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In response to the contentious process surrounding the selection of a design for the World Trade Center site, the use of spectacular buildings to brand cities and institutions, and the dizzying transformations of the skylines of Shanghai and Dubai, public awareness of architecture and design has perhaps never been higher. At the same time, architecture itself is(...)
The new architectural pragmatism
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In response to the contentious process surrounding the selection of a design for the World Trade Center site, the use of spectacular buildings to brand cities and institutions, and the dizzying transformations of the skylines of Shanghai and Dubai, public awareness of architecture and design has perhaps never been higher. At the same time, architecture itself is undergoing an identity crisis as it confronts fundamental issues: the effect of digital technology on design, the pervasive impact of global capitalism, and whether to embrace or resist popular media and taste. The New Architectural Pragmatism collects the most provocative, penetrating, and influential attempts by leading theorists and practitioners in the field to define what architectural practice should be at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Written in the aftermath of modernism’s utopian impulse and postmodernism’s detached playfulness, the essays gathered here express and critique a new spirit of cultural and political engagement with contemporary society. Interrogating the architect’s social responsibility, the contributors deliberate about how much we should ask of architecture and suggest that in the coming century, architecture must be at once flexible and robust, responsive and self-directed.
Architectural Theory
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Strategically situated at the gateway to the Mississippi River yet standing atop a former swamp, New Orleans was from the first what geographer Peirce Lewis called an "impossible but inevitable city." How New Orleans came to be, taking shape between the mutual and often contradictory forces of nature and urban development, is the subject of "An unnatural metropolis".(...)
An unatural metropolis : wresting New Orleans from nature
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Strategically situated at the gateway to the Mississippi River yet standing atop a former swamp, New Orleans was from the first what geographer Peirce Lewis called an "impossible but inevitable city." How New Orleans came to be, taking shape between the mutual and often contradictory forces of nature and urban development, is the subject of "An unnatural metropolis". Craig E. Colten traces engineered modifications to New Orleans's natural environment from 1800 to 2000 and demonstrates that, though all cities must contend with their physical settings, New Orleans may be the city most dependent on human-induced transformations of its precarious site. In a new preface, Colten shows how Hurricane Katrina exemplifies the inability of human artifice to exclude nature from cities and he urges city planners to keep the environment in mind as they contemplate New Orleans's future. Urban geographers frequently have portrayed cities as the antithesis of nature, but in "An unnatural metropolis", Colten introduces a critical environmental perspective to the history of urban areas. His amply illustrated work offers an in-depth look at a city and society uniquely shaped by the natural forces it has sought to harness.
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September 2006, Baton Rouge
Urban Theory
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Gardens contain time, culture, and nature. They are powerful symbolic spaces onto which a society can project its ideals, either to conjure or contrive cultural change, rooting them in the flow of natural processes. Five authors explore the variety of relationships between garden making and cultural change in Argentina, the Caribbean, Mexico, and the United States. They(...)
Gardens and Cultural Change: a Pan-American Perspective
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Gardens contain time, culture, and nature. They are powerful symbolic spaces onto which a society can project its ideals, either to conjure or contrive cultural change, rooting them in the flow of natural processes. Five authors explore the variety of relationships between garden making and cultural change in Argentina, the Caribbean, Mexico, and the United States. They show how gardens express popular cultural invention and attempts at political manipulation, as well as provide places of cultural resistance by subjugated people. Issues of identity and ideology; political coercion and resistance apply equally throughout the continent, inviting a renewed attention to gardens as places where cultural identities are forged and contested.
Landscape Theory
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All we need
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On the occasion of Luxemburg European Capital of Culture 2007, the exhibition All We Need is being mounted on the subject of needs, resources, and fairness. The exhibition’s point of departure is the ten needs of every person as formulated by the economist Manfred Max-Neef: subsistence, protection, affection, participation, recreation, creativity, understanding, identity,(...)
All we need
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On the occasion of Luxemburg European Capital of Culture 2007, the exhibition All We Need is being mounted on the subject of needs, resources, and fairness. The exhibition’s point of departure is the ten needs of every person as formulated by the economist Manfred Max-Neef: subsistence, protection, affection, participation, recreation, creativity, understanding, identity, freedom, and transcendence. Each of these needs has a single area of the exhibition devoted to it: Survive, Protect, Love, Stand Up, Relax, Create, Understand, Choose, Dream. The book mirrors the exhibition with photographs and texts and provides additional windows on the complex subject with introductory texts on the exhibition, resources, and fairness. An extensive collage of texts and images illustrates the needs, supplemented by journalistic and art-historical images and philosophical quotations that do not appear in the exhibition itself. The catalogue is designed by the well-known graphic designer Emanuel Tschumi.
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June 2007, Luxembourg
Architectural Theory
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Life is a building site : not just since the German film of that name was released, the building site has been a popular metaphor for the patchwork plans of contemporary life. The phenomenon of the building site runs through our everyday lives, but it largely remains behind construction site fences. This volume looks behind the barriers and focuses on the building site as(...)
Construction site : metamorphoses in the city
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Life is a building site : not just since the German film of that name was released, the building site has been a popular metaphor for the patchwork plans of contemporary life. The phenomenon of the building site runs through our everyday lives, but it largely remains behind construction site fences. This volume looks behind the barriers and focuses on the building site as such for the first time. With authoritative information and reflection from a variety of perspectives, some quite surprising, the building site is presented as an extraordinary place in the city and as a microcosm that operates under heavy pressures of time and costs. With essays on specific building sites such as the megaproject Sihlcity in Zurich or the La Défense building site in Paris, interviews with architects and construction managers, and impressive illustrations, the book leaps into a gap in the urban landscape. The publication is rounded out by artistic, photographic interventions like those of Miklos Gaals, who is known for his photographs that turn urban scenes into toys.
Urban Theory
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Rudy Ricciotti : HQE
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Un texte rebelle face au diktat inacceptable théorisé par les technocrates à l'heure de l'environnement prétexte. Un cri de colère et de révolte. Un pamphlet brûlant et dérangeant. Une remise à plat, sans faux plis, de l'expertise environnementale et de ses génuflexions serviles. Grand Prix National d'architecture 2006, Rudy Ricciotti part en guerre contre le pervers et(...)
Rudy Ricciotti : HQE
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Un texte rebelle face au diktat inacceptable théorisé par les technocrates à l'heure de l'environnement prétexte. Un cri de colère et de révolte. Un pamphlet brûlant et dérangeant. Une remise à plat, sans faux plis, de l'expertise environnementale et de ses génuflexions serviles. Grand Prix National d'architecture 2006, Rudy Ricciotti part en guerre contre le pervers et périlleux syndrome HQE. Trois lettres glacées pour signifier aux élus et aux maîtres d'œuvre le label «Haute Qualité Environnementale». «Avant fermeture définitive de la raison», comme il l'écrit avec rage, Rudy Ricciotti apporte sa réponse à un maire confronté aux héritiers d'Ubu et de Kafka. Sans se préoccuper des appréciations oiseuses des sempiternels petits marquis de la culture - ce qui peut aller du banal «trublion sudiste» au troublant «social traître» -, Rudy Ricciotti engage la polémique avec la terrifiante radicalité qui lui est coutumière. Et naturellement, il défend le béton et le rude, face aux maniéristes et aux idéologues abscons de la norme environnementale. En filigrane lumineux à son argumentation belliqueuse et rigoureuse, Ricciotti dénonce la prise en otage de la légitimité démocratique par la technocratie. Et il désigne du regard les ridicules et leurs thuriféraires niais.
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March 2007, Marseille
Architectural Theory
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Cergy-Pontoise était dans les années 1970 une porte de frontière, une terre vierge où toutes les conquêtes étaient possibles. «Ville nouvelle»... Or, ce n'est pas une ville mais une agglomération. Vilain mot pour qualifier ce qui est depuis plus de trente ans une communauté de destins unissant douze communes. Nouvelle ? Cergy-Pontoise est une trentenaire un peu adulte, un(...)
Cergy-Pontoise : terre des possibles
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Cergy-Pontoise était dans les années 1970 une porte de frontière, une terre vierge où toutes les conquêtes étaient possibles. «Ville nouvelle»... Or, ce n'est pas une ville mais une agglomération. Vilain mot pour qualifier ce qui est depuis plus de trente ans une communauté de destins unissant douze communes. Nouvelle ? Cergy-Pontoise est une trentenaire un peu adulte, un peu ado, qui, émancipée de la tutelle de l'État, revendique aujourd'hui une place de choix. Mais pour découvrir toutes les pépites que recèle cette terre des possibles, il faut repousser les limites de sa curiosité, quitter l'autoroute qui file vers Paris et prendre les chemins de traverse. Pourquoi la couronne parisienne ne pourrait-elle pas receler d'autres joyaux que la Ville Lumière? Lutter contre les idées reçues, ôter cette étiquette qui colle au béton de ce qui reste la plus grande aventure urbaine du XXe siècle, c'est le défi que cet ouvrage entend relever en donnant la parole à vingt-quatre acteurs majeurs de sa vie culturelle et sociale : de l'inventeur à la militante, de la plasticienne à l'urbaniste, de l'agriculteur à l'avocate.
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May 2007, Paris
Urban Theory
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In "Municipal mind", Toronto’s Poet Laureate offers a blueprint for building sustainable cities in a global era, predicated on city soul. By weaving bold and savvy strategies for urban creativity and civic prosperity, together with a reasoned appeal for mutual respect, understanding and interaction among citizens, he persuades us that – in the delicate balancing of(...)
Municipal mind : manifestoes for the creative city
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In "Municipal mind", Toronto’s Poet Laureate offers a blueprint for building sustainable cities in a global era, predicated on city soul. By weaving bold and savvy strategies for urban creativity and civic prosperity, together with a reasoned appeal for mutual respect, understanding and interaction among citizens, he persuades us that – in the delicate balancing of universal values and individual needs – cities can do far, far better. "Municipal mind" offers up a whole new way of civic being and thinking that puts wonder before commerce and nothing before human encounter.
Urban Theory
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Michel de Certeau considers the uses to which social representation and modes of social behavior are put by individuals and groups, describing the tactics available to the common man for reclaiming his own autonomy from the all-pervasive forces of commerce, politics, and culture. In exploring the public meaning of ingeniously defended private meanings, de Certeau draws(...)
Critical Theory
December 2002, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London
The practice of everyday life
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Michel de Certeau considers the uses to which social representation and modes of social behavior are put by individuals and groups, describing the tactics available to the common man for reclaiming his own autonomy from the all-pervasive forces of commerce, politics, and culture. In exploring the public meaning of ingeniously defended private meanings, de Certeau draws brilliantly on an immense theoretical literature in analytic philosophy, linguistics, sociology, semiology, and anthropology - to speak of an apposite use of imaginative literature.
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December 2002, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London
Critical Theory
Planet of slums
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Urban theorist Davis takes a global approach to documenting the astonishing depth of squalid poverty that dominates the lives of the planet's increasingly urban population, detailing poor urban communities from Cape Town and Caracas to Casablanca and Khartoum. Davis argues health, justice and social issues associated with gargantuan slums (the largest, in Mexico City, has(...)
Planet of slums
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Urban theorist Davis takes a global approach to documenting the astonishing depth of squalid poverty that dominates the lives of the planet's increasingly urban population, detailing poor urban communities from Cape Town and Caracas to Casablanca and Khartoum. Davis argues health, justice and social issues associated with gargantuan slums (the largest, in Mexico City, has an estimated population of 4 million) get overlooked in world politics: "The demonizing rhetorics of the various international 'wars' on terrorism, drugs, and crime are so much semantic apartheid: they construct epistemological walls around gecekondus, favelas, and chawls that disable any honest debate about the daily violence of economic exclusion." Though Davis focuses on individual communities, he presents statistics showing the skyrocketing population and number of "megaslums" (informally, "stinking mountains of shit" or, formally, "when shanty-towns and squatter communities merge in continuous belts of informal housing and poverty, usually on the urban periphery") since the 1960s. Layered over the hard numbers are a fascinating grid of specific area studies and sub-topics ranging from how the Olympics has spurred the forceful relocation of thousands (and, sometimes, hundreds of thousands) of the urban poor, to the conversion of formerly second world countries to third world status. Davis paints a bleak picture of the upward trend in urbanization and maintains a stark outlook for slum-dwellers' futures
Urban Theory