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In her stirring and influential essay ''Art on the frontline,'' American scholar and activist icon Angela Y. Davis (born 1944) asked, 'how do we collectively acknowledge our popular cultural legacy and communicate it to the masses of people, most of whom have been denied access to the social spaces reserved for arts and culture?' Originally published in ''Political(...)
Art on the frontline: Mandate for a people's culture. Two works series, Vol. 2
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In her stirring and influential essay ''Art on the frontline,'' American scholar and activist icon Angela Y. Davis (born 1944) asked, 'how do we collectively acknowledge our popular cultural legacy and communicate it to the masses of people, most of whom have been denied access to the social spaces reserved for arts and culture?' Originally published in ''Political Affairs,'' a radical Marxist magazine, in 1985, the essay calls into question the role of art in the pursuit of social and racial liberation, and asserts the inequities exacerbated by the art world. Looking to the cultural and artistic forms born of Afro-American struggles, Davis insists that we attempt to understand, reclaim and glean insight from this history in preparing a political offensive against the racial oppression endemic to capitalism. Working in the context of 2020’s racial uprising some 35 years later, New York–based painter Tschabalala Self (born 1990) responds to Davis’ words with new, characteristically vibrant and provocative collaged works on paper. Her three series emerge collectively as something greater than their parts, suggesting a joyfulness in their ebbs and flows.
Art Theory
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In this edition of Lefebvre’s classic but largely unavailable text, New York–based artist Julie Mehretu responds to Lefebvre’s 1987 essay, reflecting upon its implications during a time when conceptions of “the everyday” are both heightened and obscured. She identifies thematic connections between his text and her own work, casting into relief the enduring relevance of(...)
The everyday and everydayness. Two works series, vol. 3
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In this edition of Lefebvre’s classic but largely unavailable text, New York–based artist Julie Mehretu responds to Lefebvre’s 1987 essay, reflecting upon its implications during a time when conceptions of “the everyday” are both heightened and obscured. She identifies thematic connections between his text and her own work, casting into relief the enduring relevance of Lefebvre’s consideration of time, space and place.
Critical Theory
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Many societies have imagined going to live in space. What they want to do once they get up there—whether conquering the unknown, establishing space ''colonies,'' privatising the moon’s resources—reveals more than expected. In this fascinating radical history of space exploration, Fred Scharmen shows that often science and fiction have combined in the imagined dreams of(...)
Space forces: a critical history of life in outer space
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Many societies have imagined going to live in space. What they want to do once they get up there—whether conquering the unknown, establishing space ''colonies,'' privatising the moon’s resources—reveals more than expected. In this fascinating radical history of space exploration, Fred Scharmen shows that often science and fiction have combined in the imagined dreams of life in outer space, but these visions have real implications for life back on earth. For the Russian Cosmists of the 1890s space was a place to pursue human perfection away from the Earth. For others, such as Wernher Von Braun, it was an engineering task that combined, in the Space Race, the Cold War, and during World War II, with destructive geopolitics. Arthur C. Clarke, in his speculative books, offered an alternative vision of wonder that is indifferent to human interaction. Meanwhile NASA planned and managed the space station like an earthbound corporation. Today, the market has arrived into outer space and exploration is the plaything of superrich technology billionaires, who plan to privatise the mineral wealth for themselves. Are other worlds really possible? Bringing these figures and ideas together reveals a completely different story of our relationship with outer space, as well as the dangers of our current direction of extractive capitalism and colonisation.
Architectural Theory
La beauté autour d'une ville
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Qu’est-ce qui fait la beauté d’une ville? Son site, ses bâtiments, ses jardins, ses matières, ses rivières? Ses habitants, ses milieux, son hospitalité, ses fragilités, sa mesure? Comment se définit, en fonction des projets et des contraintes de chaque siècle, l’esthétique urbaine? Quelles formes doit inventer la ville pour opérer sa transition(...)
Urban Theory
August 2021
La beauté autour d'une ville
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Qu’est-ce qui fait la beauté d’une ville? Son site, ses bâtiments, ses jardins, ses matières, ses rivières? Ses habitants, ses milieux, son hospitalité, ses fragilités, sa mesure? Comment se définit, en fonction des projets et des contraintes de chaque siècle, l’esthétique urbaine? Quelles formes doit inventer la ville pour opérer sa transition climatique? Architectes, écrivains, philosophes, historiens, paysagistes, artistes, écologues, sociologues, urbanistes… À partir des enjeux parisiens émergents, 56 autrices et auteurs explorent nos héritages et esquissent l’avenir de nos territoires urbains. Un pied dans l’histoire, et l’autre engagé sur les chemins de l’écologie, cet ouvrage collectif conçu comme une promenade nous invite à regarder d’un autre œil la beauté de Paris.
Urban Theory
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De Paris à la mer, la Seine traverse les territoires franciliens et normands, leur offrant un débouché sur la Manche et le trafic mondial. Son parcours dessine une vallée, un véritable milieu de vie à l'équilibre menacé par la pression anthropique et le dérèglement climatique. Comprendre l'espace et conduire des projets dans cet environnement fragilisé nécessite un(...)
Landscape Theory
August 2021
Plus grand que la Seine : Acteurs en réseau, paysages en projets
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De Paris à la mer, la Seine traverse les territoires franciliens et normands, leur offrant un débouché sur la Manche et le trafic mondial. Son parcours dessine une vallée, un véritable milieu de vie à l'équilibre menacé par la pression anthropique et le dérèglement climatique. Comprendre l'espace et conduire des projets dans cet environnement fragilisé nécessite un renouvellement en profondeur des approches et appelle à la mise en place de logiques interrégionales. En réponse à cet impératif, un réseau inédit s'est constitué autour d'une démarche collective de partage de connaissances et de prospective. Afin d'imaginer une autre façon d'habiter le monde, l'aménagement et la résilience des milieux y sont pensés au prisme d'une notion fondatrice : le paysage. Une itinérance au fil d'une trentaine de projets et d'actions de ce 'réseau paysage' laisse apparaître la vallée de la Seine comme un espace propice à expérimenter et à transmettre.
Landscape Theory
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Drawing on fifteen years of field research in Las Vegas, anthropologist Natasha Dow Schüll shows how the mechanical rhythm of electronic gambling pulls players into a trancelike state they call the "machine zone," in which daily worries, social demands, and even bodily awareness fade away. Once in the zone, gambling addicts play not to win but simply to keep playing, for(...)
Addiction by design: machine gambling in Las Vegas
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Drawing on fifteen years of field research in Las Vegas, anthropologist Natasha Dow Schüll shows how the mechanical rhythm of electronic gambling pulls players into a trancelike state they call the "machine zone," in which daily worries, social demands, and even bodily awareness fade away. Once in the zone, gambling addicts play not to win but simply to keep playing, for as long as possible?even at the cost of physical and economic exhaustion. In continuous machine play, gamblers seek to lose themselves while the gambling industry seeks profit. Schüll describes the strategic calculations behind game algorithms and machine ergonomics, casino architecture and "ambience management," player tracking and cash access systems?all designed to meet the market's desire for maximum "time on device." Her account moves from casino floors into gamblers' everyday lives, from gambling industry conventions and Gamblers Anonymous meetings to regulatory debates over whether addiction to gambling machines stems from the consumer, the product, or the interplay between the two. ''Addiction by design'' is a compelling inquiry into the intensifying traffic between people and machines of chance, offering clues to some of the broader anxieties and predicaments of contemporary life. At stake in Schüll's account of the intensifying traffic between people and machines of chance is a blurring of the line between design and experience, profit and loss, control and compulsion.
Design Theory
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Vast interior spaces have become ubiquitous in the contemporary city. The soaring atriums and concourses of mega-hotels, shopping malls and transport interchanges define an increasingly normal experience of being 'inside' in a city. Yet such spaces are also subject to intense criticism and claims that they can destroy the quality of a city's authentic life 'on the(...)
Interior urbanism: architecture, John Portman and downtown America
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Vast interior spaces have become ubiquitous in the contemporary city. The soaring atriums and concourses of mega-hotels, shopping malls and transport interchanges define an increasingly normal experience of being 'inside' in a city. Yet such spaces are also subject to intense criticism and claims that they can destroy the quality of a city's authentic life 'on the outside'. ''Interior Urbanism'' explores the roots of this contemporary tension between inside and outside, identifying and analysing the concept of interior urbanism and tracing its history back to the works of John Portman and Associates in 1960s and 70s America. Portman – increasingly recognised as an influential yet understudied figure – was responsible for projects such as Peachtree Center in Atlanta and the Los Angeles Bonaventure Hotel, developments that employed vast internal atriums to define a world of possibilities not just for hotels and commercial spaces, but for the future of the American downtown amid the upheavals of the 1960s and 70s. The book analyses Portman's architecture in order to reconsider major contexts of debate in architecture and urbanism in this period, including the massive expansion of a commercial imperative in architecture, shifts in the governance and development of cities amid social and economic instability, the rise of postmodernism and critical urban studies, and the defence of the street and public space amid the continual upheavals of urban development. In this way the book reconsiders the American city at a crucial time in its development, identifying lessons for how we consider the forces at work, and the spaces produced, in cities in the present.
Architectural Theory
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Cities can make us sick. They always have—diseases spread more easily when more people are close to one another. And disease is hardly the only ill that accompanies urban density. Cities have been demonized as breeding grounds for vice and crime from Sodom and Gomorrah on. But cities have flourished nonetheless because they are humanity’s greatest invention, indispensable(...)
Survival of the city: Living and thriving in an age of isolation
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Cities can make us sick. They always have—diseases spread more easily when more people are close to one another. And disease is hardly the only ill that accompanies urban density. Cities have been demonized as breeding grounds for vice and crime from Sodom and Gomorrah on. But cities have flourished nonetheless because they are humanity’s greatest invention, indispensable engines for creativity, innovation, wealth, and connection, the loom on which the fabric of civilization is woven. But cities now stand at a crossroads. During the global COVID crisis, cities grew silent as people worked from home—if they could work at all. The normal forms of socializing ground to a halt. How permanent are these changes? Advances in digital technology mean that many people can opt out of city life as never before. Will they? Are we on the brink of a post-urban world? City life will survive but individual cities face terrible risks, argue Edward Glaeser and David Cutler, and a wave of urban failure would be absolutely disastrous. In terms of intimacy and inspiration, nothing can replace what cities offer. Great cities have always demanded great management, and our current crisis has exposed fearful gaps in our capacity for good governance. It is possible to drive a city into the ground, pandemic or not. Glaeser and Cutler examine the evolution that is already happening, and describe the possible futures that lie before us.
Urban Theory
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Walter Benjamin is one of the most fascinating and enigmatic intellectual figures of this century. Not only was he a thinker who made an enormous impact with his critical and philosophical writings, he shattered disciplinary and stylistic conventions. This collection, introduced by Susan Sontag, contains the most representative and illuminating selection of his work(...)
One-way street and other writings
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Walter Benjamin is one of the most fascinating and enigmatic intellectual figures of this century. Not only was he a thinker who made an enormous impact with his critical and philosophical writings, he shattered disciplinary and stylistic conventions. This collection, introduced by Susan Sontag, contains the most representative and illuminating selection of his work over a twenty-year period, and thus does full justice to the richness and the multi-dimensional nature of his thought. Included in these pages are aphorisms and townscapes, esoteric meditation and reminiscences of childhood, and reflections on language, psychology, aesthetics and politics.
Critical Theory
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Should all-inclusive engagement be the major task of architecture? This publication presents the case that the answer is yes. Through original contributions and case studies, this volume shows that socially engaged architecture is both a theoretical construct and a professional practice navigating the global politics of poverty, charity, health, technology, neoliberal(...)
All-inclusive engagement in architecture: towards the future of social change
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Should all-inclusive engagement be the major task of architecture? This publication presents the case that the answer is yes. Through original contributions and case studies, this volume shows that socially engaged architecture is both a theoretical construct and a professional practice navigating the global politics of poverty, charity, health, technology, neoliberal urbanism, and the discipline's exclusionary basis. The scholarly ideas and design projects of 58 thought leaders demonstrate the architect's role as a revolutionary social agent. Exemplary works are included from the United States, Mexico, Canada, Africa, Asia, and Europe. This book offers a comprehensive overview and in-depth analysis of all-inclusive engagement in public interest design for instructors, students, and professionals alike, showing how this approach to architecture can bring forth a radical reformation of the profession and its relationship to society.
Urban Theory