books
Description:
149 pages : illustrations ; 23 x 29 cm.
Toronto : Coles Pub. Co., ©1978.
Yesterday's Toronto, 1870-1910 / edited by Linda Shapiro.
Actions:
Holdings:
Description:
149 pages : illustrations ; 23 x 29 cm.
books
Toronto : Coles Pub. Co., ©1978.
books
Description:
vii, 360 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm
Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.
Global downtowns / edited by Marina Peterson and Gary W. McDonogh.
Actions:
Holdings:
Description:
vii, 360 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm
books
Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.
$54.00
(available to order)
Summary:
To think through soil is to engage with some of the most critical issues of our time. In addition to its agricultural role in feeding eight billion people, soil has become the primary agent of carbon storage in global climate models, and it is crucial for biodiversity, flood control, and freshwater resources. Perhaps no other material is asked to do so much for the human(...)
Architecture ecologies
June 2025
Thinking through soil: Wastewater agriculture in the Mezquital Valley
Actions:
Price:
$54.00
(available to order)
Summary:
To think through soil is to engage with some of the most critical issues of our time. In addition to its agricultural role in feeding eight billion people, soil has become the primary agent of carbon storage in global climate models, and it is crucial for biodiversity, flood control, and freshwater resources. Perhaps no other material is asked to do so much for the human environment, and yet our basic conceptual model of what soil is and how it works remains surprisingly vague. In cities, soil occupies a blurry category whose boundaries are both empirically uncertain and politically contested. Soil functions as a nexus for environmental processes through which the planet’s most fundamental material transformations occur, but conjuring what it actually is serves as a useful exercise in reframing environmental thought, design thinking, and city and regional planning toward a healthier, more ethical, and more sustainable future. Through a sustained analysis of the world’s largest wastewater agricultural system, located in the Mexico City–Mezquital hydrological region, ''Thinking Through Soil'' imagines what a better environmental future might look like in central Mexico. More broadly, this case study offers a new image of soil that captures its shifting identity, explains its profound importance to rural and urban life, and argues for its capacity to save our planet.
Architecture ecologies
New Geographies 12: Commons
$45.00
(available to order)
Summary:
The commons as a contested political idea has been continually articulated and reproduced in many disciplines and in relation to specific historical and geographical contexts. Since the 1960s, the concept of commons has started to play an increasingly important role in the field of urban studies. While commons are usually perceived as the material spaces of the city such(...)
New Geographies 12: Commons
Actions:
Price:
$45.00
(available to order)
Summary:
The commons as a contested political idea has been continually articulated and reproduced in many disciplines and in relation to specific historical and geographical contexts. Since the 1960s, the concept of commons has started to play an increasingly important role in the field of urban studies. While commons are usually perceived as the material spaces of the city such as streets, parks, public spaces, etc., they are also perceived as the immaterial public realm- including subaltern and mainstream culture, knowledge, language, and modes of sociality. As the commoning process continuously involves the substance of urban spaces, be it physical or virtual, the concept of commons has actively contributed to reshaping spatial imaginaries such as urban islands, archipelagos, and thresholds. This issue of 'New Geographies' proposes the concept of commons as a mode of thinking that challenges assumptions in the design disciplines such as public and private spaces, local and regional geographies, and capital and state interventions. It expands the production of space as the commons into a planetary territory all the way from the intimate and subjective scale of the body to the connected material and immaterial spaces. In doing so, NG 12 aims to foreground the significance of political thinking in the process of space production, and invites to imagine alternative social relations and modes of urbanization.
Magazines
$12.50
(available to order)
Summary:
Sally Stein reconsiders Dorothea Lange’s iconic portrait of maternity and modern emblem of family values in light of Lange’s long-overlooked ‘Padonna’ pictures and proposes that ‘Migrant Mother’ should in fact be seen as a disruptive image of women’s conflictual relation to home, and the world. Stein is an American academic and cultural theorist living in Los Angeles. The(...)
Dorothea Lange: Migrant mother, Migrant gender
Actions:
Price:
$12.50
(available to order)
Summary:
Sally Stein reconsiders Dorothea Lange’s iconic portrait of maternity and modern emblem of family values in light of Lange’s long-overlooked ‘Padonna’ pictures and proposes that ‘Migrant Mother’ should in fact be seen as a disruptive image of women’s conflictual relation to home, and the world. Stein is an American academic and cultural theorist living in Los Angeles. The interrelated topics she most often engages concern the multiple effects of documentary imagery, the politics of gender, and the status and meaning of black and white and color imagery on our perceptions, beliefs, even actions as consumers and citizens. Dr. Stein, Professor Emerita, UC Irvine, is an independent scholar based in Los Angeles who continues to research and write about 20thcentury photography in the U.S. and its relation to broader questions of culture and society. She has written about New Deal FSA photographers—particularly Dorothea Lange, Marion Post Wolcott, Jack Delano—as well as the contested image of FDR. Her numerous essays about popular mass media – Ladies Home Journal, Life and Look – extend her ongoing study of the various aspects of the rise of color photography. The interrelated topics she most often engages concern the multiple effects of documentary imagery, the politics of gender, and the status and meaning of black and white and color imagery on our perceptions, beliefs, even actions as consumers and citizens.
Theory of Photography
$46.95
(available to order)
Summary:
Post, ex, sub and dis - these are but a few of the prefixes that have been used to compose neologisms for describing the contemporary cityscape in Western Europe and North America. Terms such as posturban space, postsuburbia, exurbia, exopolis, suburban downtown and disurbia are part of a dizzying collection of often hotly contested labels. The plethora of neologisms(...)
Post ex sub dis : urban fragmentations and constructions
Actions:
Price:
$46.95
(available to order)
Summary:
Post, ex, sub and dis - these are but a few of the prefixes that have been used to compose neologisms for describing the contemporary cityscape in Western Europe and North America. Terms such as posturban space, postsuburbia, exurbia, exopolis, suburban downtown and disurbia are part of a dizzying collection of often hotly contested labels. The plethora of neologisms demonstrates how difficult it has become to name, map and analyse the contemporary cityscape. To many observers, urban environments and urban society have come to evince a radically chaotic and fragmented structure. This book explores how in recent decades the notion of fragmentation - a mainstay already of reflections on urban modernity - has acquired new meanings and how, within the current decentralized and centrifugal context, the urban landscape is constantly being deconstructed and reconstructed, both materially and discursively. Richly illustrated with works by artists and photographers who have visualized various new kinds of urban fragmentation, the volume brings together a series of essays on spatial, social and cultural issues written by distinguished scholars and practitioners from an unusual variety of disciplines. It will be especially useful to students of urban planning, architecture, sociology, literature and the arts. With text contributions by Aaron Betsky, Sophie Body-Gendrot, Stefano Boeri, Lizabeth Cohen, Rosalyn Deutsche, Bart Eeckhout, Adriaan Geuze, Paul Gilroy, Steven Jacobs, Regine Leibinger, Scott Malcomson, Peter Marcuse, Bruce Robbins, Luc Sante, William Sharpe, Edward W. Soja and Mark Wigley.
Urban Theory
Forensic architecture
$49.95
(available to order)
Summary:
In recent years, the group Forensic Architecture began using novel research methods to undertake a series of investigations into human rights abuses. Today, the group provides crucial evidence for international courts and works with a wide range of activist groups, NGOs, Amnesty International, and the UN. Forensic Architecture has not only shed new light on human rights(...)
Forensic architecture
Actions:
Price:
$49.95
(available to order)
Summary:
In recent years, the group Forensic Architecture began using novel research methods to undertake a series of investigations into human rights abuses. Today, the group provides crucial evidence for international courts and works with a wide range of activist groups, NGOs, Amnesty International, and the UN. Forensic Architecture has not only shed new light on human rights violations and state crimes across the globe, but has also created a new form of investigative practice that bears its name. The group uses architecture as an optical device to investigate armed conflicts and environmental destruction, as well as to cross-reference a variety of evidence sources, such as new media, remote sensing, material analysis, witness testimony, and crowd-sourcing. In "Forensic architecture", Eyal Weizman, the group’s founder, provides, for the first time, an in-depth introduction to the history, practice, assumptions, potentials, and double binds of this practice. The book includes an extensive array of images, maps, and detailed documentation that records the intricate work the group has performed. Traversing multiple scales and durations, the case studies in this volume include the analysis of the shrapnel fragments in a room struck by drones in Pakistan, the reconstruction of a contested shooting in the West Bank, the architectural recreation of a secret Syrian detention center from the memory of its survivors, a blow-by-blow account of a day-long battle in Gaza, and an investigation of environmental violence and climate change in the Guatemalan highlands and elsewhere.
Architectural Theory
Antarctic resolution
$110.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Accounting for approximately 10% of the land mass of Planet Earth, the Antarctic is a global commons we collectively neglect. Far from being a pristine natural landscape, the continent is a contested territory which conceals resources that might prove irresistible in a world with ever-increasing population growth. The 26 quadrillion tons of ice accumulated on its bedrock,(...)
Antarctic resolution
Actions:
Price:
$110.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Accounting for approximately 10% of the land mass of Planet Earth, the Antarctic is a global commons we collectively neglect. Far from being a pristine natural landscape, the continent is a contested territory which conceals resources that might prove irresistible in a world with ever-increasing population growth. The 26 quadrillion tons of ice accumulated on its bedrock, equivalent to around 70% of the fresh water on our planet, represent at once the most significant repository of scientific data available, providing crucial information for future environmental policies, and the greatest menace to global coastal settlements threatened by the rise in sea levels induced by anthropogenic global warming. ''Antarctic Resolution'' advocates the rejection of the pixelated view of Antarctica offered to us by big data companies and urges the construction of a high-resolution image focusing on the continent’s unique geography, unparalleled scientific potential, contemporary geopolitical significance, experimental governance system and its extreme inhabitation model. Only the concerted determination of a transnational network of multidisciplinary polar experts—represented here in the form of authored texts, photographic essays and data-based visual portfolios—could construct such an image and reveal the intricate web of growing economic and strategic interests, tensions and international rivalries, which are enveloped in darkness, as is the continent for six months of the year. Learning from Antarctica’s spirit of cooperation, ''Antarctic Resolution'' aspires to launch a platform, an agency for change, where citizens can undertake a true Antarctic resolution and engage in a unanimous effort—independent of nation—to shape the future of the Antarctic and, in turn, of our planet.
Contemporary Architecture
$29.95
(available to order)
Summary:
Once considered a mere caretaker for collections, the curator is now widely viewed as a globally connected auteur. Over the last twenty-five years, as international group exhibitions and biennials have become the dominant mode of presenting contemporary art to the public, curatorship has begun to be perceived as a constellation of creative activities not unlike artistic(...)
The culture of curating and the curating of culture(s)
Actions:
Price:
$29.95
(available to order)
Summary:
Once considered a mere caretaker for collections, the curator is now widely viewed as a globally connected auteur. Over the last twenty-five years, as international group exhibitions and biennials have become the dominant mode of presenting contemporary art to the public, curatorship has begun to be perceived as a constellation of creative activities not unlike artistic praxis. The curator has gone from being a behind-the-scenes organizer and selector to a visible, centrally important cultural producer. In The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s), Paul O’Neill examines the emergence of independent curatorship and the discourse that helped to establish it. O’Neill describes how, by the 1980s, curated group exhibitions - large-scale, temporary projects with artworks cast as illustrative fragments - came to be understood as the creative work of curator-auteurs. The proliferation of new biennials and other large international exhibitions in the 1990s created a cohort of high-profile, globally mobile curators, moving from Venice to Paris to Kassel. In the 1990s, curatorial and artistic practice converged, blurring the distinction between artist and curator. O’Neill argues that this change in the understanding of curatorship was shaped by a curator-centered discourse that effectively advocated - and authorized - the new independent curatorial practice. Drawing on the extensive curatorial literature and his own interviews with leading curators, critics, art historians, and artists, O’Neill traces the development of the curator-as-artist model and the ways it has been contested. The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s) documents the many ways in which our perception of art has been transformed by curating and the discourses surrounding it.
Museology
$28.50
(available to order)
Summary:
"Downtown America" was once the vibrant urban center romanticized in the Petula Clark song-a place where the lights were brighter, where people went to spend their money and forget their worries. But in the second half of the twentieth century, "downtown" became a shadow of its former self, succumbing to economic competition and commercial decline. And the death of Main(...)
Downtown America : a history of the place and the people who made it
Actions:
Price:
$28.50
(available to order)
Summary:
"Downtown America" was once the vibrant urban center romanticized in the Petula Clark song-a place where the lights were brighter, where people went to spend their money and forget their worries. But in the second half of the twentieth century, "downtown" became a shadow of its former self, succumbing to economic competition and commercial decline. And the death of Main Streets across the country came to be seen as sadly inexorable, like the passing of an aged loved one. "Downtown America" cuts beneath the archetypal story of downtown's rise and fall and offers a new story of urban development in the United States. Moving beyond conventional narratives, Alison Isenberg shows that downtown's trajectory was not dictated by inevitable free market forces or natural life-and-death cycles. Instead, it was the product of human actors-the contested creation of retailers, developers, government leaders, architects, and planners, as well as political activists, consumers, civic clubs, real estate appraisers, even postcard artists. Throughout the twentieth century, conflicts over downtown's mundane conditions-what it should look like and who should walk its streets-pointed to fundamental disagreements over American values. Isenberg reveals how the innovative efforts of these participants infused Main Street with its resonant symbolism, while still accounting for pervasive uncertainty and fears of decline. Readers of this work will find anything but a story of inevitability. Even some of the downtown's darkest moments-the Great Depression's collapse in land values, the rioting and looting of the 1960s, or abandonment and vacancy during the 1970s-illuminate how core cultural values have animated and intertwined with economic investment to reinvent the physical form and social experiences of urban commerce. "Downtown America"-its empty stores, revitalized marketplaces, and romanticized past-will never look quite the same again.
Urban Theory