When Culture Meets Architecture

When Culture Meets Architecture

Author: Qian Yin

Publisher: Design Media Publishing Limited

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789881545053

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As the most individualized civil architecture, buildings for cultural events are the best stage for architects to practise their dreams, to express their perceptions to architectural art and ambitions. When culture meets architecture, some memories, some scenes or an attitude will find its medium to exist as a real and touchable thing. Besides those architectures that record a history or provide information, such as museum, library, memorial, archives centre and the like, more and more multi-functions cultural centres were built in cities, where people gather together for social event, entertainment, or sports, and they are also the new plaza where people can impress their sense of the city s identification deeper. Selected buildings for culture around the world are included in this book, with an invitation to witness the meeting between culture and architecture."


Book Synopsis When Culture Meets Architecture by : Qian Yin

Download or read book When Culture Meets Architecture written by Qian Yin and published by Design Media Publishing Limited. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the most individualized civil architecture, buildings for cultural events are the best stage for architects to practise their dreams, to express their perceptions to architectural art and ambitions. When culture meets architecture, some memories, some scenes or an attitude will find its medium to exist as a real and touchable thing. Besides those architectures that record a history or provide information, such as museum, library, memorial, archives centre and the like, more and more multi-functions cultural centres were built in cities, where people gather together for social event, entertainment, or sports, and they are also the new plaza where people can impress their sense of the city s identification deeper. Selected buildings for culture around the world are included in this book, with an invitation to witness the meeting between culture and architecture."


K-architecture

K-architecture

Author: Lim Jinyoung

Publisher: 길잡이미디어

Published: 2014-04-16

Total Pages: 133

ISBN-13: 897375582X

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This book offers an exploration of the lesser-known aspects of this dynamically changing field, starting with a look at the paradigmatic forms of traditional architecture before moving on to examining the issues and currents that have unfolded in architecture as it developed on Korean soil in the era of postmodernism?and began to find its way into the world. By taking a historical approach with the more noteworthy developments in Korean architecture, it seeks to support a new understanding, a rediscovery, of a field in full flux. Bustling Cities, Rising Architecture Rediscovering Korean Architecture Taking the Global Stage The History of Korean Architecture Stone Pagodas and Temple Architecture The Beauty of Column-head Brackets and Entasis Humble Spaces in Harmony with Nature East Meets West; Tradition Meets Modernity Korean Spirit Embodied in Traditional Architecture Bulguksa Temple and Seokguram Grotto Muryangsujeon Hall at Buseoksa Temple Janggyeongpanjeon Hall at Haeinsa Temple Changdeokgung Palace Jongmyo Shrine Yangdong Village Soswaewon Garden Dosan Seowon and Byeongsan Seowon Confucian Academies Hwaseong Fortress Seongyojang House Korean Modernism and Its Legacies Two Giants of Korean Modernism The 4.3 Group and Architectural Humanities Standing at the Boundary of Korean and Global Pushing the Envelope: New Ideas and Experiments Beyond the “City of Rooms” A New Housing Culture between the Beehives Evolution of Korean Modernism Landscape Architecture and the Transforming Cityscape Reinterpretation of Hanok


Book Synopsis K-architecture by : Lim Jinyoung

Download or read book K-architecture written by Lim Jinyoung and published by 길잡이미디어. This book was released on 2014-04-16 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers an exploration of the lesser-known aspects of this dynamically changing field, starting with a look at the paradigmatic forms of traditional architecture before moving on to examining the issues and currents that have unfolded in architecture as it developed on Korean soil in the era of postmodernism?and began to find its way into the world. By taking a historical approach with the more noteworthy developments in Korean architecture, it seeks to support a new understanding, a rediscovery, of a field in full flux. Bustling Cities, Rising Architecture Rediscovering Korean Architecture Taking the Global Stage The History of Korean Architecture Stone Pagodas and Temple Architecture The Beauty of Column-head Brackets and Entasis Humble Spaces in Harmony with Nature East Meets West; Tradition Meets Modernity Korean Spirit Embodied in Traditional Architecture Bulguksa Temple and Seokguram Grotto Muryangsujeon Hall at Buseoksa Temple Janggyeongpanjeon Hall at Haeinsa Temple Changdeokgung Palace Jongmyo Shrine Yangdong Village Soswaewon Garden Dosan Seowon and Byeongsan Seowon Confucian Academies Hwaseong Fortress Seongyojang House Korean Modernism and Its Legacies Two Giants of Korean Modernism The 4.3 Group and Architectural Humanities Standing at the Boundary of Korean and Global Pushing the Envelope: New Ideas and Experiments Beyond the “City of Rooms” A New Housing Culture between the Beehives Evolution of Korean Modernism Landscape Architecture and the Transforming Cityscape Reinterpretation of Hanok


A Radical Vision by OPEN

A Radical Vision by OPEN

Author:

Publisher: Rizzoli Publications

Published: 2022-04-12

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 8891831956

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This book presents the radical architectural strategies and poetic cultural projects developed by OPEN Architecture, and the opportunities and challenges that arise from redefining built forms. Drawing on a series of conversations and site visits to six recent groundbreaking projects, architecture writer Catherine Shaw describes how Beijing-based OPEN Architecture is reinventing and responding to China’s complex and fast-changing cultural landscape with projects that mark a new era for contemporary Chinese cultural architecture. OPEN Architecture was founded in New York in 2003 by Li Hu and Huang Wenjing, while their Beijing office opened in 2008. From a contemporary art gallery buried beneath a sand dune to a sculptural open-air theatre in a remote mountain valley near the Great Wall, co-founders Li Hu and Huang Wenjing re-evaluate conventional Western assumptions about culture and design as they base each pioneering project on the needs and plea-sures of humanity within the context of diverse terrains and climates. In doing so, they not only consider how cultural architecture looks, but how it works. Projects are presented with commentary and contextual information as well as new analyses and archival material, including outstanding color photography, plans and drawings, and exploratory sketches. This book provides a fresh perspective on contemporary cultural architecture and place making, hig-lighting the architects’ sources of inspiration, their challenges, and their construction methods, showing how each impactful project responds to China’s distinctive context.


Book Synopsis A Radical Vision by OPEN by :

Download or read book A Radical Vision by OPEN written by and published by Rizzoli Publications. This book was released on 2022-04-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the radical architectural strategies and poetic cultural projects developed by OPEN Architecture, and the opportunities and challenges that arise from redefining built forms. Drawing on a series of conversations and site visits to six recent groundbreaking projects, architecture writer Catherine Shaw describes how Beijing-based OPEN Architecture is reinventing and responding to China’s complex and fast-changing cultural landscape with projects that mark a new era for contemporary Chinese cultural architecture. OPEN Architecture was founded in New York in 2003 by Li Hu and Huang Wenjing, while their Beijing office opened in 2008. From a contemporary art gallery buried beneath a sand dune to a sculptural open-air theatre in a remote mountain valley near the Great Wall, co-founders Li Hu and Huang Wenjing re-evaluate conventional Western assumptions about culture and design as they base each pioneering project on the needs and plea-sures of humanity within the context of diverse terrains and climates. In doing so, they not only consider how cultural architecture looks, but how it works. Projects are presented with commentary and contextual information as well as new analyses and archival material, including outstanding color photography, plans and drawings, and exploratory sketches. This book provides a fresh perspective on contemporary cultural architecture and place making, hig-lighting the architects’ sources of inspiration, their challenges, and their construction methods, showing how each impactful project responds to China’s distinctive context.


Reading Architecture and Culture

Reading Architecture and Culture

Author: Adam Sharr

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0415601428

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Introducing the notion of appreciating buildings as cultural artefacts, this book presents insightful readings by eminent writers which show the power of this approach. Reading architecture in this way can help architects to appreciate the contexts in which they operate when they design. This book introduces, outlines and elaborates on this and opens-up powerful insights for historians, critics and students.


Book Synopsis Reading Architecture and Culture by : Adam Sharr

Download or read book Reading Architecture and Culture written by Adam Sharr and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introducing the notion of appreciating buildings as cultural artefacts, this book presents insightful readings by eminent writers which show the power of this approach. Reading architecture in this way can help architects to appreciate the contexts in which they operate when they design. This book introduces, outlines and elaborates on this and opens-up powerful insights for historians, critics and students.


Architecture as a Way of Seeing and Learning

Architecture as a Way of Seeing and Learning

Author: Nerea Amorós Elorduy

Publisher: UCL Press

Published: 2021-08-16

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 1800080115

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At the beginning of 2020, 66 long-term refugee camps existed along the East African Rift. Millions of young children have been born at the camps and have grown up there, yet it is unknown how their surrounding built environments affect their learning and development. Architecture as a Way of Seeing and Learning presents an architect’s take on questions many academics and humanitarians ask. Is it relevant to look at camps through an urban lens and focus on their built environment? Which analytical benefits can architectural and design tools provide to refugee assistance and specifically to young children’s learning? And which advantages can assemblage thinking and situated knowledges bring about in analysing, understanding and transforming long-term refugee camps? Responding to the extreme lack of information about East African camps, Nerea Amorós Elorduy has built contextualised knowledge – nuanced, situated and participatory – to describe, study and transform the East African long-term camps, and uncover hidden agencies in refugee assistance. She uses architecture as a means to create new knowledge collectively, include more local voices and speculate on how to improve the educational landscape for young children. With this book, Amorós Elorduy brings nuance, contextualisation and empathy to the study and management of long-term refugee camps in East Africa. It is empathy, she argues, that will help change mindsets, decolonise humanitarian refugee assistance and its study. Crossing architecture, humanitarian aid and early childhood development, this book offers many practical learnings.


Book Synopsis Architecture as a Way of Seeing and Learning by : Nerea Amorós Elorduy

Download or read book Architecture as a Way of Seeing and Learning written by Nerea Amorós Elorduy and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2021-08-16 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the beginning of 2020, 66 long-term refugee camps existed along the East African Rift. Millions of young children have been born at the camps and have grown up there, yet it is unknown how their surrounding built environments affect their learning and development. Architecture as a Way of Seeing and Learning presents an architect’s take on questions many academics and humanitarians ask. Is it relevant to look at camps through an urban lens and focus on their built environment? Which analytical benefits can architectural and design tools provide to refugee assistance and specifically to young children’s learning? And which advantages can assemblage thinking and situated knowledges bring about in analysing, understanding and transforming long-term refugee camps? Responding to the extreme lack of information about East African camps, Nerea Amorós Elorduy has built contextualised knowledge – nuanced, situated and participatory – to describe, study and transform the East African long-term camps, and uncover hidden agencies in refugee assistance. She uses architecture as a means to create new knowledge collectively, include more local voices and speculate on how to improve the educational landscape for young children. With this book, Amorós Elorduy brings nuance, contextualisation and empathy to the study and management of long-term refugee camps in East Africa. It is empathy, she argues, that will help change mindsets, decolonise humanitarian refugee assistance and its study. Crossing architecture, humanitarian aid and early childhood development, this book offers many practical learnings.


Architecture and the Body, Science and Culture

Architecture and the Body, Science and Culture

Author: Kim Sexton

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-10-20

Total Pages: 446

ISBN-13: 1317281853

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The relationship of architecture to the human body is a centuries-long and complex one, but not always symmetrical. This book opens a space for historians of the visual arts, archaeologists, architects, and digital humanities professionals to reflect upon embodiment, spatiality, science, and architecture in premodern and modern cultural contexts. Architecture and the Body, Science and Culture poses one overarching question: How does a period’s understanding of bodies as objects of science impinge upon architectural thought and design? The answers are sophisticated, interdisciplinary explorations of theory, technology, symbolism, medicine, violence, psychology, deformity, and salvation, and they have unexpected and fascinating implications for architectural design and history. The new research published in this volume reinvigorates the Western survey-style trajectory from Archaic Greece to post‐war Europe with scientifically‐framed, body‐centred provocations. By adding the third factor—science—to the architecture and body equation, this book presents a nuanced appreciation for architectural creativity and its embeddedness in other sets of social, institutional and political relationships. In so doing, it spatializes body theory and ties it to the experience of the built environment in ways that disturb traditional boundaries between the architectural container and the corporeally contained.


Book Synopsis Architecture and the Body, Science and Culture by : Kim Sexton

Download or read book Architecture and the Body, Science and Culture written by Kim Sexton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-20 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relationship of architecture to the human body is a centuries-long and complex one, but not always symmetrical. This book opens a space for historians of the visual arts, archaeologists, architects, and digital humanities professionals to reflect upon embodiment, spatiality, science, and architecture in premodern and modern cultural contexts. Architecture and the Body, Science and Culture poses one overarching question: How does a period’s understanding of bodies as objects of science impinge upon architectural thought and design? The answers are sophisticated, interdisciplinary explorations of theory, technology, symbolism, medicine, violence, psychology, deformity, and salvation, and they have unexpected and fascinating implications for architectural design and history. The new research published in this volume reinvigorates the Western survey-style trajectory from Archaic Greece to post‐war Europe with scientifically‐framed, body‐centred provocations. By adding the third factor—science—to the architecture and body equation, this book presents a nuanced appreciation for architectural creativity and its embeddedness in other sets of social, institutional and political relationships. In so doing, it spatializes body theory and ties it to the experience of the built environment in ways that disturb traditional boundaries between the architectural container and the corporeally contained.


Built to Meet Needs: Cultural Issues in Vernacular Architecture

Built to Meet Needs: Cultural Issues in Vernacular Architecture

Author: Paul Oliver

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2007-06-07

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 1136424059

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The study of vernacular architecture explores the characteristics of domestic buildings in particular regions or localities, and the many social and cultural factors that have contributed to their evolution. In this book, vernacular architecture specialist Paul Oliver brings together a wealth of information that spans over two decades, and the whole globe. Some previously unpublished papers, as well as those only available in hard to find conference proceedings, are brought together in one volume to form a fascinating reference for students and professional architects, as well as all those involved with planning housing schemes in their home countries and overseas.


Book Synopsis Built to Meet Needs: Cultural Issues in Vernacular Architecture by : Paul Oliver

Download or read book Built to Meet Needs: Cultural Issues in Vernacular Architecture written by Paul Oliver and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-06-07 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of vernacular architecture explores the characteristics of domestic buildings in particular regions or localities, and the many social and cultural factors that have contributed to their evolution. In this book, vernacular architecture specialist Paul Oliver brings together a wealth of information that spans over two decades, and the whole globe. Some previously unpublished papers, as well as those only available in hard to find conference proceedings, are brought together in one volume to form a fascinating reference for students and professional architects, as well as all those involved with planning housing schemes in their home countries and overseas.


Architecture Is a Social Act

Architecture Is a Social Act

Author: Sinéad Finnerty-Pyne

Publisher: Frame Publishers

Published: 2020-10-08

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9492311453

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Good architecture is no longer about simply designing a building as an isolated object, but about meeting head-on the forces that are shaping today’s world. Architecture Is a Social Act: Lorcan O'Herlihy Architects [LOHA] addresses how the discipline can be used as a tool to engage in politics, economics, aesthetics, and smart growth by promoting social equity, human interaction, and cultural evolution. The book features 28 projects drawn across LOHA’s nearly 30-year history, a selection that underscores the direct connection between the development of consciously designed buildings and wider efforts to tackle issues that are relevant in a rapidly changing world. LOHA’s projects range from tiny Santa Monica storefronts to vast urban plans in Detroit, Michigan, and Raleigh, North Carolina. From activating main streets, to designing housing of all shapes and sizes, to bringing hope to the homeless, to developing strategic plans for the future growth of cities, all of the work featured is represented within a larger social framework. Each case study is evidence of LOHA’s mastery of scale, form, light, and space that gives people a true sense of place and belonging. Architecture Is a Social Act: Lorcan O'Herlihy Architects [LOHA] points the way ahead for both people and architecture. Features A collection of 28 projects completed over nearly three decades gives readers thorough insight – both visually and conceptually – into the work of LA and Detroit-based firm Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects. An important contribution in a post-pandemic world, the book’s main goal is to spark creative ideas and important questions about how architecture can be used in political engagement, smart growth and social structures, in order to improve our urban landscapes and elevate the human condition. Texts by O’Herlihy (Foreword), Frances Anderton (Introduction), Sinéad Finnerty-Pyne and Greg Goldin (project narratives and Afterword) are accompanied by illustrations and renderings by LOHA, and photography by Iwan Baan, Lawrence Anderson, Paul Vu, and others. The book is organized chronologically (starting in the 1990s and ending in 2020) and broken up into six sections, each representing a tipping point for the practice – periods in which LOHA’s work was launched in new directions that brought new sets of challenges, all of which parallel significant historical events. Readers will gain insight into the practice’s process when engaging a new project/site; understanding its history and context, and how it is informed by the culture and ecology of the people who live there.


Book Synopsis Architecture Is a Social Act by : Sinéad Finnerty-Pyne

Download or read book Architecture Is a Social Act written by Sinéad Finnerty-Pyne and published by Frame Publishers. This book was released on 2020-10-08 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Good architecture is no longer about simply designing a building as an isolated object, but about meeting head-on the forces that are shaping today’s world. Architecture Is a Social Act: Lorcan O'Herlihy Architects [LOHA] addresses how the discipline can be used as a tool to engage in politics, economics, aesthetics, and smart growth by promoting social equity, human interaction, and cultural evolution. The book features 28 projects drawn across LOHA’s nearly 30-year history, a selection that underscores the direct connection between the development of consciously designed buildings and wider efforts to tackle issues that are relevant in a rapidly changing world. LOHA’s projects range from tiny Santa Monica storefronts to vast urban plans in Detroit, Michigan, and Raleigh, North Carolina. From activating main streets, to designing housing of all shapes and sizes, to bringing hope to the homeless, to developing strategic plans for the future growth of cities, all of the work featured is represented within a larger social framework. Each case study is evidence of LOHA’s mastery of scale, form, light, and space that gives people a true sense of place and belonging. Architecture Is a Social Act: Lorcan O'Herlihy Architects [LOHA] points the way ahead for both people and architecture. Features A collection of 28 projects completed over nearly three decades gives readers thorough insight – both visually and conceptually – into the work of LA and Detroit-based firm Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects. An important contribution in a post-pandemic world, the book’s main goal is to spark creative ideas and important questions about how architecture can be used in political engagement, smart growth and social structures, in order to improve our urban landscapes and elevate the human condition. Texts by O’Herlihy (Foreword), Frances Anderton (Introduction), Sinéad Finnerty-Pyne and Greg Goldin (project narratives and Afterword) are accompanied by illustrations and renderings by LOHA, and photography by Iwan Baan, Lawrence Anderson, Paul Vu, and others. The book is organized chronologically (starting in the 1990s and ending in 2020) and broken up into six sections, each representing a tipping point for the practice – periods in which LOHA’s work was launched in new directions that brought new sets of challenges, all of which parallel significant historical events. Readers will gain insight into the practice’s process when engaging a new project/site; understanding its history and context, and how it is informed by the culture and ecology of the people who live there.


The Architecture of Happiness

The Architecture of Happiness

Author: Alain De Botton

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart

Published: 2010-12-03

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1551993872

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Bestselling author Alain de Botton considers how our private homes and public edifices influence how we feel, and how we could build dwellings in which we would stand a better chance of happiness. In this witty, erudite look at how we shape, and are shaped by, our surroundings, Alain de Botton applies Stendhal’s motto that “Beauty is the promise of happiness” to the spaces we inhabit daily. Why should we pay attention to what architecture has to say to us? de Botton asks provocatively. With his trademark lucidity and humour, de Botton traces how human needs and desires have been served by styles of architecture, from stately Classical to minimalist Modern, arguing that the stylistic choices of a society can represent both its cherished ideals and the qualities it desperately lacks. On an individual level, de Botton has deep sympathy for our need to see our selves reflected in our surroundings; he demonstrates with great wisdom how buildings — just like friends — can serve as guardians of our identity. Worrying about the shape of our sofa or the colour of our walls might seem self-indulgent, but de Botton considers the hopes and fears we have for our homes at a new level of depth and insight. When shopping for furniture or remodelling the kitchen, we don’t just consider functionality but also the major questions of aesthetics and the philosophy of art: What is beauty? Can beautiful surroundings make us good? Can beauty bring happiness? The buildings we find beautiful, de Botton concludes, are those that represent our ideas of a meaningful life. The Architecture of Happiness marks a return to what Alain does best — taking on a subject whose allure is at once tantalizing and a little forbidding and offering to readers a completely beguiling and original exploration of the subject. As he did with Proust, philosophy, and travel, now he does with architecture.


Book Synopsis The Architecture of Happiness by : Alain De Botton

Download or read book The Architecture of Happiness written by Alain De Botton and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2010-12-03 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bestselling author Alain de Botton considers how our private homes and public edifices influence how we feel, and how we could build dwellings in which we would stand a better chance of happiness. In this witty, erudite look at how we shape, and are shaped by, our surroundings, Alain de Botton applies Stendhal’s motto that “Beauty is the promise of happiness” to the spaces we inhabit daily. Why should we pay attention to what architecture has to say to us? de Botton asks provocatively. With his trademark lucidity and humour, de Botton traces how human needs and desires have been served by styles of architecture, from stately Classical to minimalist Modern, arguing that the stylistic choices of a society can represent both its cherished ideals and the qualities it desperately lacks. On an individual level, de Botton has deep sympathy for our need to see our selves reflected in our surroundings; he demonstrates with great wisdom how buildings — just like friends — can serve as guardians of our identity. Worrying about the shape of our sofa or the colour of our walls might seem self-indulgent, but de Botton considers the hopes and fears we have for our homes at a new level of depth and insight. When shopping for furniture or remodelling the kitchen, we don’t just consider functionality but also the major questions of aesthetics and the philosophy of art: What is beauty? Can beautiful surroundings make us good? Can beauty bring happiness? The buildings we find beautiful, de Botton concludes, are those that represent our ideas of a meaningful life. The Architecture of Happiness marks a return to what Alain does best — taking on a subject whose allure is at once tantalizing and a little forbidding and offering to readers a completely beguiling and original exploration of the subject. As he did with Proust, philosophy, and travel, now he does with architecture.


Toward A Minor Architecture

Toward A Minor Architecture

Author: Jill Stoner

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2012-03-09

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 0262300281

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A major proposal for a minor architecture, and for the making of spaces out of the already built. Architecture can no longer limit itself to the art of making buildings; it must also invent the politics of taking them apart. This is Jill Stoner's premise for a minor architecture. Her architect's eye tracks differently from most, drawn not to the lauded and iconic but to what she calls “the landscape of our constructed mistakes”—metropolitan hinterlands rife with failed and foreclosed developments, undersubscribed office parks, chain hotels, and abandoned malls. These graveyards of capital, Stoner asserts, may be stripped of their excess and become sites of strategic spatial operations. But first we must dissect and dismantle prevalent architectural mythologies that brought them into being—western obsessions with interiority, with the autonomy of the building-object, with the architect's mantle of celebrity, and with the idea of nature as that which is “other” than the built metropolis. These four myths form the warp of the book. Drawing on the literary theory of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Stoner suggests that minor architectures, like minor literatures, emerge from the bottoms of power structures and within the language of those structures. Yet they too are the result of powerful and instrumental forces. Provoked by collective desires, directed by the instability of time, and celebrating contingency, minor architectures may be mobilized within buildings that are oversaturated, underutilized, or perceived as obsolete. Stoner's provocative challenge to current discourse veers away from design, through a diverse landscape of cultural theory, contemporary fiction, and environmental ethics. Hers is an optimistic and inclusive approach to a more politicized practice of architecture.


Book Synopsis Toward A Minor Architecture by : Jill Stoner

Download or read book Toward A Minor Architecture written by Jill Stoner and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-03-09 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major proposal for a minor architecture, and for the making of spaces out of the already built. Architecture can no longer limit itself to the art of making buildings; it must also invent the politics of taking them apart. This is Jill Stoner's premise for a minor architecture. Her architect's eye tracks differently from most, drawn not to the lauded and iconic but to what she calls “the landscape of our constructed mistakes”—metropolitan hinterlands rife with failed and foreclosed developments, undersubscribed office parks, chain hotels, and abandoned malls. These graveyards of capital, Stoner asserts, may be stripped of their excess and become sites of strategic spatial operations. But first we must dissect and dismantle prevalent architectural mythologies that brought them into being—western obsessions with interiority, with the autonomy of the building-object, with the architect's mantle of celebrity, and with the idea of nature as that which is “other” than the built metropolis. These four myths form the warp of the book. Drawing on the literary theory of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Stoner suggests that minor architectures, like minor literatures, emerge from the bottoms of power structures and within the language of those structures. Yet they too are the result of powerful and instrumental forces. Provoked by collective desires, directed by the instability of time, and celebrating contingency, minor architectures may be mobilized within buildings that are oversaturated, underutilized, or perceived as obsolete. Stoner's provocative challenge to current discourse veers away from design, through a diverse landscape of cultural theory, contemporary fiction, and environmental ethics. Hers is an optimistic and inclusive approach to a more politicized practice of architecture.