The New Science of Cities by
A proposal for a new way to understand cities and their design not as artifacts but as systems composed of flows and networks. In The New Science of Cities, Michael Batty suggests that to understand cities we must view them not simply as places in space but as systems of networks and flows. To understand space, he argues, we must understand flows, and to understand flows, we must understand networks--the relations between objects that compose the system of the city. Drawing on the complexity sciences, social physics, urban economics, transportation theory, regional science, and urban geography, and building on his own previous work, Batty introduces theories and methods that reveal the deep structure of how cities function. Batty presents the foundations of a new science of cities, defining flows and their networks and introducing tools that can be applied to understanding different aspects of city structure. He examines the size of cities, their internal order, the transport routes that define them, and the locations that fix these networks. He introduces methods of simulation that range from simple stochastic models to bottom-up evolutionary models to aggregate land-use transportation models. Then, using largely the same tools, he presents design and decision-making models that predict interactions and flows in future cities. These networks emphasize a notion with relevance for future research and planning: that design of cities is collective action.
Construction Site for Possible Worlds by 
Future Ethics by
'Eloquent, insightful and utterly readable: a must read for anyone who is inventing the future or cares about living in it.' -Christina Wodtke, Stanford University 'Cennydd's long-lens view of ethics is exactly what designers, product managers and builders of today's digital products need.' -Azeem Azhar, Exponential View 'Destined to become a well-thumbed classic.' -Alan Cooper, author of The Inmates Are Running the Asylum. Technology was never neutral; its social, political, and moral impacts have become painfully clear. But the stakes will only get higher as connected cameras will watch over the city, algorithms oversee society's most critical decisions, and transport, jobs, and even war will become automated. The tech industry hasn't yet earned the trust these technologies demand. Based on Cennydd's years of research and consulting, Future Ethics transforms modern ethical theory into practical advice for designers, product managers, and software engineers alike. Cennydd uses the three lenses of modern ethics to focus on some of the tech industry's biggest challenges: unintended consequences and algorithmic bias, the troubling power of persuasive technology, and the dystopias of surveillance, autonomous war, and a post-work future. Future Ethics is an intelligent, quietly provocative book that challenges technologists to stand up for change, and teaches essential ethical principles and methods for building a fairer future. Cennydd Bowles is a London-based designer and writer with fifteen years of experience and clients including Twitter, Ford, Cisco, and the BBC. His focus today is the ethics of emerging technology. He has lectured on the topic at Carnegie Mellon University, Google, and New York's School of Visual Arts, and is a sought-after speaker at technology and design events worldwide.
Critique of Urbanization by
Urbanization is transforming the planet, within and beyond cities, at all spatial scales. In this book, Neil Brenner mobilizes the tools of critical urban theory to deconstruct some of the dominant urban discourses of our time, which naturalize, and thus depoliticize, the enclosures, exclusions, injustices and irrationalities of neoliberal urbanism. In so doing, Brenner advocates a constant reinvention of the framing categories, methods and assumptions of critical urban theory in relation to the rapidly mutating geographies of capitalist urbanization. Only a theory that is dynamic--which is constantly being transformed in relation to the restlessly evolving social worlds and territorial landscapes it aspires to grasp--can be a genuinely critical theory.
The Smart Enough City by
Why technology is not an end in itself, and how cities can be "smart enough," using technology to promote democracy and equity. Smart cities, where technology is used to solve every problem, are hailed as futuristic urban utopias. We are promised that apps, algorithms, and artificial intelligence will relieve congestion, restore democracy, prevent crime, and improve public services. In The Smart Enough City, Ben Green warns against seeing the city only through the lens of technology; taking an exclusively technical view of urban life will lead to cities that appear smart but under the surface are rife with injustice and inequality. He proposes instead that cities strive to be "smart enough" to embrace technology as a powerful tool when used in conjunction with other forms of social change--but not to value technology as an end in itself. In a technology-centric smart city, self-driving cars have the run of downtown and force out pedestrians, civic engagement is limited to requesting services through an app, police use algorithms to justify and perpetuate racist practices, and governments and private companies surveil public space to control behavior. Green describes smart city efforts gone wrong but also smart enough alternatives, attainable with the help of technology but not reducible to technology: a livable city, a democratic city, a just city, a responsible city, and an innovative city. By recognizing the complexity of urban life rather than merely seeing the city as something to optimize, these Smart Enough Cities successfully incorporate technology into a holistic vision of justice and equity.
Design Research in Architecture by
What is the role of design research in the types of insight and knowledge that architects create? That is the central question raised by this book. It acts as the introductory overview for Ashgate's major new series, 'Design Research in Architecture' which has been created in order to establish a firm basis for this emerging field of investigation within architecture. While there have been numerous architects-scholars since the Renaissance who have relied upon the interplay of drawings, models, textual analysis, intellectual ideas and cultural insights to scrutinise the discipline, nonetheless, until recently, there has been a reluctance within architectural culture to acknowledge and accept the role of design research as part of the discourse. However, in many countries around the world, one of the key changes in architecture and architectural education over the last decade has been the acceptance of design as a legitimate research area in its own right and this new series provides a forum where the best proponents of architectural design research can publish their work. This volume provides a broad overview on design research that supports and amplifies the different volumes coming out in the book series. It brings together leading architects and academics to discuss the more general issues involved in design research. At the end, there is an Indicative Bibliography which alludes to a long history of architectural books which can be seen as being in the spirit of design research.
Creative Ecologies by
Architect and philosopher Hélène Frichot examines how the discipline of architecture is theorized and practiced at the periphery. Eschewing a conventionally direct approach to architectural objects - to iconic buildings and big-name architects - she instead explores the background of architectural practice, to introduce the creative ecologies in which architecture exists only in relation to other objects and ideas. Consisting of a series of philosophical encounters with architectural practice that are neither neatly located in one domain nor the other, this book is concerned with 'other ways of doing architecture'. It examines architecture at the limits where it is muddied by alternative disciplinary influences - whether art practice, philosophy or literature. Frichot meets a range of creative characters who work at the peripheries, and who challenge the central assumptions of the discipline, showing that there is no 'core of architecture' - there is rather architecture as a multiplicity of diverse concerns in engagement with local environments and worlds.From an author well-known in the disciplines of architecture and philosophy for her scholarship on Deleuze, this is a radical, accessible, and highly-original approach to design research, deftly engaging with an array of current topics from the Anthropocene to affect theory, new materialism contemporary feminism.
The Form Of Knowledge by
Tokyo-based architect Ryji Fujimura approaches his field as creative relationships between knowledge and form (the materialisation of knowledge), thereby examining and exploring all aspects of design as the prototype of architectural thinking. This volume features Fujimuras recent architectural designs and essays, tracing his attempts to redefine architecture as a dynamic intellectual tool for the realisation of more tolerant societies that appreciate diversity. It is set against the background of todays social context, where people fluctuate between democracy and populism, while algorithms and artificial intelligence handle an ever-increasing volume of information.
Positions on Emancipation by
Is there a place for architecture beyond neoliberal paradigms? While our era of constant crisis demands stronger social and political engagement, architecture has been largely characterized by a lack of strong positions during the last decades. But more recently, one can again observe attitudes that claim to address architecture and urbanism as more engaged with the social and political effects of global capitalism. Against the liberal 'anything goes' and the revival of architectural autonomy, these attitudes believe less in the possibility for even the most experimental architectural object to have a changing effect on society. Their approaches instead vary from activism to the construction of new critical narratives. But how do these attitudes emancipate themselves from capitalism and to what extent are they able to take into account the complexities of the sociopolitical, economical, ecological, and cultural aspects of the production of space? This book relays a passionate debate between some of the most outstanding theoreticians and eloquent protagonists of this new attitude, leaving us with an overview of such postulated ambitions. A debate with Anne-Julchen Bernhardt, Arno Brandlhuber, Gilles Delalex, Manuel Gausa, Rania Ghosn & El Hadi Jazairy, Adrian Lahoud, Bart Lootsma, Markus Miessen, Can Onaner, Laurent Stalder, Peter Swinnen, Pelin Tan, Milica Topalovic, Stephan Truby, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, and Paola Vigano.
Projective Ecologies by
The past two decades have witnessed a resurgence of ecological ideas and ecological thinking in discussions of urbanism, society, culture, and design. The field of ecology has moved from classical determinism and a reductionist Newtonian concern with stability, certainty, and order in favor of more contemporary understandings of dynamic systemic change and the related phenomena of adaptability, resilience, and flexibility. But ecology is not simply a project of the natural sciences. Researchers, theorists, social commentators, and designers have all used ecology as a broader idea or metaphor for a set of conditions and relationships with political, economic, and social implications. Projective Ecologies takes stock of the diversity of contemporary ecological research and theory--embracing Felix Guattari's broader definition of ecology as at once environmental, social, and existential--and speculates on potential paths forward for design practices. Where are ecological thinking and theory now? What do current trajectories of research suggest for future practice? How can advances in ecological research and modeling, in social theory, and in digital visualization inform, with greater rigor, more robust design thinking and practice? How does all of this point to potential paths forward in an age of climate change and the need for adaptation and mitigation? With Contributions of: Jesse M. Keenan, foreword to the second edition Charles Waldheim, foreword to the first edition James Corner Christopher Hight C.S. Holling and M.A. Goldberg Wenche E. Dramstad, James D. Olson, and Richard T.T. Forman Daniel Botkin Erle C. Ellis Jane Wolff Robert E. Cook Peter Del Tredici David Fletcher Frances Westley and Katharine McGowan Sean Lally Sanford Kwinter Co-published by Harvard Graduate School of Design & Actar Publishers
Commodification and Spectacle in Architecture by
More than ever, architectural design is seen as a means to promote commercial goals rather than as an end in itself. Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, for example, simply cannot be considered apart from its intended role as a catalyst for the economic revitalization of Bilbao and its ability to attract tourist dollars, regardless of its architectural merits. A built environment intended to seduce consumers is more likely to offer instant gratification than to invite independent thought and reflection. But how harmful, if at all, is this unprecedented commercialization of architecture? Framed with a provocative introduction by Kenneth Frampton, the contributions to Commodification and Spectacle in Architecture stake out a variety of positions in the debate over the extent to which it is possibleor desirableto escape from, resist, or suggest plausible alternatives to the dominant culture of consumer capitalism. Rejecting any dreamy nostalgia for an idealized present or past in which design is completely divorced from commerceand, in some cases, celebrating the pleasures of spectaclethe individual essays range from indictments of particular architects and critiques of the profession to broader concerns about what the phenomenon of commodification means for the practice of democracy and the health of society. Bringing together an impressive and varied group of critics and practitioners, Commodification and Spectacle in Architecture will help to sharpen the discussion of how design can respond to our hypercommodified culture. Contributors: Michael Benedikt, Luis Fernández-Galiano, Thomas Frank, Kevin Ervin Kelley, Daniel Naegele, Rick Poynor, Michael Sorkin, Wouter Vanstiphout. William S. Saunders is editor of Harvard Design Magazine and assistant dean for external relations at the Harvard Design School. He is the author of Modern Architecture: Photographs by Ezra Stoller. Kenneth Frampton is Ware Professor of Architecture at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation and author of many books, including Labour, Work, and Architecture.
Material Witness by
The evidential role of matter-when media records trace evidence of violence-explored through a series of cases drawn from Kosovo, Japan, Vietnam, and elsewhere. In this book, Susan Schuppli introduces a new operative concept- material witness, an exploration of the evidential role of matter as both registering external events and exposing the practices and procedures that enable matter to bear witness. Organized in the format of a trial, Material Witnessmoves through a series of cases that provide insight into the ways in which materials become contested agents of dispute around which stake holders gather. These cases include an extraordinary videotape documenting the massacre at Izbica, Kosovo, used as war crimes evidence against Slobodan Milosevic; the telephonic transmission of an iconic photograph of a South Vietnamese girl fleeing an accidental napalm attack; radioactive contamination discovered in Canada's coastal waters five years after the accident at Fukushima Daiichi; and the ecological media or "disaster film" produced by the Deep Water Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Each highlights the degree to which a rearrangement of matter exposes the contingency of witnessing, raising questions about what can be known in relationship to that which is seen or sensed, about who or what is able to bestow meaning onto things, and about whose stories will be heeded or dismissed. An artist-researcher, Schuppli offers an analysis that merges her creative sensibility with a forensic imagination rich in technical detail. Her goal is to relink the material world and its affordances with the aesthetic, the juridical, and the political.
Platform Capitalism by
What unites Google and Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, Siemens and GE, Uber and Airbnb? Across a wide range of sectors, these firms are transforming themselves into platforms: businesses that provide the hardware and software foundation for others to operate on. This transformation signals a major shift in how capitalist firms operate and how they interact with the rest of the economy: the emergence of platform capitalism. This book critically examines these new business forms, tracing their genesis from the long downturn of the 1970s to the boom and bust of the 1990s and the aftershocks of the 2008 crisis. It shows how the fundamental foundations of the economy are rapidly being carved up among a small number of monopolistic platforms, and how the platform introduces new tendencies within capitalism that pose significant challenges to any vision of a post-capitalist future. This book will be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how the most powerful tech companies of our time are transforming the global economy."
The edifice complex : the architecture of power by
A thrilling and passionately indignant trawl through vanity's most polluted depths'
THE TIMES
Why do presidents and prime ministers, tycoons and tyrants share such a fascination with grand designs? Is it to impress or terrify, to wield state power, make a bid for immortality or just satisfy their egos? From Hitler's vast Chancellery to Saddam Hussein's Mother of all Battles mosque, from Olympic stadiums to Donald Trump's excesses, Deyan Sudjic examines the murky relationship between buildings, money and politics, revealing the power of architecture - and the architecture of power.
'An often frightening, sometimes hilarious set of stories of brutality, absurdity and occasionally beauty'
EVENING STANDARD
'Punchily written . . . deftly amusing . . . a closely argued, brilliantly marshalled, important book'
DAILY MAIL
'Informed, lively and intelligent . . . an asylum of power-mad politicians and Croesus-rich patrons'
NEW STATESMAN
'By turns funny, acidic, penetrating and provocative ...... as compelling a read as a popular novel'
NORMAN FOSTER
'Ever wondered why totalitarianism and architectural excess go hand in hand? This book details modern architecture's frequent collusion with the bad guys'
WALLPAPER
The Dissolution of Place by
Postmodern architecture - with its return to ornamentality, historical quotation, and low-culture kitsch - has long been seen as a critical and popular anodyne to the worst aspects of modernist architecture: glass boxes built in urban locales as so many interchangeable, generic anti-architectural cubes and slabs. This book extends this debate beyond the modernist/postmodernist rivalry to situate postmodernism as an already superseded concept that has been upended by deconstructionist and virtual architecture as well as the continued turn toward the use of theming in much new public and corporate space. It investigates architecture on the margins of postmodernism -- those places where both architecture and postmodernism begin to break down and to reveal new forms and new relationships. The book examines in detail not only a wide range of architectural phenomena such as theme parks, casinos, specific modernist and postmodernist buildings, but also interrogates architecture in relation to identity, specifically Native American and gay male identities, as they are reflected in new notions of the built environment. In dealing specifically with the intersection between postmodern architecture and virtual and filmic definitions of space, as well as with theming, and gender and racial identities, this book provides provides ground-breaking insights not only into postmodern architecture, but into spatial thinking in general.
Discrimination by Design by
"A fast-moving, insightful, politically astute and upfront feminist examination of the power struggles involved in building and controlling space." -- Women's Review of Books "A readable account of the force of male dominance in the built environment. . . . Those looking to this book for a clearer vision of the changes that need to be made in the organization and design of housing, work, and public space to foster gender equality will not be disappointed." -- Journal of Planning Education and Research "A pioneering work that will pave new territory not only for feminists but all those who are prepared to rethink environmental and societal issues." -- Choice
There are three series of publications that are considered as core textbooks.
The Dissertation by
The Dissertation is one of the most demanding yet potentially most stimulating components of an architectural course. This classic text provides a complete guide to what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and what the major pitfalls are. This is a comprehensive guide to all that an architecture student might need to know about undertaking the dissertation. The book provides a plain guide through the whole process of starting, writing, preparing and submitting a dissertation with minimum stress and frustration. The third edition has been revised throughout to bring the text completely up-to-date for a new generation of students. Crucially, five new and complete dissertations demonstrate and exemplify all the advice and issues raised in the main text. These dissertations are on subjects from the UK, USA, Europe and Asia and offer remarkable insights into how to get it just right.
Architecture in the Space of Flows by
Traditionally, architecture has been preoccupied with the resolution of form. That concern helps to make photogenic buildings, which have received a great deal of attention. This book looks instead at the idea of the flows, which connects things together and moves between things. It is more difficult to discuss, but more necessary, because it is what makes things work. Architects have to think about flow - the flow of people through buildings, the flow of energy into buildings, and waste out of them - but usually the effects of flow do not find expression. The essays gathered here present a collection ofnbsp;exploratory ideas andnbsp;offer an understanding of buildings, people and settlements through concepts of flow.
Writing Urban Space by
From William Blake through to Iain Sinclair, literature has sought to engage with and transform urban space. Architects now seek the input of poets, and storytelling is employed in urban regeneration. Writing Urban Space investigates this relationship between imaginative writing and the built environment.
Complexity by
JPVA Journal of Philosophy and the Visual Arts No 6 Complexity Architecture / Art / Philosophy 'Beginning with complexity will involve working with the recognition that there has always been more than one. Here however this insistent "more than one" will be positioned beyond the scope of semantics; rather than complexity occurring within the range of meaning and taking the form of a generalised polysemy, it will be linked to the nature of the object and to its production. Complexity, therefore, will be inextricably connected to the ontology of the object. What this means is that complexity, in resisting the hold of a semantic idealism on the one hand, and the attempt to give to it the position of being the basis of a new foundationalism on the other, becomes a way of thinking both the presence and the production of objects.' Andrew Benjamin The Journal of Philosophy and the Visual Arts has set new standards in its exploration of themes central to philosophy's relation to the visual arts, illuminating areas of art criticism, architecture, feminism as well as philosophy itself. Rather than simply reflecting current trends it provides a forum in which the real developments in the analysis of the visual arts and its larger cultural and political context can be presented. Articles by well known philosophers and theorists, as well as some lesser known, together with writings by artists and architects allow a strong interdisciplinary approach reflecting the Journal's roots in post-structural theory. Previous issues include: Philosophy & the Visual Arts (No 1) Philosophy & Architecture (No 2) Architecture, Space, Painting (No 3) The Body (No 4) Abstraction (No 5)
Atlas of Emotion by
Atlas of Emotion is a highly original endeavour to map a cultural history of spatio-visual arts. In an evocative montage of words and pictures, emphasises that sight and site but also motion and emotion are irrevocably connected. In so doing, Giuliana Bruno touches on the art of Gerhard Richter and Annette Message, the film making of Peter Greenaway and Michelangelo Antonioni, the origins of the movie palace and its precursors, and her own journeys to her native Naples. Visually luscious and daring in conception, Bruno opens new vistas and understandings at every turn.
Suffragette City by
Suffragette Citybrings together a collection of illustrated essays dedicated to exploring and analysing cases in which women have resourcefully leveraged or defied the politics of gender to form and reform architecture and urbanism. Throughout much of modern history, women have been assigned to the margins and expected to play passive social roles. Suffragette Citydraws on nineteenth- and twentieth-century architectural case studies from the English-speaking world, including the USA, South Africa, Scotland, India and England, to examine places and moments when women stepped into the centre of public life and claimed opportunities to shape the fabrics of their communities. Their engagements with the built environment consistently transcended architecture to achieve the level of urbanism, as whole networks of relationships came into their purview, transforming the architecture of socio-political connection as well as the confronting the physical divisions that have historically lain along racial, economic and gendered lines. Academics, researchers and students engaged in architectural history, theory, urbanism, gender studies and social and cultural history will be interested in this fascinating, politically-charged text.
Extreme Cities by
How will climate change affect our lives' Where will its impacts be most deeply felt' Are we doing enough to protect ourselves from the coming chaos' In Extreme Cities, Ashley Dawson argues that cities are ground zero for climate change, contributing the lion 's share of carbon to the atmosphere, while also lying on the frontlines of rising sea levels. Today, the majority of the world 's megacities are located in coastal zones, yet few of them are adequately prepared for the floods that will increasingly menace their shores. Instead, most continue to develop luxury waterfront condos for the elite and industrial facilities for corporations. These not only intensify carbon emissions, but also place coastal residents at greater risk when water levels rise. In Extreme Cities, Dawson offers an alarming portrait of the future of our cities, describing the efforts of Staten Island, New York, and Shishmareff, Alaska residents to relocate; Holland 's models for defending against the seas; and the development of New York City before and after Hurricane Sandy. Our best hope lies not with fortified sea walls, he argues. Rather, it lies with urban movements already fighting to remake our cities in a more just and equitable way. As much a harrowing study as a call to arms Extreme Cities is a necessary read for anyone concerned with the threat of global warming, and of the cities of the world.
Affective Spaces: Architecture and the Living Body by
This book explores the notion of affective space in relation to architecture. It helps to clarify the first-person, direct experience of the environment and how it impacts a person’s emotional states, influencing their perception of the world around them. Affective space has become a central notion in several discussions across philosophy, geography, anthropology, architecture and so on. However, only a limited selection of its key features finds resonance in architectural and urban theory, especially the idea of atmospheres , through the work of German phenomenologist Gernot Böhme. This book brings to light a wider range of issues bound to lived corporeal experience. These further issues have only received minor attention in architecture, where the discourse on affective space mostly remains superficial. The theory of atmospheres, in particular, is often criticized as being a surface-level, shallow theory as it is introduced in an unsystematic and fragmented fashion, and is a mere "easy to use" segment of what is a wider and all but impressionistic analytical method. This book provides a broader outlook on the topic and creates an entry point into a hitherto underexplored field. The book’s theoretical foundation rests on a wide range of non-architectural sources, primarily from philosophy, anthropology and the cognitive sciences, and is strengthened through cases drawn from actual architectural and urban space. These cases make the book more comprehensible for readers not versed in contemporary philosophical trends. 1. Introduction. Life in Space 2. What is Space all About? 3. Objects and Stranger Things 4. The Living Body 5. Sensing the Environment 6. Motion, Emotion 7. Gestures and Rituals 8. The Space between Subjects 9. The Feeling Space 10. Forms of Time 11. The Affective City 12. Interiors 13. On the Archaeology of Emotions 14. The Primacy of Feeling Federico De Matteis is Associate Professor of Architectural Design at the University of L’Aquila. He has written articles and monographs on issues related to urban design and regeneration. His recent research focuses on the affective dimension of urban and architectural space.
Make_Shift City by
Make_Shift City looks at urban design strategies that renegotiate and emancipate shared spaces and resources within the city, showing how the increasing scarcity of resources and commons--particularly in Western cities--have far-reaching consequences for the everyday urban experience.
The Rent of Form by
A critique of prominent architects' approach to digitally driven design and labor practices over the past two decades With the advent of revolutionary digital design and production technologies, contemporary architects and their clients developed a taste for dramatic, unconventional forms. Seeking to amaze their audiences and promote their global brands, "starchitects" like Herzog & de Meuron and Frank Gehry have reaped substantial rewards through the pursuit of spectacle enabled by these new technologies. This process reached a climax in projects like Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao and the "Bilbao effect," in which spectacular architectural designs became increasingly sought by municipal and institutional clients for their perceived capacity to enhance property values, which author Pedro Fiori Arantes calls the "rent of form." Analyzing many major international architectural projects of the past twenty years, Arantes provides an in-depth account of how this "architecture of exception" has come to dominate today's industry. Articulating an original, compelling critique of the capital and labor practices that enable many contemporary projects, Arantes explains how circulation (via image culture), consumption (particularly through tourism), the division of labor, and the distribution of wealth came to fix a certain notion of starchitecture at the center of the industry. Significantly, Arantes's viewpoint is not that of Euro-American capitalism. Writing from the Global South, this Brazilian theorist offers a fresh perspective that advances ideas less commonly circulated in dominant, English-language academic and popular discourse. Asking key questions about the prevailing logics of finance capital, and revealing inconvenient truths about the changing labor of design and the treatment of construction workers around the world, The Rent of Form delivers a much-needed reevaluation of the astonishing buildings that have increasingly come to define world cities.
Capitalist Realism by
It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. After 1989, capitalism has successfully presented itself as the only realistic political-economic system - a situation that the bank crisis of 2008, far from ending, actually compounded. The book analyses the development and principal features of this capitalist realism as a lived ideological framework. Using examples from politics, film (Children Of Men, Jason Bourne, Supernanny), fiction (Le Guin and Kafka), work and education, it argues that capitalist realism colours all areas of contemporary experience, is anything but realistic and asks how capitalism and its inconsistencies can be challenged It is a sharp analysis of the post-ideological malaise that suggests that the economics and politics of free market neo-liberalism are givens rather than constructions. A quick and entertaining read. Socialist Standard A provocative and necessary read, ...for anyone wanting to talk seriously about the politics of education today. Times Higher Educational Supplement
Scarcity by
Leading analysts of all the major resource domains - water, food, material, energy and finance - are all telling us that our global industrial growth models are taking the planet to the brink of chronic scarcity. In architecture, concerns about depleting material and energy sources have largely been centered on the more emollient category of 'sustainability.' This book brings together leading thinkers for the first time in a single volume, including Ezio Manzini, Erik Swyngedouw, John Thackara and Jeremy Till. In addition, featured architects and designers include Jody Boehnert, Katrin Bohn and Andre Viljoen.
Elements of a Philosophy of Technology by
The first philosophy of technology, constructing humans as technological and technology as an underpinning of all culture Ernst Kapp was a foundational scholar in the fields of media theory and philosophy of technology. His 1877 Elements of a Philosophy of Technology is a visionary study of the human body and its relationship with the world that surrounds it. At the book's core is the concept of "organ projection"d: the notion that humans use technology in an effort to project their organs to the outside, to be understood as "the soul apparently stepping out of the body in the form of a sending-out of mental qualities"into the world of artifacts.Kapp applies this theory of organ projection to various areas of the material world--the axe externalizes the arm, the lens the eye, the telegraphic system the neural network. From the first tools to acoustic instruments, from architecture to the steam engine and the mechanic routes of the railway, Kapp's analysis shifts from "simple"tools to more complex network technologies to examine the projection of relations. What emerges from Kapp's prophetic work is nothing less than the emergence of early elements of a cybernetic paradigm.
The Redundant City by
Dynamic processes and conflicts are at the core of the urban condition. Against the background of continuous change in cities, concepts and assumptions about spatial transformations have to be constantly re-examined and revised. Norbert Kling explores the rich body of narrative knowledge in architecture and urbanism and confronts this knowledge with an empirically grounded situational analysis of a large housing estate. The outcome of this twofold research approach is the sensitising concept of the Redundant City. It describes a specific form of collectively negotiated urban change.
Novacene : the coming age of hyperintelligence by
The creator of the Gaia hypothesis and the greatest environmental thinker of our time has produced an astounding new theory about the future of life on Earth. James Lovelock argues that the anthropocene - the age in which humans acquired planetary-scale technologies - is, after three centuries, coming to an end. A new age - the novacene - has already begun.
New beings will emerge from existing artificial intelligence systems. They will think 10,000 times faster than we do and will regard us as we now regard plants. The cruel, violent machine takeover imagined by sci-fi writers will not happen- these hyper-intelligent beings will be as dependent on the health of the planet as we are. They will need the planetary cooling system of Gaia to defend from the increasing heat of the sun. Gaia depends on organic life. We will be partners in this project. It is crucial, Lovelock argues, that the intelligence of Earth survives and prospers. We are at present the only beings capable of understanding the cosmos, but he speculates that the novacene could be the beginning of a process that will see intelligence suffusing the entire cosmos. At the age 100, Lovelock has produced the most compelling work of his life.
Space (Re)Solutions by
The rapid changes currently taking place in our urban, political and institutional environments have shifted spatial practice to centre stage both in civic life and academic research. Social networking, political projects, cross-border movements, artistic interventions, urban and environmental initiatives, self-organized educational practices - all articulate the challenges involved in organizing the spaces we share. In this volume, visual culture scholars from around the world discuss the »practical turn« in different fields of critical engagement, proposing fresh ways to assert an interpenetrated space of research and intervention.
Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: by
Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: An Anthology of ArchitecturalTheory collects in a single volume the most significant essays on architectural theory of the last thirty years.A dynamic period of reexamination of the discipline, the postmodern eraproduced widely divergent and radical viewpoints on issues of making, meaning, history, and the city. Among the paradigms presented arearchitectural postmodernism, phenomenology, semiotics, poststructuralism, deconstruction, and feminism.By gathering these influential articles from a vast array of books and journals into a comprehensive anthology, Kate Nesbitt has created a resource of great value. Indispensable to professors and students of architecture and architectural theory, Theorizing a New Agenda also serves practitioners and the general public, as Nesbitt provides an overview, a thematic structure, and a critical introduction to each essay.The list of authors inTheorizing a New Agenda reads like a Who's Who" of contemporary architectural thought: Tadao Ando, Giulio Carlo Argan, Alan Colquhoun, Jacques Derrida, Peter Eisenman, Marco Frascari, Kenneth Frampton, Diane Ghirardo, Vittorio Gregotti, Karsten Harries, Rem Koolhaas, Christian Norberg-Schulz, Aldo Rossi, Colin Rowe, Thomas Schumacher, Ignasi de Sol-Morales Rubi, Bernard Tschumi, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, and Anthony Vidler. A bibliography and notes on all the contributors are also included."
A Slow, Contemporary Violence: Damaged Environments of Technological Culture by
The contemporary moment is comprised of many overlapping speeds, rhythms, and periods of time. A central theme of Jussi Parikka's book concerns slowness instead of acceleration: a different sort of a temporal horizon in order to understand some of the environmental temporalities that media and technological arts are involved in. This is approached through art and design practices that unfold this multiplicity of time, closely entwined with contemporary concerns in aesthetic theory, to understand and engage with the planetary time scales of slow environmental violence. The third volume of the Contemporary Condition series continues the investigation into contemporaneity as a defining condition of our historical present. The series aims to question the formation of subjectivity and concept of temporality in the world now. It begins from the assumption that art, with its ability to investigate the present and make meaning from it, can lead to an understanding of wider developments within culture and society. Addressing a perceived gap in existing literature on the subject, the series focuses on three broad strands: the issue of temporality, the role of contemporary media and computational technologies, and how artistic practice makes epistemic claims. The Contemporary Condition series edited by Geoff Cox and Jacob Lund, Volume 03 Copublished with Aarhus University and ARoS Art Museum
The City of Tomorrow by
An internationally renowned architect, urban planner, and scholar describes the major technological forces driving the future of cities Since cities emerged ten thousand years ago, they have become one of the most impressive artifacts of humanity. But their evolution has been anything but linear--cities have gone through moments of radical change, turning points that redefine their very essence. In this book, a renowned architect and urban planner who studies the intersection of cities and technology argues that we are in such a moment. The authors explain some of the forces behind urban change and offer new visions of the many possibilities for tomorrow's city. Pervasive digital systems that layer our cities are transforming urban life. The authors provide a front-row seat to this change. Their work at the MIT Senseable City Laboratory allows experimentation and implementation of a variety of urban initiatives and concepts, from assistive condition-monitoring bicycles to trash with embedded tracking sensors, from mobility to energy, from participation to production. They call for a new approach to envisioning cities: futurecraft, a symbiotic development of urban ideas by designers and the public. With such participation, we can collectively imagine, examine, choose, and shape the most desirable future of our cities.
Digital and Other Virtualities by
If virtuality is being celebrated as heralding a radically new era, rich with new possibilities and futures hitherto unimagined through cybernetics, networking and digitalizaton, such claims are also being viewed with deep scepticism and countered by renewed interest in the groundedness and referentiality of the concept of the index. In this transdisciplinary book, major artists, filmmakers, film theorists, philosophers, literary critics, information theorists and cultural analysts examine the twists and turns of the contesting terms of virtuality and indexicality in contemporary cultural theory in relation to history, trauma, sexuality, textuality, anxiety, simulated lives, code, digital cinema, science fiction, and contemporary art. Antony Bryant, Juli Carson, N. Katherine Hayles, Anna Johnson, Mary Kelly, Brian Massumi, Claire Pajaczkowska, Griselda Pollock, Adrian Rifkin, Martha Rosler, Alison Rowley, Trinh T. Minha, Samuel Weber, and Paul Willemen, draw on concrete practices, ranging from film, video and chatrooms to airport spaces, conceptual art and textiles, to offer critically engaged, sometimes sceptical, analyses of contemporary image worlds in the light of a continuing allegiance to grounded histories and critical practice.
Art and the Home by
Our homes contain us, but they are also within us. They can represent places to be ourselves, to recollect childhood memories, or to withdraw into adult spaces of intimacy; they can be sites for developing rituals, family relationships, and acting out cultural expectations. Like the personal, social, and cultural elements out of which they are constructed, homes can be not only comforting, but threatening too. The home is a rich theme running through post-war western art, and it continues to engage contemporary artists today - yet it has been the subject of relatively little critical writing. Art and the Home: Comfort, Alienation and the Everyday is the first single-authored, up-to-date book on the subject. Imogen Racz provides a theme-led discussion about how the physical experience of the dwelling space and the psychological complexities of the domestic are manifested in art, focusing mainly on sculpture, installation and object-based practice; discussing the work and ideas of artists as diverse as Louise Bourgeois, Gordon Matta-Clark, George Segal and Cornelia Parker within their artistic and cultural contexts
A Topology of Everyday Constellations by
The threshold as both boundary and bridge- investigations of spaces, public and private, local and global.Today, spaces no longer represent a bourgeois haven; nor are they the sites of a classical harmony between work and leisure, private and public, the local and the global. The house is not merely a home but a position for negotiations with multiple spheres-the technological as well as the physical and the psychological. In A Topology of Everyday Constellations, Georges Teyssot considers the intrusion of the public sphere into private space, and the blurring of notions of interior, privacy, and intimacy in our societies. He proposes that we rethink design in terms of a new definition of the practices of everyday life. Teyssot considers the door, the window, the mirror, and the screen as thresholds or interstitial spaces that divide the world in two- the outside and the inside. Thresholds, he suggests, work both as markers of boundaries and as bridges to the exterior. The stark choice between boundary and bridge creates a middle space, an in-between that holds the possibility of exchanges and encounters. If the threshold no longer separates public from private, and if we can no longer think of the house as a bastion of privacy, Teyssot asks, does the body still inhabit the house-or does the house, evolving into a series of microdevices, inhabit the body?
Urban Challenges, Resilient Solutions by
Urban Challenges, Resilient Solutions offers designers, their commissioners and local governments new models for thinking about sustainability, resiliency, and the social and physical health of contemporary cities, with more than 50 case studies.