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Standards and codes dictate virtually all aspects of urban development. The same standards for subdividing land, grading, laying streets and utilities, and configuring rights-of-way and street widths to accommodate cars (rather than pedestrians) have been adopted in many areas of the world regardless of variations in local environments. In "The code of the city", Eran(...)
The code of the city : standards and the hidden language of place making
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Standards and codes dictate virtually all aspects of urban development. The same standards for subdividing land, grading, laying streets and utilities, and configuring rights-of-way and street widths to accommodate cars (rather than pedestrians) have been adopted in many areas of the world regardless of variations in local environments. In "The code of the city", Eran Ben-Joseph examines the relationship between standards and place making. He traces the evolution of codes and standards and analyzes their impact on the modern city and its suburbs, arguing that it is time for development regulations to reflect site-specific and localized physical design.
Urban Theory
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City planning initiatives and redesign of urban structures often become mired in debate and delay. Despite the fact that cities are considered to be dynamic and flexible spaces- never finished but always under construction- it is very difficult to change existing urban structures; they become fixed, obdurate, securely anchored in their own histories as well as in the(...)
Unbuilding cities : obduracy in urban sociotechnical change
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City planning initiatives and redesign of urban structures often become mired in debate and delay. Despite the fact that cities are considered to be dynamic and flexible spaces- never finished but always under construction- it is very difficult to change existing urban structures; they become fixed, obdurate, securely anchored in their own histories as well as in the histories of their surroundings. In "Unbuilding cities", Anique Hommels looks at the tension between the malleability of urban space and its obduracy, focusing on sites and structures that have been subjected to "unbuilding"-redesign or reconfiguration. She brings the concepts of science and technology studies (STS) to bear on the study of cities. Viewing the city as a large sociotechnological artifact, she demonstrates the usefulness of STS tools that were developed to analyze other technological artifacts and explores in detail the role of obduracy in sociotechnical change. Her analysis distinguishes three concepts of obduracy: interactionist, in which actors with diverging views are constrained by fixed ways of thinking and interacting; relational, in which change is difficult because of technology's embeddedness in sociotechnical networks; and enduring, in which persistent traditions influence the development of technology over time. Hommels examines the tensions between obduracy and change in three urban redesign projects in the Netherlands: a renovated city center that fell into drabness and disrepair; a highway system that runs through a densely populated urban area; and a high-rise housing project, designed according to modernist precepts and built for middle-class families, that became a haven for unemployment and crime. "Unbuilding cities" contributes to a productive fusion of STS and urban studies.
Urban Theory
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In this volume, twenty scholars explore the work of two of the twentieth century’s greatest architectural historians: the American Henry-Russell Hitchcock (1903–1987) and the Englishman Sir John Summerson (1904–1992). Both men undertook architectural training and became key polemical figures in the establishment of Modernism in the 1930s. After the war, and especially in(...)
Summersopn and Hitchcock : centenary essays on architectural historiography
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In this volume, twenty scholars explore the work of two of the twentieth century’s greatest architectural historians: the American Henry-Russell Hitchcock (1903–1987) and the Englishman Sir John Summerson (1904–1992). Both men undertook architectural training and became key polemical figures in the establishment of Modernism in the 1930s. After the war, and especially in the 1950s, both turned more exclusively to historical research and writing. While their areas of interest overlapped, their approaches greatly differed. The contributors to the book investigate the work and methodologies of Summerson and Hitchcock, from their interests in the Northern European (as opposed to Italian) Renaissance, through their studies of the nineteenth century as a precursor to their own times, to their involvement in contemporary issues of design and conservation. The book enhances our understanding of the influences that shaped these two important figures and of the place of architecture within the social and cultural environment.
Architectural Theory
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After September 11, Smith asserts, late modern architecture suddenly seemed an indulgence. With close readings of key buildings - including Jørn Utzon’s Sydney Opera House, Minoru Yamasaki’s World Trade Center, Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and Richard Meier’s Getty Center - Smith traces the growth of the architecture of modernity and then charts its aftermath(...)
The architecture of aftermath
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After September 11, Smith asserts, late modern architecture suddenly seemed an indulgence. With close readings of key buildings - including Jørn Utzon’s Sydney Opera House, Minoru Yamasaki’s World Trade Center, Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and Richard Meier’s Getty Center - Smith traces the growth of the architecture of modernity and then charts its aftermath in the conditions of contemporaneity. Smith focuses on the very culture of aftermath itself, exploring how global politics, clashing cultures, and symbolic warfare have changed the way we experience destination architecture. Like other artists everywhere, architects are responding to the idea of aftermath by questioning the viability of their forms and the validity of their purposes.
Architectural Theory
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The narrative of the artist's life and work is one of the oldest models in the Western literature of the visual arts. In "Art as existence", Gabriele Guercio investigates the metamorphosis of the artist's monograph, tracing its formal and conceptual trajectories from Vasari's sixteenth-century "Lives of the painters, sculptors, and architects" (which provided the model(...)
Art as existence : the artist's monograph and its project
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The narrative of the artist's life and work is one of the oldest models in the Western literature of the visual arts. In "Art as existence", Gabriele Guercio investigates the metamorphosis of the artist's monograph, tracing its formal and conceptual trajectories from Vasari's sixteenth-century "Lives of the painters, sculptors, and architects" (which provided the model and source for the genre) through its apogee in the nineteenth century and decline in the twentieth. He looks at the legacy of the life-and-work model and considers its prospects in an intellectual universe of deconstructionism, psychoanalysis, feminism, and postcolonialism. Since Vasari, the monograph has been notable for its fluidity and variety; it can be scrupulous and exact, probing and revelatory, poetic and imaginative, or any combination of these. In the nineteenth century, the monograph combined art-historical, biographical, and critical methods, and even added elements of fiction. Guercio explores some significant books that illustrate key phases in the model's evolution, including works by Gustav Friedrich Waagen, A. C. Quatremère de Quincy, Johann David Passavant, Bernard Berenson, and others. The hidden project of the artist's monograph, Guercio claims, comes from a utopian impulse; by commuting biography into art and art into biography, the life-and-work model equates art and existence, construing otherwise distinct works of an artist as chapters of a life story. Guercio calls for a contemporary reconsideration of the life-and-work model, arguing that the ultimate legacy of the artist's monograph does not lie in its established modes of writing but in its greater project and in the intimate portrait that we gain of the nature of creativity.
Art Theory
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As we spend more and more of our time staring at the screens of movies, televisions, computers, and handheld devices--"windows" full of moving images, texts, and icons--how the world is framed has become as important as what is in the frame. In The Virtual Window, Anne Friedberg examines the window as metaphor, as architectural component, and as an opening to the(...)
The virtual window : from Alberti to Microsoft
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As we spend more and more of our time staring at the screens of movies, televisions, computers, and handheld devices--"windows" full of moving images, texts, and icons--how the world is framed has become as important as what is in the frame. In The Virtual Window, Anne Friedberg examines the window as metaphor, as architectural component, and as an opening to the dematerialized reality we see on the screen. In De pictura (1435), Leon Battista Alberti famously instructed painters to consider the frame of the painting as an open window. Taking Alberti's metaphor as her starting point, Friedberg tracks shifts in the perspectival paradigm as she gives us histories of the architectural window, developments in glass and transparency, and the emerging apparatuses of photography, cinema, television, and digital imaging. Single-point perspective--Alberti's metaphorical window--has long been challenged by modern painting, modern architecture, and moving-image technologies. And yet, notes Friedberg, for most of the twentieth century the dominant form of the moving image was a single image in a single frame. The fractured modernism exemplified by cubist painting, for example, remained largely confined to experimental, avant-garde work. On the computer screen, however, where multiple "windows" coexist and overlap, perspective may have met its end. In this wide-ranging book, Friedberg considers such topics as the framed view of the camera obscura, Le Corbusier's mandates for the architectural window, Eisenstein's opinions on the shape of the movie screen, and the multiple images and nested windows commonly displayed on screens today. The Virtual Window proposes a new logic of visuality, framed and virtual: an architecture not only of space but of time.
Architectural Theory
Camouflage
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The desire for camouflage is a desire to feel connected--to find our place in the world and to feel at home. In Camouflage Neil Leach analyzes this desire and its consequences for architectural concerns. Design, Leach argues, can aid the process of assimilation we go through when we adapt to our surroundings. Design can provide a form of connectivity--a mediation between(...)
Camouflage
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The desire for camouflage is a desire to feel connected--to find our place in the world and to feel at home. In Camouflage Neil Leach analyzes this desire and its consequences for architectural concerns. Design, Leach argues, can aid the process of assimilation we go through when we adapt to our surroundings. Design can provide a form of connectivity--a mediation between us and our environment--and it can contribute to a sense of belonging. Architecture, and indeed all forms of design and creativity--fashion, art, cinema, and others--can be an effective realm for forging a sense of belonging and establishing an identity. Camouflage offers a range of overlapping and intersecting theoretical perspectives--from an overview of psychoanalytic insights to an account of the magical properties of architectural models--that together suggest a way to rethink our relationship to the world and the role that design plays in that relationship.
Architectural Theory
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Walter Benjamin n'a jamais cru que pratiquer la "critique de l'art" dispensât d'être philosophe. Au contraire, la critique n'a d'autre lieu que la philosophie sous sa forme la plus épurée. Les diverses contributions de ce recueil donne une image très cohérente et homogène de la personnalité et de la pensée de Benjamin.
Walter Benjamin : critique philosophique de l'art
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Walter Benjamin n'a jamais cru que pratiquer la "critique de l'art" dispensât d'être philosophe. Au contraire, la critique n'a d'autre lieu que la philosophie sous sa forme la plus épurée. Les diverses contributions de ce recueil donne une image très cohérente et homogène de la personnalité et de la pensée de Benjamin.
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January 2006, Paris
Architectural Theory
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This book examines the inherent mysticism common to architecture around the world. The author, a leader in the Arts and Crafts Movement, explores the intentions behind structure and form. In so doing, he reveals the esoteric principles behind such grand buildings as St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Taj Mahal, and the Palace of Versailles. Originally published in 1892, this was(...)
Architecture mysticism and myth
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This book examines the inherent mysticism common to architecture around the world. The author, a leader in the Arts and Crafts Movement, explores the intentions behind structure and form. In so doing, he reveals the esoteric principles behind such grand buildings as St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Taj Mahal, and the Palace of Versailles. Originally published in 1892, this was among the earliest studies of the correlation of mysticism and the design process. Its examination of customs, myths, and folktales of many civilizations demonstrates that buildings reflect secrets that lie deeply embedded in the human psyche, related to ancient and universal symbolism. 30 black-and-white illustrations.
Architectural Theory
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Written specifically as a teaching text and authored by a team of leading academics in the field, this is the first book to bring together the key issues of rapid urbanisation with approaches to planning and housing. Outlining and explaining core concepts from ‘informal settlements’ to ‘sustainability’, it focuses on the rapid urbanization of developing countries with(...)
Urban Theory
October 2005, London / New York
Planning and housing in the rapidly urbanising world
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Written specifically as a teaching text and authored by a team of leading academics in the field, this is the first book to bring together the key issues of rapid urbanisation with approaches to planning and housing. Outlining and explaining core concepts from ‘informal settlements’ to ‘sustainability’, it focuses on the rapid urbanization of developing countries with case studies from Latin America, Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. The impact of rapid urbanization and associated globalization on land-use and housing is described and analyzed with reference to the particular issues of poverty, health and the environment of these areas. Providing an accessible introduction to the key issues as well as enhancing current theoretical debates and exploring practical applications, this book is an essential resource for students and researchers in this area.
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October 2005, London / New York
Urban Theory