Kategoria BISAC: Architecture >> Criticism

The expedited globalised process of exchange and new forms of cultural production have transformed old established notions of identity, calling into question their conceptual foundations. This book explores the spatial and representational dimension of this phenomenon, by addressing how the reshaping of the key themes of place, architecture and memory are altering the nature, as well as, our understanding of identity.

Cutting across boundaries, the book drives discussion of identity beyond the well-worn concern for its loss within a globalised context, and importantly provides links...

From participatory architecture to interaction design, the question of how design accommodates use is driving inquiry in many creative fields. Expanding utility to embrace people s everyday experience brings new promises for the social role of design. But this is nothing new. As the essays assembled in this collection show, interest in the elusive realm of the user was an essential part of architecture and design throughout the twentieth century. "Use Matters" is the first to assemble this alternative history, from the bathroom to the city, from ergonomics to cybernetics, and from Algeria...

A pioneering title, High Definition explores the onslaught of new and highly accurate digital metrology tools in large- and small-scale 3-D scanning and 3-D modelling. Capable of measuring space to an accuracy of less than 1 mm, these tools offer unprecedented precision for the development and interrogation of design before, during and post production. Over the last decade or so, the array of designers' digital tools to propose and make their ideas have evolved significantly, but the absence of high-accuracy, zero-tolerance design production has often remained the missing piece...

Architecture and the Paradox of Dissidence maps out and expands upon the methodologies of architectural action and reinvigorates the concept of dissent within the architectural field. It expands the notion of dissidence to other similar practices and strategies of resistance, in a variety of historical and geographical contexts.The book also discusses how the gestures and techniques of past struggles, as well as dilemmas of working in politically suppressive regimes, can help to inform those of today.

This collection of essays from expert scholars demonstrates the multiple responses to...

Vittorio Gregotti the architect of Barcelona s Olympic Stadium, Milan s Arcimboldi Opera Theater, and Lisbon s Centro Cultural de Belem, among many other noted constructions is not only a designer of international repute but an acclaimed theorist and critic. "Architecture, Means and Ends "is his practical and imaginative reflection on the role of the technical aspects of architectural design, both as part of the larger process of innovation and in relation to the mythic opposition between vision and construction.

Interweaving the seemingly irreconcilable concerns of aesthetics, meaning,...

Japanese architect Arata Isozaki sees buildings not as dead objects but as events that encompass the social and historical context -- not to be defined forever by their "everlasting materiality" but as texts to be interpreted and reread continually. In Japan-ness in Architecture, he identifies what is essentially Japanese in architecture from the seventh to the twentieth century. In the opening essay, Isozaki analyzes the struggles of modern Japanese architects, including himself, to create something uniquely Japanese out of modernity. He then circles back in history to find what he...

Through a series of close readings of two major figures of the modern movement, Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier, Beatriz Colomina argues that architecture only becomes modern in its engagement with the mass media, and that in so doing it radically displaces the traditional sense of space and subjectivity.Privacy and Publicity boldly questions certain ideological assumptions underlying the received view of modern architecture and reconsiders the methodology of architectural criticism itself. Where conventional criticism portrays modern architecture as a high artistic practice in opposition to...

In Enduring Innocence, Keller Easterling tells the stories of outlaw "spatial products" -- resorts, information technology campuses, retail chains, golf courses, ports, and other hybrid spaces that exist outside normal constituencies and jurisdictions -- in difficult political situations around the world. These spaces -- familiar commercial formulas of retail, business, and trade -- aspire to be worlds unto themselves, self-reflexive and innocent of politics. But as Easterling shows, in reality these enclaves can become political pawns and objects of contention. Jurisdictionally...

In this exploration of the relationship between modernity, dwelling, and architecture, Hilde Heynen attempts to bridge the gap between the discourse of the modern movement and cultural theories of modernity. On one hand, she discusses architecture from the perspective of critical theory, and on the other, she modifies positions within critical theory by linking them with architecture. She assesses architecture as a cultural field that structures daily life and that embodies major contradictions inherent in modernity, arguing that architecture nonetheless has a certain capacity to adopt a...

The contributors to this highly original collection of essays explore the relationship between food and architecture, asking what can be learned by examining the (often metaphorical) intersection of the preparation of meals and the production of space. In a culture that includes the Food Channel and the knife-juggling chefs of Benihana, food has become not only an obsession but an alternative art form. The nineteen essays and "Gallery of Recipes" in Eating Architecture seize this moment to investigate how art and architecture engage issues of identity, ideology, conviviality,...

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...

Ayrshire and Arran is an area of striking contrasts. Its landscape ranges from sand dunes to rolling pastures to moors. The local architecture is similarly diverse, marrying natural beauty with industry and modernity. This survey, featuring specially commissioned photographs and maps, offers the kind of detailed and comprehensive analysis for which the Pevsner Architectural Guides are known. Highlights include the monument at the Skelmorlie Aisle and Robert Burns's birthplace in Alloway; the stones of Machrie Moor; medieval castles and planned towns; early churches and abbeys; and some of...

James Stirling (1924-1992) is acclaimed as the most influential and controversial modern British architect. His partnership with James Gowan (b. 1923) between 1956 and 1963 put postwar British architecture on the international map, and their Leicester University Engineering Building became an iconic monument for a new kind of modernism.

Mark Crinson's book is the most thoroughly researched study of Stirling and Gowan's partnership to date. Based on extensive interviews and archival research, Crinson argues that their work was the product of two equally creative partners whose...