The Social (Re)Production of Architecture

Author: Doina Petrescu
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317509234
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 407

Book Description
The Social (Re)Production of Architecture brings the debates of the ‘right to the city’ into today’s context of ecological, economic and social crises. Building on the 1970s’ discussions about the ‘production of space’, which French sociologist Henri Lefebvre considered a civic right, the authors question who has the right to make space, and explore the kinds of relations that are produced in the process. In the emerging post-capitalist era, this book addresses urgent social and ecological imperatives for change and opens up questions around architecture’s engagement with new forms of organization and practice. The book asks what (new) kinds of ‘social’ can architecture (re)produce, and what kinds of politics, values and actions are needed. The book features 24 interdisciplinary essays written by leading theorists and practitioners including social thinkers, economic theorists, architects, educators, urban curators, feminists, artists and activists from different generations and global contexts. The essays discuss the diverse, global locations with work taking different and specific forms in these different contexts. A cutting-edge, critical text which rethinks both practice and theory in the light of recent crises, making it key reading for students, academics and practitioners.

Tiergarten, Landscape of Transgression

Author: Sandra Bartoli
Publisher: Park Publishing (WI)
ISBN: 9783038600336
Category : Berlin (Germany)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Tiergarten is Berlin's oldest park, with more than five hundred acres of woodland in the heart of the city. Before it was absorbed by the city, the area that became Tiergarten was a naturally occurring forest. Throughout its history, it was used as royal hunting grounds and as a landscaped public park, and--in the years of hardship following World War II-- an area where trees were felled for firewood, before changing social and political circumstances and the growing ecological movement led to measures to restore and replant the vast public space. Thus, Tiergarten has become not only a very popular place of recreation but as well a biotope of extraordinarily high biodiversity. Generously illustrated with historical and contemporary photographs, Tiergarten, Landscape of Transgression takes readers through the history of the park, with an eye toward exploring it as a radical spatial expression--a space where humans and other species and conflicting histories coexist in close proximity, and a model for future environments in areas of intense urbanization. Born of a recent symposium staged by the Technische Universit t Berlin, the book brings together twelve essays with a range of archival documents, including newspaper articles, maps, reports, plans, and photographs.

The Experimental Zone

Author: Séverine Marguin
Publisher: Park Publishing (WI)
ISBN: 9783038601487
Category : Architectural design
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Experimental Zone documents a remarkable experiment in spatial research at the interdisciplinary laboratory Image Knowledge Gestaltung at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Every two months, for four years, researchers reconfigured a 350-square meter workspace for forty scientists. The design-based collaborative experiment's focus was on the interrelation of space and knowledge production: What spatial qualities are required by interdisciplinary teams for their research work? With some 300 striking and straightforward graphics, Experimental Zone presents the findings of the experiment. It highlights the spatial conditions under which individual and collaborative research unfold, overlap, or merge and reveals the characteristics of an architecture that fosters interdisciplinary. The experiment's innovative interdisciplinary approach is also reflected in the book's design, with each of the five chapters and the comprehensive visual material reflecting publishing traditions in design, architecture, and the humanities.

City Lust

Author: Charlie Koolhaas
Publisher: Scheidegger and Spiess
ISBN: 9783858818041
Category : Cities and towns
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Charlie Koolhaas is an artist, photographer, and writer in Rotterdam. City Lust is the name of a fragrance that she found in a Dubai perfumery wholesale showroom, but it is also the starting point of an expedition that leads Koolhaas to a variety of places in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and the United States. In Lagos, Guangzhou, Dubai, London, and Huston, she explores the rapid changes that a globalized economy forces upon these so very different metropolises. During extended stays in each place, Koolhaas took a vast number of photographs, many of them of striking intensity. Her aim is not only to show the increasing uniformity of cities around the world, but also to demonstrate the discrepancy between cultural standardization and local diversity in the age of globalization. City Lust is a brilliant combination of everyday photography, pure documentation, and captivating observation. Accompanying the photos is an equally fascinating and illuminating essay by Koolhaas that brings together her own insights into global trade and its protagonists.

Body-and Image-Space

Author: Sigrid Weigel
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134837518
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
The last decade has seen a new wave of interest in philosophical and theoretical circles in the writings of Walter Benjamin. In Body-and Image-Space Sigrid Weigel, one of Germany's leading feminist theorists and a renowned commentator on the work of Walter Benjamin, argues that the reception of his work has so far overlooked a crucial aspect of his thought - his use of images. Weigel shows that it is precisely his practice of thinking in images that holds the key to understanding the full complexity, richness and topicality of Benjamin's theory.

Virtual Geography

Author: McKenzie Wark
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253113481
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Book Description
"The author's capacity to grasp and interpret these [world media] events is astounding, and her ability to provide insights into a world where unbounded information is circling the earth with the speed of light is startling." -- Choice "... a wide-ranging, quirky and dextrous mix of description, theory and analysis, that documents the perils of the global telecommunications network... " -- Times Literary Supplement "... this is a stimulating, even moving, book, dense with ideas and with many quotable lines." -- The New Statesman "Wark is one of the most original and interesting cultural critics writing today." -- Lawrence Grossberg McKenzie Wark writes about the experience of everyday life under the impact of increasingly global media vectors. We no longer have roots, we have aerials. We no longer have origins, we have terminals.

HyperCities

Author: Todd Samuel Presner
Publisher: metaLABprojects
ISBN: 9780674725348
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
More than a physical space, a hypercity is a real city overlaid with information networks that document the past, catalyze the present, and project future possibilities. Hypercities are always under construction. HyperCities puts digital humanities theory into practice to chart the proliferating cultural records of places around the world.

Sicher in Kreuzberg

Author: Ayhan Kaya
Publisher: Transcript Verlag, Roswitha Gost, Sigrid Nokel u. Dr. Karin Werner
ISBN:
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Book Description
This book examines the construction and articulation of diasporic cultural identity among the Turkish working-class youth in Kreuzberg (Little Istanbul), Berlin. This work primarily suggests that the contemporary diasporic consciousness is built on two antithetical axes: particularism and universalism. The presence of this dichotomy derives from the unresolved historical dialogues that the diasporic youths experience between continuity and disruption, essence and positionality, tradition and translation, homogeneity and difference, past and future, 'here' and 'there', 'roots' and 'routes', and local and global.

The Ludic City

Author: Quentin Stevens
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134143958
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 390

Book Description
This international and illustrated work challenges current writings focussing on the problems of urban public space to present a more nuanced and dialectical conception of urban life. Detailed and extensive international urban case studies show how urban open spaces are used for play, which is defined and discussed using Caillois' four-part definition – competition, chance, simulation and vertigo. Stevens explores and analyzes these case studies according to locations where play has been observed: paths, intersections, thresholds, boundaries and props. Applicable to a wide-range of countries and city forms, The Ludic City is a fascinating and stimulating read for all who are involved or interested in the design of urban spaces.

Extreme Cities

Author: Ashley Dawson
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1784780375
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Book Description
A cutting exploration of how cities drive climate change while being on the frontlines of the coming climate crisis 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.