Architecture's Evil Empire?

Architecture's Evil Empire? PDF Author: Miles Glendinning
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1861899815
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
From Chicago to Toronto to Shanghai, cities around the world have sprouted “iconic” buildings by celebrity architects like Frank Gehry and Daniel Libeskind that compete for attention both on the skyline and in the media. But in recent years, criticism of these extreme “gestural” structures, known for their often-exaggerated forms, has been growing. Miles Glendinning’s impassioned polemic, Architecture’s Evil Empire, looks at how today’s trademark architectural individualism stretches beyond the well-known works and ultimately extends to the entire built environment. Glendinning examines how the global empire of the current modernism emerged—particularly in relation to the excesses of global capitalism—and explains its key organizational and architectural features, placing its most influential theorists and designers in a broader context of history and artistic movements. Arguing against the excesses of iconic architecture, Glendinning advocates a vision of modern renewal that seeks to remedy the shattered and alienated look he sees in contemporary architecture. Mingling scholarship with wry humor and a genuine concern for the state of architecture, Architecture’s Evil Empire will raise many heated debates and appeal to a wide range of readers, from architects to historians, interested in the built environment.

Practiceopolis: Stories from the Architectural Profession

Practiceopolis: Stories from the Architectural Profession PDF Author: Yasser Megahed
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000168484
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This is a graphic novel about the contemporary architectural profession, in which it acts as the protagonist in the form of an imaginary city called Practiceopolis. The novel narrates quasi-realistic stories that exaggerate the architectural everyday and the tacit, in order to make them prominent and tangible. They depict and dramatise the value conflicts between the different cultures of practising architecture and between the architectural profession and other members of the building industry as political conflicts around the future of Practiceopolis. The book uses the metaphorical world of Practiceopolis to provoke big questions about everyday routines in the profession that practitioners may take for granted and to examine different ideologies at work among architects and other members of the construction industry. The novel ends in the tradition of dystopian worlds common in a certain strand of graphic novels. By vividly illustrating and narrating the critical issues he interrogates, the author has created a world which any architect, student or professional, will both instantly recognise and simultaneously reject, provoking the reader to challenge themselves and the profession at large.

Stones of Empire

Stones of Empire PDF Author: Jan Morris
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780192805966
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
The attitude of the British to India was compounded partly of arrogance, but partly also of homesickness, and it shows in their constructions. Georgian terraces were adapted to tropical conditions, Victorian railway stations were elaborately orientalised, and seaside villas were adjusted to suit Himalayan conditions. This book, now reissued with a new introduction by Simon Winchester, is the first to describe the whole range of British constructions in India. Stones of Empire charts an enterprise in architecture, engineering, and social adaptation unique in human history.

The Architecture of Phantasmagoria

The Architecture of Phantasmagoria PDF Author: Libero Andreotti
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131747872X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
In a time of mass-mediated modernity, the city becomes, almost by definition, a constitutively ‘mediated’ city. Today, more than ever before, the omnipresence of media in every sphere of culture is creating a new urban ontology, saturating, fracturing, and exacerbating the manifold experience of city life. The authors describe this condition as one of 'hyper-mediation' – a qualitatively new phase in the city’s historical evolution. The concept of phantasmagoria has pride of place in their study; using it as an all-embracing explanatory framework, they explore its meanings as a critical category to understand the culture, and the architecture, of the contemporary city. Andreotti and Lahiji argue that any account of architecture that does not include understanding the role and function of media and its impact on the city in the present ‘tele-technological-capitalist’ society is fundamentally flawed and incomplete. Their approach moves from Walter Benjamin, through the concepts of phantasmagoria and of media – as theorized also by Theodor Adorno, Siegfried Kracauer, and a new generation of contemporary critics – towards a new socio-critical and aesthetic analysis of the mediated space of the contemporary city.

The Conservation Movement

The Conservation Movement PDF Author: Miles Glendinning
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415499992
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
Shortlisted for the 2014 SAHGB Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion. Certainly, ancient structures have long been treated with care and reverence in many societies, including classical Rome and Greece. But only in modern Europe and America, in the last two centuries, has this care been elaborated and energised into a forceful, dynamic ideology: a 'Conservation Movement', infused with a sense of historical destiny and loss, that paradoxically shared many of the characteristics of Enlightenment modernity. Miles Glendinning's new book authoritatively presents, for the first time, the entire history of architectural conservation, and traces its dramatic fluctuations in ideas and popularity, ending by questioning whether its recent international ascendancy can last indefinitely.

The Icon Project

The Icon Project PDF Author: Leslie Sklair
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190464186
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
The Icon Project argues that the transnational capitalist class mobilizes two forms of iconic architecture--unique icons recognized as works of art, notably designed by global starchitects (such as Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid); and typical icons copying elements of unique icons--to promote the same ideological message: the culture-ideology of consumerism.

The Conservation Movement: A History of Architectural Preservation

The Conservation Movement: A History of Architectural Preservation PDF Author: Miles Glendinning
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136167013
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
Winner of the 2016 Antoinette Forrester Downing Award presented by the Society of Architectural Historians. In many cities across the world, particularly in Europe, old buildings form a prominent part of the built environment, and we often take it for granted that their contribution is intrinsically positive. How has that widely-shared belief come about, and is its continued general acceptance inevitable? Certainly, ancient structures have long been treated with care and reverence in many societies, including classical Rome and Greece. But only in modern Europe and America, in the last two centuries, has this care been elaborated and energised into a forceful, dynamic ideology: a ‘Conservation Movement’, infused with a sense of historical destiny and loss, that paradoxically shared many of the characteristics of Enlightenment modernity. The close inter-relationship between conservation and modern civilisation was most dramatically heightened in periods of war or social upheaval, beginning with the French Revolution, and rising to a tragic climax in the 20th-century age of totalitarian extremism; more recently the troubled relationship of ‘heritage’ and global commercialism has become dominant. Miles Glendinning’s new book authoritatively presents, for the first time, the entire history of this architectural Conservation Movement, and traces its dramatic fluctuations in ideas and popularity, ending by questioning whether its recent international ascendancy can last indefinitely.

Forgotten Empire

Forgotten Empire PDF Author: Béatrice André-Salvini
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520247310
Category : Achaemenid dynasty
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
A richly-illustrated and important book that traces the rise and fall of one of the ancient world's largest and richest empires.

Museum Architecture

Museum Architecture PDF Author: Suzanne MacLeod
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134053622
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
Recent decades have witnessed an explosion of museum building around the world and the subsequent publication of multiple texts dedicated to the subject. Museum Architecture: A new biography focuses on the stories we tell of museum buildings in order to explore the nature of museum architecture and the problems of architectural history when applied to the museum and gallery. Starting from a discussion of the key issues in contemporary museum design, the book explores the role of architectural history in the prioritisation of specific stories of museum building and museum architects and the exclusion of other actors from the history of museum making. These omissions have contemporary relevance and impact directly on the ways in which the physical structures of museums are shaped. Theoretically, the book places a particular emphasis on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Henri Lefebvre in order to establish an understanding of buildings as social relations; the outcome of complex human interactions and relationships. The book utilises a micro history, an in-depth case study of the ‘National Gallery of the North’, the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, to expose the myriad ways in which museum architecture is made. Coupled with this detailed exploration is an emphasis on contemporary museum design which utilises the understanding of the social realities of museum making to explore ideas for a socially sustainable museum architecture fit for the twenty-first century.

Design Capital

Design Capital PDF Author: Sherry McKay
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000605566
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
Well-designed infrastructure brings social value that far exceeds its initial construction expenditure, but competition for scarce government funds and a general public perception of infrastructure as mere efficiency, has often left design ill-considered. This book provides designers with the tools needed to argue for the value of design: the ‘design capital’ as the authors term it. In naming and defining design capital, design can once again become part of the discussion and realization of every infrastructure project. Design Capital offers strategies and tools for justifying public spending on design considerations in infrastructure projects. Design has the ability to make infrastructure resonate with cultural or social value, as seen in the case studies, which bestows infrastructure with the potential to accrue design capital. Support for this proposition is drawn from various methodologies of economic valuation and Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital, explanation of design methodology and education and a series of historical and contemporary case studies. The book also addresses some of the more controversial outcomes associated with contemporary infrastructure: gentrification, globalization and consumer tourism. With this book, designers can make a stronger case for the value of design in public infrastructure.