Boredom and the Architectural Imagination

Boredom and the Architectural Imagination PDF Author: Andreea Mihalache
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813951585
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
Boredom as an impetus for architectural theory and practice Any theorist or practitioner of architecture must confront, and even be compelled by, boredom. Called ennui, Langeweile, or acedia, boredom is a pressing concern, as the production and obsolescence of images accelerates with new technologies, leaving individuals saturated with information presented in fleeting displays that are easy to produce, easy to delete, and easy to consume. In this innovative book, Andreea Mihalache discusses the work of a quartet of well-known thinkers—designer Bernard Rudofsky, architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, and artist Saul Steinberg—who all recognized this form of exhaustion and shallowness as the disease of the modern world. Rudofsky found it in a deeper and more intimate engagement between the human body and its environment. Proclaiming “Less is a bore,” Venturi, and later Scott Brown, explored excess as the remedy to boredom. With detachment and irony, Steinberg mocked the homogenous architecture of the American city. Taken together, Mihalache shows, these four offer a comprehensive view of the alienated relationship of individuals with their world at three different, yet interrelated scales: the body, the building, and the urban space.

Boredom and the Architectural Imagination

Boredom and the Architectural Imagination PDF Author: Andreea Mihalache
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813951585
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 311

Get Book Here

Book Description
Boredom as an impetus for architectural theory and practice Any theorist or practitioner of architecture must confront, and even be compelled by, boredom. Called ennui, Langeweile, or acedia, boredom is a pressing concern, as the production and obsolescence of images accelerates with new technologies, leaving individuals saturated with information presented in fleeting displays that are easy to produce, easy to delete, and easy to consume. In this innovative book, Andreea Mihalache discusses the work of a quartet of well-known thinkers—designer Bernard Rudofsky, architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, and artist Saul Steinberg—who all recognized this form of exhaustion and shallowness as the disease of the modern world. Rudofsky found it in a deeper and more intimate engagement between the human body and its environment. Proclaiming “Less is a bore,” Venturi, and later Scott Brown, explored excess as the remedy to boredom. With detachment and irony, Steinberg mocked the homogenous architecture of the American city. Taken together, Mihalache shows, these four offer a comprehensive view of the alienated relationship of individuals with their world at three different, yet interrelated scales: the body, the building, and the urban space.

Modern American Poetry and the Architectural Imagination

Modern American Poetry and the Architectural Imagination PDF Author: Jo Gill
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192638815
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Modern American Poetry and the Architectural Imagination: The Harmony of Forms assesses the relationship between architectural and poetic innovation in the United States across the twentieth century. Taking the work of five key poets as case studies and drawing on the work of a rich range of other writers, architects, artists, and commentators, this study proposes that by examining the sustained and productive—if hitherto overlooked—engagement between the two disciplines, we enrich our understanding of the complexity and interrelationship of both. The book begins by tracing the rise of what was conceived of as 'modern' (and often 'international style') architecture and by showing how poetry and architecture in the early decades of the century developed in dialogue, and within a shared, and often transnational, context. It then moves on to examine the material, aesthetic, and social conditions that helped shape both disciplines, offering new readings of familiar poems and bringing other pertinent resources to light. It considers the uses to which poets of the period put the insights of architecture—and vice versa. In closing, Gill turns to modern and contemporary architects' written accounts of their own practice, in memoirs and other commentaries, and examines how they have assimilated, or resisted, the practice and vision of poetry.

Boredom and the Religious Imagination

Boredom and the Religious Imagination PDF Author: Michael L. Raposa
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813919256
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
The Gospel of Mark depicts a prayerful and passionate Jesus juxtaposed with his drowsy disciples in Gethsemane. Their failure to discern what is happening in their midst, Raposa suggests, is a powerful example of what medieval Christian theologians called "acedia," their term for boredom with the rituals of spiritual devotion. But these descriptions of acedia bear a striking resemblance to mystical accounts of the "dark night," a terrifying although necessary stage in the mystic's spiritual journey. Drawing on this notion and others from Eastern and Western religious traditions, Raposa asks us to see boredom as playing an ambivalent role in spiritual life, often serving as a metaphorical midwife for the birth of religious knowledge.

The Emerald City and Other Essays on the Architectural Imagination

The Emerald City and Other Essays on the Architectural Imagination PDF Author: Daniel Willis
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
ISBN: 9781568981741
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
In The Emerald City, Dan Willis takes us on a flight of imagination that paradoxically never strays far from the most tangible, even intimate subjects. His essays range from the Tower of Babel to the Wizard of Oz, from Christo to Christmas trees, from the "lightness of being" to the "weight of architecture." This ultimately optimistic book suggests that architecture is as vital as ever: "It is tempting to say that our present cultural situation...has rendered architecture nearly impossible if not unnecessary. But it is also possible to look to what our lives, at the turn of the millennium, typically lack-fulfillment, spirituality, a sense of belonging, weight-and to conclude that the ground for architecture has never been more fertile. The texts-intelligent and readable-draw equally from literary sources, architectural practice, philosophical analyses, pop culture, and everyday experiences. Willis's perspective as a writer, architect, artist, and teacher informs his work; his texts are at once reflective and proactive, as they challenge readers to rethink their participation in the built environment. Accompanying the text are the author's original illustrations, which link the forms and forces surrounding architecture at the end of the twentieth century in novel, thought-provoking ways.

Reading Architecture

Reading Architecture PDF Author: Angeliki Sioli
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315402882
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
Why write instead of draw when it comes to architecture? Why rely on literary pieces instead of architectural treatises and writings when it comes to the of study buildings and urban environments? Why rely on literary techniques and accounts instead of architectural practices and analysis when it comes to academic research and educational projects? Why trust authors and writers instead of sociologists or scientists when it comes to planning for the future of cities? This book builds on the existing interdisciplinary bibliography on architecture and literature, but prioritizes literature’s capacity to talk about the lived experience of place and the premise that literary language can often express the inexpressible. It sheds light on the importance of a literary instead of a pictorial imagination for architects and it looks into four contemporary architectural subjects through a wide variety of literary works. Drawing on novels that engage cities from around the world, the book reveals aspects of urban space to which other means of architectural representation are blind. Whether through novels that employ historical buildings or sites interpreted through specific literary methods, it suggests a range of methodologies for contemporary architectural academic research. By exploring the power of narrative language in conveying the experience of lived space, it discusses its potential for architectural design and pedagogy. Questioning the massive architectural production of today’s globalized capital-driven world, it turns to literature for ways to understand, resist or suggest alternative paths for architectural practice. Despite literature’s fictional character, the essays of this volume reveal true dimensions of and for places beyond their historical, social and political reality; dimensions of utmost importance for architects, urban planners, historians and theoreticians nowadays.

The Essential Russell Kirk

The Essential Russell Kirk PDF Author: Russell Kirk
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1684516145
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 583

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Book Description
As the author of The Conservative Mind and other seminal books, Russell Kirk is usually thought of as one of the American conservative political movement’s most important progenitors. But as this collection demonstrates, Kirk was perhaps at his best as an essayist. This volume also confirms that Kirk’s was principally a literary and historical conservatism that refused to fit the irreducible complexity of human experience to the requirements of any ideological straitjacket. With The Essential Russell Kirk, literary critic George A. Panichas captures the breadth and depth of Kirk’s intellectual project by gathering together forty-four of the most masterful of Kirk’s essays, along with a unique chronology told in Kirk’s own words and a substantial introduction that articulates the deep humanism that animated Kirk’s philosophy. The result is a carefully assembled volume that gives us a fuller picture of an extraordinary man and writer, one whose labors had, and continue to have, remarkable repercussions on the American literary and political landscape.

Boredom, Architecture, and Spatial Experience

Boredom, Architecture, and Spatial Experience PDF Author: Christian Parreno
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350148156
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Boredom is a ubiquitous feature of modern life. Endured by everyone, it is both cause and effect of modernity, and of situations, spaces and surroundings. As such, this book argues, boredom shares an intimate relationship with architecture-one that has been seldom explored in architectural history and theory. Boredom, Architecture, and Spatial Experience investigates that relationship, showing how an understanding of boredom affords us a new way of looking at and understanding the modern experience. It reconstructs a series of episodes in architectural history, from the 19th century to the present, to survey how boredom became a normalized component of the everyday, how it infiltrated into the production and reception of architecture, and how it serves to diagnose moments of crisis in the continuous transformations of the built environment. Erudite and innovative, the work moves deftly from architectural theory and philosophy to literature and psychology to make its case. Combining archival material, scholarly sources, and illuminating excerpts from conversations with practitioners and thinkers-including Charles Jencks, Rem Koolhaas, Sylvia Lavin, and Jorge Silvetti-it reveals the complexity and importance of boredom in architecture.

The Interior Architecture Theory Reader

The Interior Architecture Theory Reader PDF Author: Gregory Marinic
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317434994
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description
The Interior Architecture Theory Reader presents a global compilation that collectively and specifically defines interior architecture. Diverse views and comparative resources for interior architecture students, educators, scholars, and practitioners are needed to develop a proper canon for this young discipline. As a theoretical survey of interior architecture, the book examines theory, history, and production to embrace a full range of interior identities in architecture, interior design, digital fabrication, and spatial installation. Authored by leading educators, theorists, and practitioners, fifty chapters refine and expand the discourse surrounding interior architecture.

The Venice Variations

The Venice Variations PDF Author: Sophia Psarra
Publisher: UCL Press
ISBN: 1787352390
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
From the myth of Arcadia through to the twenty-first century, ideas about sustainability – how we imagine better urban environments – remain persistently relevant, and raise recurring questions. How do cities evolve as complex spaces nurturing both urban creativity and the fortuitous art of discovery, and by which mechanisms do they foster imagination and innovation? While past utopias were conceived in terms of an ideal geometry, contemporary exemplary models of urban design seek technological solutions of optimal organisation. The Venice Variations explores Venice as a prototypical city that may hold unique answers to the ancient narrative of utopia. Venice was not the result of a preconceived ideal but the pragmatic outcome of social and economic networks of communication. Its urban creativity, though, came to represent the quintessential combination of place and institutions of its time. Through a discussion of Venice and two other works owing their inspiration to this city – Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital – Sophia Psarra describes Venice as a system that starts to resemble a highly probabilistic ‘algorithm’, that is, a structure with a small number of rules capable of producing a large number of variations. The rapidly escalating processes of urban development around our big cities share many of the motivations for survival, shelter and trade that brought Venice into existence. Rather than seeing these places as problems to be solved, we need to understand how urban complexity can evolve, as happened from its unprepossessing origins in the marshes of the Venetian lagoon to the ‘model city’ that endured a thousand years. This book frees Venice from stereotypical representations, revealing its generative capacity to inform potential other ‘Venices’ for the future.

Ceilings and Dreams

Ceilings and Dreams PDF Author: Paul Emmons
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135106584X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
Where is the space for dreaming in the twenty-first century? Lofty thoughts, like dreams, are born and live overhead, just as they have been represented in Renaissance paintings and modern cartoons. Ceilings are often repositories of stories, events and otherwise invisible oneiric narratives. Yet environments that inspire innovative thinking are dwindling as our world confronts enormous challenges, and almost all of our thinking, debating and decision-making takes place under endless ceiling grids. Quantitative research establishes that spaces with taller ceilings elicit broader, more creative thoughts. Today, ceilings are usually squat conduits of technology: they have become the blind spot of modern architecture. The twenty essays in this book look across cultures, places and ceilings over time to discover their potential to uplift the human spirit. Not just one building element among many, the ceiling is a key to unlock the architectural imagination. Ceilings and Dreams aims to correct this blind spot and encourages architects and designers, researchers and students, to look up through writings organized into three expansive categories: reveries, suspensions and inversions. The contributors contemplate the architecture of levity and the potential of the ceiling, once again, as a place for dreaming.