Reconstructing Italy

Reconstructing Italy

Author: Stephanie Zeier Pilat

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-08

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 1317070291

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Reconstructing Italy traces the postwar transformation of the Italian nation through an analysis of the Ina-Casa plan for working class housing, established in 1949 to address the employment and housing crises. Government sponsored housing programs undertaken after WWII have often been criticized as experiments that created more social problems than they solved. The neighborhoods of Ina-Casa stand out in contrast to their contemporaries both in terms of design and outcome. Unlike modernist high-rise housing projects of the period, Ina-Casa neighborhoods are picturesque and human-scaled and incorporate local construction materials and methods resulting in a rich aesthetic diversity. And unlike many other government forays into housing undertaken during this period, the Ina-Casa plan was, on the whole, successful: the neighborhoods are still lively and cohesive communities today. This book examines what made Ina-Casa a success among so many failed housing experiments, focusing on the tenuous balance struck between the legislation governing Ina-Casa, the architects who led the Ina-Casa administration, the theory of design that guided architects working on the plan, and an analysis of the results-the neighborhoods and homes constructed. Drawing on the writings of the architects, government documents, and including brief passages from works of neorealist literature and descriptions of neorealist films by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italo Calvino and others, this book presents a portrait of the postwar struggle to define a post-Fascist Italy.


Constructed Geographies

Constructed Geographies

Author: Jean-Louis Cohen

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2024-11-05

Total Pages: 441

ISBN-13: 0300275455

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The first major retrospective to emerge from the archive of Paulo Mendes da Rocha, shining important new light on his work One of the most acclaimed architects working in Brazil since the mid-twentieth century, Paulo Mendes da Rocha (1928-2021) began building in the 1950s, championing an approach often associated with "Brutalism" but expanding well beyond it. He is widely recognized for having transformed the urban imprint of São Paulo. His best-known buildings include the Brazilian Museum of Sculpture, remarkable for its engagement with the site and its daring structure; the renovation of the Pinacoteca do Estado, with audacious metallic inserts; and outstanding private houses, starting with his own. In 2006, he became the second Brazilian architect, after Oscar Niemeyer, to win the Pritzker Prize. This retrospective catalogue is the first major publication on Mendes da Rocha since the establishment of his archive at the Casa da Arquitectura in 2021. A team of international scholars provides a comprehensive view of the architect's trajectory and the collective dimension of his work, along with thematic essays. Mendes da Rocha's identity as a South American architect interested in the geographic relation between nature and culture is underlined. The book's contributors explore his concern with the social and anthropogenic impact of the continent's development, as well as its colonial past and postcolonial future. The volume centers around twelve of his most important buildings and reprints two important essays on Mendes da Rocha's work. This will be an essential book on this significant figure of global modernism and will point the way for future scholarship on Mendes da Rocha and the architecture of contemporary Brazil. Distributed for Casa da Arquitectura-Portuguese Centre for Architecture Exhibition Schedule: Casa da Arquitectura, Porto (May 26, 2023-February 25, 2024)


Latin American Modern Architectures

Latin American Modern Architectures

Author: Patricio del Real

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-06-03

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 113623442X

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Latin American Modern Architectures: Ambiguous Territories has thirteen new essays from a range of distinguished architectural historians to help you understand the region’s rich and varied architecture. It will also introduce you to major projects that have not been written about in English. A foreword by historian Kenneth Frampton sets the stage for essays on well-known architects, such as Lucio Costa and Félix Candela, which will show you unfamiliar aspects of their work, and for essays on the work of little-known figures, such as Uruguayan architect Carlos Gómez Gavazzo and Peruvian architect and politician Fernando Belaúnde Terry. Covering urban and territorial histories from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, along with detailed building analyses, this book is your best source for historical and critical essays on a sampling of Latin America's diverse architecture, providing much-needed information on key case studies. Contributors include Noemí Adagio, Pedro Ignacio Alonso, Luis Castañeda, Viviana d’Auria, George F. Flaherty, María González Pendás, Cristina López Uribe, Hugo Mondragón López, Jorge Nudelman Blejwas, Hugo Palmarola Sagredo, Gaia Piccarolo, Claudia Shmidt, Daniel Talesnik, and Paulo Tavares.


Performing Architectures

Performing Architectures

Author: Andrew Filmer

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2018-05-03

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 1474248004

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Performing Architectures offers a coherent introduction to the fields of performance and contemporary architecture, exploring the significance of architecture for performance theory and theatre and performance practice. It maps the diverse relations that exist between these disciplines and demonstrates how their aims, concerns and practices overlap through shared interests in space, action and event. Through a wide range of international examples and contributions from scholars and practitioners, it offers readers an analytical survey of current practices and equips them with the tools for analyzing site-specific and immersive theatre and performance. The essays in this volume, contributed by leading theorists and practitioners from both disciplines, focus on three key sites of encounter: * Projects: examines recent trends in architecture for performance; * Practices: looks at cross-currents in artistic practice, including spatial dramaturgies, performance architectonics and performative architectures; and * Pedagogies: considers the uses of performance in architectural education and architecture in teaching performance. The volume provides an essential introduction to the ways in which performance and architecture, as socio-spatial processes and as things made or constructed, operate as generating, shaping and steering forces in understanding and performing the other.


Progress(es), Theories and Practices

Progress(es), Theories and Practices

Author: Mário S. Ming Kong

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2017-10-03

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 1351242687

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The texts presented in Proportion Harmonies and Identities (PHI) - Progress(es) - Theories and Practices were compiled with the intent to establish a platform for the presentation, interaction and dissemination of research. It aims also to foster the awareness of and discussion on the topics of Harmony and Proportion with a focus on different progress visions and readings relevant to Architecture, Arts and Humanities, Design, Engineering, Social and Natural Sciences, Technology and their importance and benefits for the community at large. Considering that the idea of progress is a major matrix for development, its theoretical and practical foundations have become the working tools of scientists, philosophers, and artists, who seek strategies and policies to accelerate the development process in different contexts.


Topographical Stories

Topographical Stories

Author: David Leatherbarrow

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2015-11-06

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 0812223500

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Topography, in his view, incorporates terrain, built and unbuilt. It also traces practical affairs, by which culture preserves and renews its typical situations and institutions."


Outdoor Domesticity

Outdoor Domesticity

Author: Ricardo Devesa

Publisher: Actar D, Inc.

Published: 2022-02-04

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1638408343

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Trees have been deliberately connected with houses since they were introduced as a prominent part of architectural design. The relationships of contiguity between houses and trees have existed since ancient times. However, at the end of the 19th century those links became explicit in the design process, as the house emerged as one of the fundamental architectural programs, and as the result of an increasing sensibility towards environmental aspects and the landscape. The first part of this publication is to present a collection of exemplary five houses that evinced explicit relationships with pre-existing trees. The five twentieth century projects are: La Casa (B. Rudofsky, 1969), Cottage Caesar (M. Breuer, 1951), Ville La Roche (Le Corbusier & P. Jeanneret, 1923), Villa Pepa (J. Navarro Baldeweg, 1994) and Hexenhaus (A. & P. Smithson, 1984-2002). The second part of the book contributes three theoretical concerns for the contemporary project, those ones which are established in the process, with respect to time, place and outdoor domesticity in modern western housing. One of these theoretical contributions establishes that any house located on a site finds a significant place in conjunction with the preexisting trees. The second contribution describes the effects in terms of time, in addition to spatial considerations, which trees can contribute to the architectural project. Finally, the establishment of these connections between architecture and trees enlarges the idea of the house: the tree serves to draw the surrounding environment into the house and, as a result, becomes an intrinsic part of the house itself.


Modern Architecture in Latin America

Modern Architecture in Latin America

Author: Luis E. Carranza

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2015-01-05

Total Pages: 425

ISBN-13: 0292768184

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Designed as a survey and focused on key examples and movements arranged chronologically from 1903 to 2003, this is the first comprehensive history of modern architecture in Latin America in any language. Runner-up, University Co-op Robert W. Hamilton Book Award, 2015 Modern Architecture in Latin America: Art, Technology, and Utopia is an introductory text on the issues, polemics, and works that represent the complex processes of political, economic, and cultural modernization in the twentieth century. The number and types of projects varied greatly from country to country, but, as a whole, the region produced a significant body of architecture that has never before been presented in a single volume in any language. Modern Architecture in Latin America is the first comprehensive history of this important production. Designed as a survey and focused on key examples/paradigms arranged chronologically from 1903 to 2003, this volume covers a myriad of countries; historical, social, and political conditions; and projects/developments that range from small houses to urban plans to architectural movements. The book is structured so that it can be read in a variety of ways—as a historically developed narrative of modern architecture in Latin America, as a country-specific chronology, or as a treatment of traditions centered on issues of art, technology, or utopia. This structure allows readers to see the development of multiple and parallel branches/historical strands of architecture and, at times, their interconnections across countries. The authors provide a critical evaluation of the movements presented in relationship to their overall goals and architectural transformations.


Constructing Identity in Contemporary Architecture

Constructing Identity in Contemporary Architecture

Author: Peter Herrle

Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 3643102763

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The global spread of uniform modes of production and cultural values has been accompanied by a dissemination of stereotypes of "modern" architecture styles almost everywhere around the globe. Paradoxically, the reverse process has also emerged: In some countries, the elites feel the necessity to counterbalance the "loss of identity" and defend their own cultures against the "intruding" forces of globalization. What started as a defensive notion has developed into a more progressive attempt to re-create what has allegedly been lost. This trend is being strongly expressed in discourses about architecture in countries of the South. Who are the actors feeling compelled to "construct" new identities? How are these new identities in architecture created in various parts of the world? And, which are the ingredients borrowed from various historical and ethnic traditions and other sources? These and other questions are discussed in five case studies from different parts of the world, written by renowned scholars from Brazil, Mexico, Egypt, India and Singapore.