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This book examines the ways in which a historic, and so-called 'traditional' city quietly mutated into one that was modern in its own terms not only in form but also in its use and meaning. Through a study of Delhi, the author challenges some prevalent dichotomies and myths in architecture and urbanism and identifies an interpretation of modernism that expands upon(...)
avril 2005, London
Indigenous modernities : negotiating architecture and urbanism
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$58.50
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Résumé:
This book examines the ways in which a historic, and so-called 'traditional' city quietly mutated into one that was modern in its own terms not only in form but also in its use and meaning. Through a study of Delhi, the author challenges some prevalent dichotomies and myths in architecture and urbanism and identifies an interpretation of modernism that expands upon conventional understandings of it. Conventional discourse in the West defines modern as the antithesis of that which is 'not-modern' or is 'traditional.' Many scholars have debated the significance of the words and most agree that the very word 'tradition' was a modernist creation that variously implied backwardness, threatened by change, resistance to innovation. The first part of this book reflects on the transformations and discontinuities in built form and spatial culture and calls into question accepted notions of the static nature of what is normally referred to as 'traditional' and 'non-Western' architecture. The second part is a critical discussion of Delhi in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It expands upon conventional understandings of modernity in a way that wrenches free the city's architecture and the society from the objectified realm of the exotic while also acknowledging cultural conditions of modernity and modern architecture outside the West. Stepping outside Western canons, this project looks at late nineteenth and early twentieth century architecture to include them in a conversation on architecture that has typically focused on Western Europe and North America. Finally, the author seeks out the 'indigenous modernities': the irregular, the uneven, and the unexpected in what uncritical observers might label a perfectly coherent 'traditional' built environment; or in the influence of local society and institutions on forms that appear modern by conventional standards in the West.
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"Last Landscapes" is an exploration of the cult and celebration of death, loss and memory. It traces the history and design of burial places throughout Europe and the USA, ranging from the picturesque tradition of the village churchyard to tightly packed ‘cities of the dead’, such as the Jewish Cemetery in Prague and Père Lachaise in Paris. Other landscapes that feature(...)
Last landscapes : the architecture of the cemetery in the west
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"Last Landscapes" is an exploration of the cult and celebration of death, loss and memory. It traces the history and design of burial places throughout Europe and the USA, ranging from the picturesque tradition of the village churchyard to tightly packed ‘cities of the dead’, such as the Jewish Cemetery in Prague and Père Lachaise in Paris. Other landscapes that feature in this book include the war cemeteries of northern France, Viking burial islands in central Sweden, Etruscan tombs and early Christian catacombs in Italy, the 17th-century Portuguese–Jewish cemetery 'Beth Haim' at Ouderkerk in the Netherlands, Forest Lawns in California, Derek Jarman’s garden in Kent and the Stockholm Woodland Cemetery. It is a fact that architecture ‘began with the tomb', yet, as Ken Worpole shows us in Last Landscapes, many historic cemeteries have been demolished or abandoned in recent times (notably the case with Jewish cemeteries in Eastern Europe), and there has been an increasing loss of inscription and memorialization in the modern urban cemetery. Too often cemeteries today are both poorly designed and physically and culturally marginalized. Worse, cremation denies a full architectural response to the mystery and solemnity of death. The author explores how modes of disposal – burial, cremation, inhumation in mausoleums and wall tombs – vary across Europe and North America, according to religious and other cultural influences. And Last Landscapes raises profound questions as to how, in an age of mass cremation, architects and landscape designers might create meaningful structures and settings in the absence of a body, since for most of history the human body itself has provided the fundamental structural scale. This evocative book also contemplates other forms of memorialization within modern societies, from sculptures to parks, most notably the extraordinary Duisberg Park, set in a former giant steelworks in Germany’s Ruhr Valley.
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The book reproduces a series of the collages made by David Wild. Their subject is modern architecture in the first half of the twentieth century: in the Netherlands, in Russia, and in the work of Le Corbusier. The method of the book is to show a collage on a right-hand page; then on the facing page is a (...)
Fragments of utopia: collage reflections of heroic modernism
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The book reproduces a series of the collages made by David Wild. Their subject is modern architecture in the first half of the twentieth century: in the Netherlands, in Russia, and in the work of Le Corbusier. The method of the book is to show a collage on a right-hand page; then on the facing page is a prose commentary by Wild and supporting smaller images. Introducing the book, David Wild explains that the impulse for this work lies in the aftermath of a fire in his house: his scorched books lent themselves to collage. He goes on to sketch the cultural-political climate in Britain over the last 40 years: the backdrop to his work as an architect and (less directly) to this book. In the opening section on the Netherlands, the leading theme is an architecture of social equity and continuity. Rooted in old cultural traditions, and in the particular ‘football-pitch’ landscape of the country, modern architecture could realise some of its dreams in everyday buildings. Postage stamps play an active part in many of the book’s collages, and especially in this section: the design of stamps flourished in the Netherlands, through the enlightened patronage of the Dutch post office — with several architects designing stamps too. Politics and history come to prominence in the Russian section, as a motivating force in the work of the early 1920s, and then as a heavy burden — with the onset of totalitarian control and repression. At the centre of the discussion here is the architecture of constructivism: formally brilliant, but with a clear social programme. Flight and the exploration of space are recurring topics in this section, as another and particularly Russian dimension of utopian striving The work of Le Corbusier, in Europe, North and South America, Russia and India, is treated in the third section. Le Corbusier is presented as a brilliant artist, a master architect of the greatest skill and the greatest ambition — and without scruple in pursuing commissions. The images and text follow him into the years after the Second World War, culminating in the work in India. Here there is a vision of another kind of politics, of co-operation and non-violence.
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janvier 1900, London