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In 1833, the Select Committee for Public Walks was introduced so that “the provision of parks would lead to a better use of Sundays and the replacement of the debasing pleasures.” Being “the safest and surest method of popular culture,” music was seen as an important moral influence in this endeavor. And so the bandstand was born. The history and heritage of bandstands in(...)
Bandstands: pavilions for music, entertainment and leisure
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In 1833, the Select Committee for Public Walks was introduced so that “the provision of parks would lead to a better use of Sundays and the replacement of the debasing pleasures.” Being “the safest and surest method of popular culture,” music was seen as an important moral influence in this endeavor. And so the bandstand was born. The history and heritage of bandstands in England has largely been ignored. Yet in their heyday, there were more than 1500 bandstands in the country—in public parks, on piers, and at seaside promenades, often attracting crowds of thousands. In "Bandstands", landscape architect Paul Rabbitts guides us from their evolution as “orchestras” in the early pleasure gardens, to their great decline after World War II, to their subsequent revival in the late 1990s. This beautifully illustrated book tells for the first time the story of these pavilions made for music, illuminating their history, architecture, and worldwide influence.
Commercial interiors, Building types
Shomei Tomatsu
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Casting a cold eye on postwar Japan, the raw, grainy and impressionistic photography of Shomei Tomatsu practically defined Japanese photography in the second half of the 20th century, greatly influencing Daido Moriyama, Nobuyoshi Araki and Takuma Nakihara. His best-known images are his portraits of people and street scenes from the 1950s, when the country struggled to(...)
Shomei Tomatsu
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Casting a cold eye on postwar Japan, the raw, grainy and impressionistic photography of Shomei Tomatsu practically defined Japanese photography in the second half of the 20th century, greatly influencing Daido Moriyama, Nobuyoshi Araki and Takuma Nakihara. His best-known images are his portraits of people and street scenes from the 1950s, when the country struggled to recover from World War II and US military presence was ubiquitous; his photographs of 1960s Japan; and throughout his career, his images of Okinawa, where he died in 2012. Tomatsu's most famous single photograph is probably Melted Bottle, Nagasaki, 1961, which depicts a beer bottle rendered grotesquely biomorphic by the nuclear blast that devastated Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. The American photographer and writer Leo Rubinfien described Tomatsu's Nagasaki images as "sad, haggard facts," noting that "beneath the surface there was a grief so great that any overt expression of sympathy would have been an insult."
Photography monographs
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Never loving the static presentation of art found in the common exhibition catalog, Swiss contemporary artist Athene Galiciadis (b. 1978) chose to show her work in a way that allows the art to lead the viewer as opposed to the essay or curators leading the viewer. In ''An Acrylic Glass Pyramid and Three Pendulums Attached to a Triangle on a Table'', a timeline of the(...)
Athene Galiciadis: An acrylic glass pyramid and three pendulums attached to a triangle on
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Never loving the static presentation of art found in the common exhibition catalog, Swiss contemporary artist Athene Galiciadis (b. 1978) chose to show her work in a way that allows the art to lead the viewer as opposed to the essay or curators leading the viewer. In ''An Acrylic Glass Pyramid and Three Pendulums Attached to a Triangle on a Table'', a timeline of the artist's work and of those who inspired her have been created. Featured are works printed on graph paper of figures, spirals, patterns, vases, and a self-portrait, as well as photographic documents inspired by an early twentieth-century Swiss artist, healer, and visionary, Emma Kunz, known for her geometrical drawings made on graph paper with the aid of a pendulum. Based on Kunzs precise empirical approach to producing knowledge and art, Galiciadis has created this new series of monochromatic colored pencil drawings, whose configurations of shape and pattern draw us into her perceptions and interpretation of the world.
Contemporary Art Monographs
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Psycho Buildings: Artists and Architecture marks the fortieth anniversary of London's Hayward gallery--itself an architectural icon, and one of the few remaining examples of the 1960s Brutalist style. The exhibition brings together the work of artists--including Atelier Bow-Wow, Michael Beutler, Los Carpinteros, Gelitin, Mike Nelson, Ernesto Neto, Tobias Putrih, Tomas(...)
August 2008, London
Psycho Buildings: Artists Take On Architecture
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Psycho Buildings: Artists and Architecture marks the fortieth anniversary of London's Hayward gallery--itself an architectural icon, and one of the few remaining examples of the 1960s Brutalist style. The exhibition brings together the work of artists--including Atelier Bow-Wow, Michael Beutler, Los Carpinteros, Gelitin, Mike Nelson, Ernesto Neto, Tobias Putrih, Tomas Saraceno, Do-Ho Suh and Rachel Whiteread--who create habitat-like structures and architectural environments that are mental and perceptual spaces as much as physical ones. The works in this book revisit and reanimate the history of Modernist design while reminding us that built spaces can be defined in social, political, psychological, physical and aesthetic terms. An invaluable exploration of this contemporary trend, the volume includes essays by Hayward Director Ralph Rugoff, Jane Rendell and Brian Dillon. In addition, each artist profile includes a text by a different author, including Francis McKee, Tumelo Mosaka, Midori Matsui, Brian Dillon, Paulo Herkenhoff, David Greene, Francesco Manacorda, Tom Morton, Miwon Kwon and Iain Sinclair.
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Worldchanging is packed with information, resources, reviews, and ideas that give readers access to the tools they need to build a better future. Written by a diverse collaborative of innovators, Worldchanging demonstrates that the means for making a difference lie all around us. This team of top-notch writers, brought together by Worldchanging.com founder Alex(...)
World changing: a user`s guide for the 21st century
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Worldchanging is packed with information, resources, reviews, and ideas that give readers access to the tools they need to build a better future. Written by a diverse collaborative of innovators, Worldchanging demonstrates that the means for making a difference lie all around us. This team of top-notch writers, brought together by Worldchanging.com founder Alex Steffen, includes Cameron Sinclair, founder of Architecture for Humanity, Geekcore founder Ethan Zuckerman, and sustainable food expert Anne Lappé, among many others. Each chapter offers practical answers to important questions, such as: Why does buying locally produced food make sense? What steps can we take to influence our workplace toward sustainability? How can we travel, live, work, and learn in world-changing ways? How, in short, can we participate in building a better future locally and globally? Worldchanging proves that a life that is sustainably prosperous, thoughtful and democratic, dynamic and peaceful, is not just possible, it’s here.
Green Architecture
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Los Angeles is a city that has long thrived on the continual re-creation of its own myth. In this extraordinary work, Norman Klein examines the process of memory erasure in LA. Using a provocative mixture of fact and fiction, the book takes us on an "anti-tour" of downtown LA, examines life for Vietnamese immigrants in the City of Dreams, imagines Walter Benjamin as a Los(...)
The history of forgetting: Los Angeles and the erasure of the memory
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Los Angeles is a city that has long thrived on the continual re-creation of its own myth. In this extraordinary work, Norman Klein examines the process of memory erasure in LA. Using a provocative mixture of fact and fiction, the book takes us on an "anti-tour" of downtown LA, examines life for Vietnamese immigrants in the City of Dreams, imagines Walter Benjamin as a Los Angeleno, and finally looks at the way information technology has recreated the city, turning cyberspace into the last suburb. In this new edition, Norman Klein explores the evolution of the Latino majority, how the Pacific economy is changing the structure of urban life, the impact of collapsing infrastructure in the city, and the restructuring of those very districts that had been "forgotten." Norman M. Klein is a critic and historian of mass culture, author of most recently, The Vatican to Vegas: The History of Special Effects. He teaches at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles.
Urban Theory
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''American Documentary Film'' focuses on the extensive range and history of nonfiction filmmaking in the USA, investigating how documentary films have reflected varied and often competing visions of US culture, history, and national identity. Documentary has long been a negotiated and changing concept: a site of social, intellectual, and aesthetic investment keenly fought(...)
American documentary film: Projecting the nation
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''American Documentary Film'' focuses on the extensive range and history of nonfiction filmmaking in the USA, investigating how documentary films have reflected varied and often competing visions of US culture, history, and national identity. Documentary has long been a negotiated and changing concept: a site of social, intellectual, and aesthetic investment keenly fought over and debated. In this sense documentary films also create a kind of public space: they act as sites for community-building, public expression, and social innovation; they contribute to the public sphere. This book distills key aspects of the documentary idea while tracing the form's development over time, focusing on the ways documentaries have given shape to the experience and comprehension of a national imaginary. Combining comprehensive overviews with in-depth case studies, Geiger examines the impact of pre- and early cinema, travelogues, the avant-garde, 1930s social documentary, Second World War propaganda, direct cinema, postmodernism and the crisis of ‘truth’, and the new media age.
Current Exhibitions
Dead cities and other tales
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In his most syncretic writing yet, radical urban theorist Mike Davis explores the combat zone that is contemporary urban America, a ceaseless battle waged both within cities and against nature. Using environmental science as his frame of understanding, Davis examines themes of urban life today—white flight, deindustrialization, housing and job segregation and(...)
Dead cities and other tales
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In his most syncretic writing yet, radical urban theorist Mike Davis explores the combat zone that is contemporary urban America, a ceaseless battle waged both within cities and against nature. Using environmental science as his frame of understanding, Davis examines themes of urban life today—white flight, deindustrialization, housing and job segregation and discrimination, and federal policy—and looks at areas he calls "national sacrifice zones," military landscapes that simulated warfare and arms production have rendered uninhabitable. Davis begins our apocalyptically inflected tour with a trip to New York’s Ground Zero. He then takes us to "German Village," a Utah wasteland that was once a test site for Allied science advisors to rehearse the perfect plan for destroying Berlin, and to the diabolic miracle of Las Vegas, where environmental terrorism is practiced in the name of urban development. Davis also hits Los Angeles, the frontline of the "Second Civil War" sparked by American apartheid, and which lies waiting to be ignited in cities across the country.
Urban Theory
Unknown quantity
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Published to accompany an exhibition he has conceived for the Fondation Cartier in Paris, this book examines the philosophical issues raised by our confrontation with accidents and their impact on our world. Accidents capture our attention, surprise or shock us, disrupt or ultimately alter the course of our existence. Whether significant or insignificant, benign or(...)
Unknown quantity
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Published to accompany an exhibition he has conceived for the Fondation Cartier in Paris, this book examines the philosophical issues raised by our confrontation with accidents and their impact on our world. Accidents capture our attention, surprise or shock us, disrupt or ultimately alter the course of our existence. Whether significant or insignificant, benign or disastrous, accidents always reveal something about ourselves and the systems we construct. For Virilio, to invent the ship is to invent the shipwreck, to invent electricity is to invent electrocution. Accidents are consequently, in his view, inherent in all technological systems. This catalogue features over 200 illustrations, including press photographs, paintings, and engravings representing natural and industrial accidents from the past three centuries. It also contains reproductions of the works of the many artists included in the exhibit, most notably Lebbeus Woods, Nancy Rubins, Stephen Vitiello, Cai Guo Qiang, Bruce Conner, Tony Oursler, Jonas Mekas, and Jem Cohen.
Architecture since 1900, Europe
The Parthenon
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At once an entrancing cultural history and a congenial guide for tourists, armchair travelers, and amateur archaeologists alike, this book conducts readers through the storied past and towering presence of the most famous building in the world. Who built the Parthenon, and for what purpose? How are we to understand its sculpture? Why is it such a compelling monument? The(...)
The Parthenon
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At once an entrancing cultural history and a congenial guide for tourists, armchair travelers, and amateur archaeologists alike, this book conducts readers through the storied past and towering presence of the most famous building in the world. Who built the Parthenon, and for what purpose? How are we to understand its sculpture? Why is it such a compelling monument? The classicist and historian Mary Beard takes us back to the fifth century B.C. to consider the Parthenon in its original guise--as the flagship temple of imperial Athens, housing an enormous gold and ivory statue of the city's patron goddess attended by an enigmatic assembly of sculptures. Just as fascinating is the monument's far longer life as cathedral church of Our Lady of Athens, as "the finest mosque in the world," and, finally, as an inspirational ruin and icon. Beard also takes a cool look at the bitter arguments that continue to surround the "Elgin Marbles," the sculptures from the Parthenon now in the British Museum.
History until 1900, Greece