From Mariame Kaba, New York Times-bestselling author of "We do this ‘til we free us," and social worker Jane Ball comes a powerful book showing the harm that prisons cause and exploring alternatives, illustrated by Olly Costello. On a moonlit road, tucked away from prying eyes, a child sees a prison complex-- cinder blocks, watch towers, barbed wire. Page by page, we come to see the prison as a child sees it. Prisons hurt people and leave them lonely, without loved ones to comfort them or lend a listening ear. As dandelion stars float up in the air, this dreamscape becomes a hope-scape, where love transcends the prison walls. All the families and friends of the people in the prison march and protest in beautiful song, march together to a new way and a new dawn-- in this case a cooperative housing and community center, next to a neighborhood greenhouse for restoration and healing. A new world, where connection and repair are fundamental, and even tangible, as people around a table quilt messages, “I hear you. I’m sorry for what I did. How can I make it better?” In "Prisons must fall," Mariame Kaba, a longtime activist, together with co-author Jane Ball, present solutions that do not involve incarceration, such as meeting people’s basic needs, restorative justice, and community support-- seeds for a safe world.
Children's Books
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They are places we fear to tread, monuments to the principles of our forebears, awe-inspiring towers of achievement : public institutions that sustain and support our lives are all around us. Scott Fortino investigates these enduring pillars of public life in "Institutional", a striking visual essay that documents the diverse architectural structures that house the(...)
Photography monographs
September 2005, Santa Fe
Institutional : photographs of jails, schools, and other Chicago buildings
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They are places we fear to tread, monuments to the principles of our forebears, awe-inspiring towers of achievement : public institutions that sustain and support our lives are all around us. Scott Fortino investigates these enduring pillars of public life in "Institutional", a striking visual essay that documents the diverse architectural structures that house the foundations of civic life in the city of Chicago. From schools to churches to prisons, Fortino transforms these worn, familiar edifices into compelling symbols of long-lost ideals and communitarian spirit. Fortino coaxes out the subtle warmth and depths of these often overwhelming and pitiless public spaces in his photographs, as his camera reveals the hidden characters of both high-profile works by renowned designers such as Rem Koolhaas, Helmut Jahn, and Mies van der Rohe as well as the stolid structures designed by long-forgotten architects. Light, colour, and composition work together in Fortino's images to produce provocative new perspectives on the interiors of public buildings, revealing how their cultural and social roles as places of worship, education, punishment, or entertainment cast long and complex shadows over our lives. Fortino challenges us in "Institutional" to rethink our view of the public spaces we pass through every day by offering an original and fascinating photographic study of the settings in which the important events of human life unfold.
Photography monographs
Sprawl and suburbia
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Sprawl is the single most significant and urgent issue in American land use at the turn of the twenty-first century. Efforts to limit and reform sprawl through legislative “Smart Growth” initiatives have been enacted around the country while the neotraditionalist New Urbanism has been embraced by many architects and urban planners. Yet most Americans persist in their(...)
Sprawl and suburbia
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Sprawl is the single most significant and urgent issue in American land use at the turn of the twenty-first century. Efforts to limit and reform sprawl through legislative “Smart Growth” initiatives have been enacted around the country while the neotraditionalist New Urbanism has been embraced by many architects and urban planners. Yet most Americans persist in their desire to live farther and farther away from urban centers, moving to exurbs made up almost entirely of single-family residential houses and stand-alone shopping areas. "Sprawl and suburbia" brings together some of the foremost thinkers in the field to present in-depth diagnosis and critical analysis of the physical and social realities of exurban sprawl. Along with an introduction by Robert Fishman, these essays call for architects, urban planners, and landscape designers to work at mitigating the impact of sprawl on land and resources and improving the residential and commercial built environment as a whole. In place of vast residential exurbs, these writers offer visions of a fresh urbanism—appealing and persuasive models of life at greater density, with greater diversity, and within genuine communities. With sprawl losing the support of suburban citizens themselves as economic, environmental, and social costs are being paid, "Sprawl and suburbia" appears at a moment when design might achieve some critical influence over development—if architects and planners accept the challenge.
Suburbs
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From the Gothic to the contemporary, glass has transformed the structural, formal, and philosophical principles of architecture. In The "Glass state", Annette Fierro views the many meanings of transparency in architecture. Specifically, she analyzes the transparent monumental buildings that were built in Paris between 1981 and 1998 as part of François Mitterrand’s(...)
Architecture since 1900, Europe
December 2002, Cambridge / London
The glass state : the technology of the spectacle - Paris, 1981-1998
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From the Gothic to the contemporary, glass has transformed the structural, formal, and philosophical principles of architecture. In The "Glass state", Annette Fierro views the many meanings of transparency in architecture. Specifically, she analyzes the transparent monumental buildings that were built in Paris between 1981 and 1998 as part of François Mitterrand’s program of Grands Projets. The Grands Projets provide a rare opportunity to study a finite set of buildings constructed of similar materials, in the same time period, in a specific urban landscape, and with related ideological missions. Fierro employs a "discourse of the detail," in which the smallest architectural detail manifests the political, theoretical, and urban contexts of the building’s design and construction. She examines the paradox of the most pared down architectural configurations being used to support the most complex meanings. Intrinsic to Mitterrand’s glass buildings in Paris, for example, is a political concept: the metaphor of accessibility as a means of breaking open cultural institutions previously closed to the public. In addition to the structures of the Grands Projets--the Institut du Monde Arabe, the Grande and Petite Pyramides du Louvre, the glass greenhouses at utopian park projects at La Villette and Andre Citroën, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France--Fierro discusses the Fondation Cartier and two precedent structures, the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Eiffel Tower.
Architecture since 1900, Europe