Architecture and Revolution explores the consequences of the 1989 revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe from an architectural perspective. It presents new writings from a team of renowned architects, philosophers and cultural theorists from both the East and the West. They explore the questions over the built environment that now face architects, planners and politicians in the region. They examine the problems of buildings inherited from the communist era: some are environmentally inadequate, many were designed to serve a now redundant social programme and others carry the stigma of association with previous regimes. Contributors include: Daniel Libeskind, Bernard Tschumi, Laura Mulvey, Helene Cixous, Andrew Benjamin and Frederic Jameson.
The work presented in this book is an invitation to undertake an urgent architectural and political thought experiment: to rethink today's struggles for justice and equality not only from the historical perspective of revolution, but also from that of a continued struggle for decolonization; consequently, to rethink the problem of political subjectivity not from the point of view of a Western conception of a liberal citizen but rather from that of the displaced and extraterritorial refugee. Located on the edge of the desert in the town of Beit Sahour in Palestine, the architectural collective Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency (DAAR) has since 2007 combined discourse, spatial intervention, collective learning, public meetings, and legal challenges to open an arena for speculating about the seemingly impossible: the actual transformation of Israel's physical structures of domination.
The period following the Mexican Revolution was characterized by unprecedented artistic experimentation. Seeking to express the revolution's heterogeneous social and political aims, which were in a continuous state of redefinition, architects, artists, writers, and intellectuals created distinctive, sometimes idiosyncratic theories and works. Luis E. Carranza examines the interdependence of modern architecture in Mexico and the pressing sociopolitical and ideological issues of this period, as well as the interchanges between post-revolutionary architects and the literary, philosophical, and artistic avant-gardes. Organizing his book around chronological case studies that show how architectural theory and production reflected various understandings of the revolution's significance, Carranza focuses on architecture and its relationship to the philosophical and pedagogic requirements of the muralist movement, the development of the avant-garde in Mexico and its notions of the Mexican city, the use of pre-Hispanic architectural forms to address indigenous peoples, the development of a socially oriented architectural functionalism, and the monumentalization of the revolution itself. In addition, the book also covers important architects and artists who have been marginally discussed within architectural and art historiography. Richly illustrated, Architecture as Revolution is one of the first books in English to present a social and cultural history of early twentieth-century Mexican architecture.
Spatial Revolution is the first comparative parallel study of Soviet architecture and planning to create a narrative arc across a vast geography. The narrative binds together three critical industrial-residential projects in Baku, Magnitogorsk, and Kharkiv, built during the first fifteen years of the Soviet project and followed attentively worldwide after the collapse of capitalist markets in 1929. Among the revelations provided by Christina E. Crawford is the degree to which outside experts participated in the construction of the Soviet industrial complex, while facing difficult topographies, near-impossible deadlines, and inchoate theories of socialist space-making. Crawford describes how early Soviet architecture and planning activities were kinetic and negotiated and how questions about the proper distribution of people and industry under socialism were posed and refined through the construction of brick and mortar, steel and concrete projects, living laboratories that tested alternative spatial models. As a result, Spatial Revolution answers important questions of how the first Soviet industrialization drive was a catalyst for construction of thousands of new enterprises on remote sites across the Eurasian continent, an effort that spread to far-flung sites in other socialist states—and capitalist welfare states—for decades to follow. Thanks to generous funding from Emory University and its participation in TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem), the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.
A sneak peek at up-and-coming trends in IT, a multidimensional vision for achieving business agility through agile architectures The Agile Architecture Revolution places IT trends into the context of Enterprise Architecture, reinventing Enterprise Architecture to support continuous business transformation. It focuses on the challenges of large organizations, while placing such organizations into the broader business ecosystem that includes small and midsize organizations as well as startups. Organizes the important trends that are facing technology in businesses and public sector organizations today and over the next several years Presents the five broad organizing principles called Supertrends: location independence, global cubicle, democratization of technology, deep interoperability, and complex systems engineering Provides a new perspective on service-oriented architecture in conjunction with architectural approaches to cloud computing and mobile technologies that explain how organizations can achieve better business visibility through IT and enterprise architecture Laying out a multidimensional vision for achieving agile architectures, this book discusses the crisis points that promise sudden, transformative change, unraveling how organizations' spending on IT will continue to undergo radical change over the next ten years.
A refreshingly unconventional look at architecture and the World Wide Web. Using Vitruvius' classical text De Arquitectura as a starting point, De Kerckhove begins a journey into the exciting world of the Internet. On the one hand he explores the architecture of this revolutionary medium, on the other, he considers the wide-ranging opportunities which the IT world offers for architectonic design, revealing how this new medium for communication is as much based on tradition as on innovation. Derrick de Kerckhove is the Director of the McLuhan Institute and Professor at the University of Toronto. His research into the effects of innovative technology on human communication, of new media on traditional culture have gained worldwide recognition.
"Beautified China shows the country's modern architecture in new light" - CNN Style Photo-Series "Provides an abstracted look at China's iconic architecture," - ArchDaily.com. This book of stunning photographs by architect and photographer Kris Provoost captures the wave of the architectural revolution in China. Internationally renowned architects such as Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Ole Scheeren, Herzog & de Meuron, Daniel Liebeskind and many others have been engaged in creative, futuristic, and flamboyant projects in China in recent years. The sky is literally the limit, both in terms of construction, use of materials and design. Unimaginable forms, which defy all rules of gravity, come to life in immense skyscrapers. Beautified China offers an overview of these revolutionary designs, capturing their surreal impact in photographs that explore the free play of form that characterises each building. The book features essays by Rem Koolhaas, Ma Yansong & Ole Scheeren, among others, and each photograph is accompanied by information pertinent to the project, including function, environment, and context. AUTHOR: Kris Provoost is a Belgian architect and photographer. After receiving his Master's in Architecture, he moved to China, where he further expanded his career. He worked for, among others, Zaha Hadid Architects & Buro Ole Scheeren. He also focuses on architectural photography. His work has previously appeared in CNN Style, Dezeen, ArchDaily, Designboom, gooood, That's Mag Beijing, Time Out Shanghai, Abduzeedo, Fubiz, and T-Magazine. SELLING POINTS: * A photo essay by Belgian architect and photographer Kris Provoost capturing the boldest and most iconic structures of the architectural revolution in China * Striking images of fantastical buildings from unexpected angles and perspectives 180 colour, 40 b/w images
Conventional readings of the history of Soviet art and architecture show modernist utopian aspirations as all but prohibited by 1932 under Stalin's totalitarianism. Soviet Architectural Avant-Gardes challenges that view. Radically redefining the historiography of the period, it reveals how the relationship between the Party and practicing architects was much more complex and contradictory than previously believed, and shows, in contrast to the conventional scholarly narrative, how the architectural avant-garde was able to persist at a time when it is widely considered to have been driven underground. In doing so, this book provides an essential perspective on how to analyse, evaluate, and “re-imagine” the history of modernist expression in its cultural context. It offers a new understanding of ways in which 20th century social revolutions and their totalitarian sequels inflected the discourse of both modernity and modernism. The book relies on close analyses of archival documents and architectural works. Many of the documents have been rarely – if ever – discussed in English before, while the architectural projects include iconic works such as the Palace of Soviets and the Soviet Pavilion at the Paris 1937 World Exposition, as well as remarkable works that until now have been neglected by architectural historians inside and outside Russia. In a fascinating final chapter, it also reveals for the first time the details of Frank Lloyd Wright's triumphant welcome at the First Congress of Soviet Architects in Moscow in 1937, at the height of Stalin's Terror.
"A revolution of forms is a revolution of essentials."-Jos Mart, Cuban intellectual and independence leader. Although the current surge of interest in Cuba has extended to that country's architecture, few know that the most outstanding architectural achievement of the Cuban Revolution stands neglected just outside Havana. The Escuelas Nacionales de Arte (National Art Schools), constructed from 1961 to 1965, were the result of an educational program initiated by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara soon after the Revolution of 1959. The architects they commissioned created an organic complex of brick and terra-cotta Catalan vaulted structures that reflected the optimism and exuberance of the period. The schools attempted to reinvent architecture, just as the Revolution hoped to reinvent society. However, even before construction was completed, the schools fell out of official favor and were subjected to an attack that resulted in their subsequent "disappearance." An ideological campaign branded them politically incorrect, a bourgeois luxury that was not in keeping with the Revolution. The buildings fell into disuse and, abandoned to the jungle, were literally overgrown. Now, almost 40 years later, Cuba is beginning to recognize and reclaim these significant works of architecture. Revolution of Forms investigates the history and politics surrounding the creation of these structures as well as their subsequent abandonment. The text is accompanied by archival photographs, plans, and images of the present condition of these structures.
By linking building theory to the emancipatory project of critique advanced by radical thinkers in our time, this work investigates the key conceptual and historical elements that culminate in an emancipatory theory of building entitled: 'Toward A Philosophy of Shelter'. Taking Marx as its only resource, this work proceeds with the conviction that our era is contemporaneous to Marx's historical era. This means 'not judging the validity of Marx from the perspective of the historical situation', but rather, 'demonstrating the validity of a Marxian perspective for a singular historical situation', as ours. This work will therefore translate this perspective into seeing the situation of architecture through the eyes of Marx. All those concerned with the predicament in our current condition in which architecture must play a major social role in upholding the universal value of what Alain Badiou calls 'generic humanity' will take an interest in this work. In particular, architects, critics, scholars and students inside the field of architecture who would be seeking the application of this universal value to a new theory of building will be a welcoming audience for this work.
