The Architectural Uncanny presents an engaging and original series of meditations on issues and figures that are at the heart of the most pressing debates surrounding architecture today. Anthony Vidler interprets contemporary buildings and projects in light of the resurgent interest in the uncanny as a metaphor for a fundamentally "unhomely" modern condition. The essays are at once historical -- serving to situate contemporary discourse in its own intellectual tradition and theoretical -- opening up the complex and difficult relationships between politics, social thought, and...

Beginning with agoraphobia and claustrophobia in the late nineteenth century, followed by shell shock and panic fear after World War I, phobias and anxiety came to be seen as the mental condition of modern life. They became incorporated into the media and arts, in particular the spatial arts of architecture, urbanism, and film. This "spatial warping" is now being reshaped by digitalization and virtual reality.Anthony Vidler is concerned with two forms of warped space. The first, a psychological space, is the repository of neuroses and phobias. This space is not empty but full of disturbing...

The British architect James Frazer Stirling (1924-1992) stimulated impassioned responses among both supporters and detractors, and he continues to be the subject of fierce debate. He earned international renown through such innovative--and frequently controversial--projects as the Leicester University Engineering Building (1959-63); the History Faculty building at Cambridge University (1964-67); the Neue Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart (1977-84); the Clore Gallery at Tate Britain (1984); and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum at Harvard University (1979-84). Stirling was also a visiting professor at...