Did Someone Say Participate?

Did Someone Say Participate?

Author: Markus Miessen

Publisher: MIT Press (MA)

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13:

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A report from the front lines of cultural activism that looks at spatial practitioners who actively trespass into neighboring or alien fields of knowledge.


Did Someone Say Participate?

Did Someone Say Participate?

Author: Markus Miessen

Publisher:

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 9783865882684

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"What was once seen as the defensive preserve of architects - mapping, making, or manipulating spaces- has become a >new culture of space


Reality Bytes

Reality Bytes

Author: Bart Lootsma

Publisher: Birkhäuser

Published: 2016-11-21

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 303560259X

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Reality Bytes is a collection of essays by Bart Lootsma, written in the years from 1998 to 2009. "Byte" is a unit of digital information used in information technology and most commonly consists of eight bits. Reality Bytes is also the title of an essay by Bart Lootsma, in which he investigates the relationship between society and architects and town planners. Bart Lootsma, Professor of Architecture as well as architectural historian, critic and curator, is one of the most multi-faceted figures amongst contemporary architectural theorists. He has produced numerous publications, including "Superdutch", an appraisal of contemporary architecture in the Netherlands published in 2000. In Reality Bytes he has now for the first time compiled hitherto (mostly) unpublished texts on architectural theory, on Second Modernism, on populism and architecture, on landscape architecture and on the changing role of architects in society.


Learning Citizenship by Practicing Democracy

Learning Citizenship by Practicing Democracy

Author: Elizabeth Pinnington

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2009-12-14

Total Pages: 355

ISBN-13: 1443818216

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For many years, the fields of citizenship education and participatory democracy have often operated independently from each other. During the last decade, the Transformative Learning Centre of the University of Toronto has nurtured multiple spaces for an interdisciplinary dialogue among scholars, practitioners and students from these two fields. One of those spaces was the Second International Conference on Citizenship Learning and Participatory Democracy, where close to 300 participants from all over the world shared ideas in more than 150 sessions, including discussions, round-tables, workshops and keynote addresses. This volume brings together a selected collection from the many papers submitted to the conference. Learning Citizenship by Practicing Democracy: International Initiatives and Perspectives includes an introductory essay, 18 chapters and a postscript, and is organized in three sections: I. Learning democracy in educational institutions II. Learning democracy in communities III. Learning democracy in participatory budgeting The articles in this book represent a variety of perspectives (as the authors come from different geographical and disciplinary locations), but they all share a commitment to improvements in theory, research and practice in the worldwide movement for deepening democracy and for an emancipatory citizenship education.


Architecture and Space Re-imagined

Architecture and Space Re-imagined

Author: Richard Bower

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-06-10

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 131739030X

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As with so many facets of contemporary western life, architecture and space are often experienced and understood as a commodity or product. The premise of this book is to offer alternatives to the practices and values of such westernised space and Architecture (with a capital A), by exploring the participatory and grass-roots practices used in alternative development models in the Global South. This process re-contextualises the spaces, values, and relationships produced by such alternative methods of development and social agency. It asks whether such spatial practices provide concrete realisations of some key concepts of Western spatial theory, questioning whether we might challenge the space and architectures of capitalist development by learning from the places and practices of others. Exploring these themes offers a critical examination of alternative development practices methods in the Global South, re-contextualising them as architectural engagements with socio-political space. The comparison of such interdisciplinary contexts and discourses reveals the political, social, and economic resonances inherent between these previously unconnected spatial protagonists. The interdependence of spatial issues of choice, value, and identity are revealed through a comparative study of the discourses of Henri Lefebvre, John Turner, Doreen Massey, and Nabeel Hamdi. These key protagonists offer a critical framework of discourses from which further connections to socio-spatial discourses and concepts are made, including post-marxist theory, orientalism, post-structural pluralism, development anthropology, post-colonial theory, hybridity, difference and subalterneity. By looking to the spaces and practices of alternative development in the Global South this book offers a critical reflection upon the working practices of Westernised architecture and other spatial and political practices. In exploring the methodologies, implications and values of such participatory development practices this book ultimately seeks to articulate the positive potential and political of learning from the difference, multiplicity, and otherness of development practice in order to re-imagine architecture and space. .


The Radicals' City: Urban Environment, Polarisation, Cohesion

The Radicals' City: Urban Environment, Polarisation, Cohesion

Author: Ralf Brand

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-02-24

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1317018281

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Bringing together comparative case studies from Belfast, Beirut, Amsterdam and Berlin, this book examines the role of the urban environment in social polarisation processes. In doing so, it provides a timely and refreshingly innovative voice in the confusing babble on (counter-)terrorism, urban conflict and community cohesion. Despite their socio-political differences, these cities are telling cases of how the location and shape of very mundane objects such as rubbish bins, bridges, clothes’ stores, shopping malls and cafés - in addition to the obvious fences, walls and barbed wire - are often subject to heated controversies and influence the way urban conflict is 'lived' and practised. Within a Science and Technology Studies (STS) theoretical framework, the authors provide a systematic analysis of these four cities and provide many concrete and richly illustrated examples of ’material agency’ without losing sight of their specific historical, political, geographical and social conditions. The STS angle permits some surprising, yet extremely convincing, conclusions which are of use not only for a range of practitioners but also to scholars interested in the social shaping processes and the consequences of urban artefacts. The authors argue that, although architecture and urban design is clearly not the sole cause of conflict and polarisation, neither is it completely innocent. Conversely, it cannot be the silver bullet to solve related problems and to create community cohesion. However, the materiality of our cities must not be ignored; in fact, it can and should be ’enrolled’ in our efforts. The book contains detailed descriptions of such positive cases as inspiration for practitioners as diverse as policy makers, architects, urban designers, planners, community workers, consultants or police officers.


The SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory

The SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory

Author: C. Greig Crysler

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2012-01-20

Total Pages: 1012

ISBN-13: 1473971160

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"Offers an intense scholarly experience in its comprehensiveness, its variety of voices and its formal organization... the editors took a risk, experimented and have delivered a much-needed resource that upends the status-quo." - Architectural Histories, journal of the European Architectural History Network "Architectural theory interweaves interdisciplinary understandings with different practices, intentions and ways of knowing. This handbook provides a lucid and comprehensive introduction to this challenging and shifting terrain, and will be of great interest to students, academics and practitioners alike." - Professor Iain Borden, UCL Bartlett School of Architecture "In this collection, architectural theory expands outward to interact with adjacent discourses such as sustainability, conservation, spatial practices, virtual technologies, and more. We have in The Handbook of Architectural Theory an example of the extreme generosity of architectural theory. It is a volume that designers and scholars of many stripes will welcome." - K. Michael Hays, Eliot Noyes Professor of Architectural Theory, Harvard University The SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory documents and builds upon the most innovative developments in architectural theory over the last two decades. Bringing into dialogue a range of geographically, institutionally and historically competing positions, it examines and explores parallel debates in related fields. The book is divided into eight sections: Power/Difference/Embodiment Aesthetics/Pleasure/Excess Nation/World/Spectacle History/Memory/Tradition Design/Production/Practice Science/Technology/Virtuality Nature/Ecology/Sustainability City/Metropolis/Territory. Creating openings for future lines of inquiry and establishing the basis for new directions for education, research and practice, the book is organized around specific case studies to provide a critical, interpretive and speculative enquiry into the relevant debates in architectural theory.


The Efficacy of Architecture

The Efficacy of Architecture

Author: Tahl Kaminer

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2016-12-08

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 1317437446

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A significant ideological transition has taken place in the discipline of architecture in the last few years. Originating in a displeasure with the ‘starchitecture’ system and the focus on aesthetic innovation, a growing number of architects, emboldened by the 2007–8 economic crisis, have staged a rebellion against the dominant mode of architectural production. Against a ‘disinterested’ position emulating high art, they have advocated political engagement, citizen participation and the right to the city. Against the fascination with the rarefied architectural object, they have promoted an interest in everyday life, play, self-build and personalization. At the centre of this rebellion is the call for architecture to (re-)assume its social and political role in society. The Efficacy of Architecture supports the return of architecture to politics by interrogating theories, practices and instances that claim or evidence architectural agency. It studies the political theories animating the architects, revisits the emergence of reformist architecture in the late nineteenth century, and brings to the fore the relation of spatial organization to social forms. In the process, a clearer picture emerges of the agency of architecture, of the threats to as well as potentials for meaningful societal transformation through architectural design.


The Art of Public Space

The Art of Public Space

Author: Kim Gurney

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-01-05

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 1137436905

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A journey through Johannesburg via three art projects raises intriguing notions about the constitutive relationship between the city, imagination and the public sphere- through walking, gaming and performance art. Amid prevailing economic validations, the trilogy posits art within an urban commons in which imagination is all-important.