Download or read book The Kinetic City and Other Essays written by Rahul Mehrotra and published by Architangle. This book was released on 2021-08 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rahul Mehrotra is the founder of RMA Architects, which emerged in Mumbai in 1990 and has studios in Mumbai and Boston. Currently he is the chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design at Havard GSD and has had a long-term engagement with and analyses of urbanism in India which has given rise to a new conceptualization of the city. The Kinetic City, the counterpart to the Static City familiar to most of us from conventional city maps, is perceived in terms of patterns of occupation and associative values attributed to space. The framework is established in this publication by Rahul Mehrotra's anchor essay, which draws out its potential to "allow a better understanding of the blurred lines of contemporary urbanism and the changing roles of people and spaces in urban society." The emerging urban Indian condition, of which the Kinetic City is symbolic, is examined in this publication through this anchor essay as well as an expansive complimentary photo essay. The theory is solidified by a series of essays from different points of Rahul Mehrotra's career as an architect, urban designer and educator. From case studies such as 'Evolution, Involution and the City's Future; A Perspective on Bombay's Urban Form', to more generally appliable ruminations such as 'Our Home in the World', the book will offer an in-depth look at the last thirty years of theory behind Mehrotra's work.
Download or read book Other Cities Other Worlds written by Andreas Huyssen and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2008-11-11 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Other Cities, Other Worlds brings together leading scholars of cultural theory, urban studies, art, anthropology, literature, film, architecture, and history to look at non-Western global cities. The contributors focus on urban imaginaries, the ways that city dwellers perceive or imagine their own cities. Paying particular attention to the historical and cultural dimensions of urban life, they bring to their essays deep knowledge of the cities they are bound to in their lives and their work. Taken together, these essays allow us to compare metropolises from the so-called periphery and gauge processes of cultural globalization, illuminating the complexities at stake as we try to imagine other cities and other worlds under the spell of globalization. The effects of global processes such as the growth of transnational corporations and investment, the weakening of state sovereignty, increasing poverty, and the privatization of previously public services are described and analyzed in essays by Teresa P. R. Caldeira (São Paulo), Beatriz Sarlo (Buenos Aires), Néstor García Canclini (Mexico City), Farha Ghannam (Cairo), Gyan Prakash (Mumbai), and Yingjin Zhang (Beijing). Considering Johannesburg, the architect Hilton Judin takes on themes addressed by other contributors as well: the relation between the country and the city, and between racial imaginaries and the fear of urban violence. Rahul Mehrotra writes of the transitory, improvisational nature of the Indian bazaar city, while AbdouMaliq Simone sees a new urbanism of fragmentation and risk emerging in Douala, Cameroon. In a broader comparative frame, Okwui Enwezor reflects on the proliferation of biennales of contemporary art in African, Asian, and Latin American cities, and Ackbar Abbas considers the rise of fake commodity production in China. The volume closes with the novelist Orhan Pamuk’s meditation on his native city of Istanbul. Contributors: Ackbar Abbas, Teresa P. R. Caldeira, Néstor García Canclini, Okwui Enwezor, Farha Ghannam, Andreas Huyssen, Hilton Judin, Rahul Mehrotra, Orhan Pamuk, Gyan Prakash, Beatriz Sarlo, AbdouMaliq Simone, Yingjin Zhang
Download or read book Kinetic Architecture written by Charles Linn and published by Images Publishing. This book was released on 2014-01-17 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A shift in the architecture industry’s focus in the last 20 years toward ecological concerns, long-term value, and user comfort has coincided with significant new developments in digital controls, actuators, shading typologies, building physics simulation capability, and material performance. This collision has afforded architects an expanded set of opportunities to create architecture that can respond directly to environmental conditions, resulting in innovative façade designs that quickly become landmarks for their cities. Authors Russell Fortmeyer and Charles Linn trace the historical development of active façades in modern architecture, and reveal how contemporary architects and consultants design and test these systems.
Download or read book Critical Mass written by James Wolcott and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James Wolcott’s career as a critic has been unmatched, from his early Seventies dispatches for The Village Voice to the literary coverage made him equally feared and famous to his must-read reports on the cultural weather for Vanity Fair. Bringing together his best work from across the decades, this collection shows Wolcott as connoisseur, intrepid reporter, memoirist, and necessary naysayer. We begin with “O.K. Corral Revisited,” Wolcott’s career-launching account of the famed Norman Mailer–Gore Vidal dust-off on the original Dick Cavett Show. He goes on to consider (or reconsider) the towering figures of our culture, among them Lena Dunham Patti Smith, Johnny Carson, Woody Allen, and John Cheever. And we witness his legendary takedowns, which have entered into the literary lore of our time. In an age where a great deal of back scratching and softball pitching pass for criticism, Critical Mass offers a bracing taste of the real thing.
Download or read book Kant s Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write An Autobiography in Essays written by Claire Messud and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A glimpse into a beloved novelist’s inner world, shaped by family, art, and literature. In her fiction, Claire Messud "has specialized in creating unusual female characters with ferocious, imaginative inner lives" (Ruth Franklin, New York Times Magazine). Kant’s Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write opens a window on Messud’s own life: a peripatetic upbringing; a warm, complicated family; and, throughout it all, her devotion to art and literature. In twenty-six intimate, brilliant, and funny essays, Messud reflects on a childhood move from her Connecticut home to Australia; the complex relationship between her modern Canadian mother and a fiercely single French Catholic aunt; and a trip to Beirut, where her pied-noir father had once lived, while he was dying. She meditates on contemporary classics from Kazuo Ishiguro, Teju Cole, Rachel Cusk, and Valeria Luiselli; examines three facets of Albert Camus and The Stranger; and tours her favorite paintings at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. In the luminous title essay, she explores her drive to write, born of the magic of sharing language and the transformative powers of “a single successful sentence.” Together, these essays show the inner workings of a dazzling literary mind. Crafting a vivid portrait of a life in celebration of the power of literature, Messud proves once again "an absolute master storyteller" (Rebecca Carroll, Los Angeles Times).
Download or read book The History of the Future written by Edward McPherson and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of long essays centered on American places where the past is erupting into the present in unexpected ways.
Download or read book Asian Alterity With Special Reference To Architecture And Urbanism Through The Lens Of Cultural Studies written by William Siew Wai Lim and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2007-12-04 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Asian Alterity is an interdisciplinary theoretical analysis that vigorously contests the homogeneity of the mainstream Eurocentric values. Part I argues for the need for an alternate perspective to be introduced so as to understand the diversity of Asia's cultural differences at their varied development stages and to meet the complex challenges of the explosive urban expansion and disruptive changes in traditional cultures and lifestyles.Part II of the book consists of nine case studies of Asian major urban cities by well-established academic writers and urban theorists. Each author presents diverse aspects of urban dynamism. The case studies will collectively demonstrate a broad framework to understand the essentiality of the interdisciplinary mode of Cultural Studies as an important lens towards meeting the challenges in Asian Architecture and Urbanism.Highlights of the book:
Download or read book Working in Mumbai written by Rahul Mehrotra and published by . This book was released on 2020-07 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Working in Mumbai is a critical reflection on thirty years of the practice of RMA Architects. Rahul Mehrotra weaves a narrative to connect his multiple engagements in architectural practice, including teaching, research, documenting, writing and exhibiting since the establishment of the practice in 1990. The book is structured around the subjects of interior architecture, critical conservation, and work and living spaces that straddle the binaries of the global and the local as well as the rural and the urban. While the book is a portfolio of the selected works of RMA Architects, the projects are curated so as to unravel and clarify the challenges faced by architects in India and in several parts of the ?majority? world where issues related to rapid urbanization and the impacts of global capital are among the many that dispute conventional models of practice. Working in Mumbai is used emblematically to interrogate the notion of context and understand how the practice evolved through its association with the city of Bombay/Mumbai.
Download or read book Electronic Literature written by Scott Rettberg and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-12-14 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Electronic Literature considers new forms and genres of writing that exploit the capabilities of computers and networks – literature that would not be possible without the contemporary digital context. In this book, Rettberg places the most significant genres of electronic literature in historical, technological, and cultural contexts. These include combinatory poetics, hypertext fiction, interactive fiction (and other game-based digital literary work), kinetic and interactive poetry, and networked writing based on our collective experience of the Internet. He argues that electronic literature demands to be read both through the lens of experimental literary practices dating back to the early twentieth century and through the specificities of the technology and software used to produce the work. Considering electronic literature as a subject in totality, this book provides a vital introduction to a dynamic field that both reacts to avant-garde literary and art traditions and generates new forms of narrative and poetic work particular to the twenty-first century. It is essential reading for students and researchers in disciplines including literary studies, media and communications, art, and creative writing.
Download or read book Balkrishna Doshi Writings on Architecture Identity written by Balkrishna V. Doshi and published by . This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Balkrishna Doshi (born 1927 in Pune, India) played a pivotal role in shaping of postcolonial architecture in India. He is a pioneer in addressing crucial issues of social housing and urbanization in India. Doshi influenced the development of Indian architecture significantly through his teaching and lecturing activities and played a major role in the development of Ahmedabad into a center of Indian architectural education. This anthology assembles a selection of his writings, such as lectures, articles and essays.0Doshi, who worked for Le Corbusier in Paris for six years in the 1950s, has also always sought contacts with Western architects, for example by promoting the work of Louis Kahn in India.0The book is published to accompany the opening of the Balkrishna Doshi Exhibition at the Architekturmuseum der TUM, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich.
Download or read book Matters of Gravity written by Scott Bukatman and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2003-07-21 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The headlong rush, the rapid montage, the soaring superhero, the plunging roller coaster—Matters of Gravity focuses on the experience of technological spectacle in American popular culture over the past century. In these essays, leading media and cultural theorist Scott Bukatman reveals how popular culture tames the threats posed by technology and urban modernity by immersing people in delirious kinetic environments like those traversed by Plastic Man, Superman, and the careening astronauts of 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Right Stuff. He argues that as advanced technologies have proliferated, popular culture has turned the attendant fear of instability into the thrill of topsy-turvydom, often by presenting images and experiences of weightless escape from controlled space. Considering theme parks, cyberspace, cinematic special effects, superhero comics, and musical films, Matters of Gravity highlights phenomena that make technology spectacular, permit unfettered flights of fantasy, and free us momentarily from the weight of gravity and history, of past and present. Bukatman delves into the dynamic ways pop culture imagines that apotheosis of modernity: the urban metropolis. He points to two genres, musical films and superhero comics, that turn the city into a unique site of transformative power. Leaping in single bounds from lively descriptions to sharp theoretical insights, Matters of Gravity is a deft, exhilarating celebration of the liberatory effects of popular culture.
Download or read book Ultraluminous written by Katherine Faw and published by MCD. This book was released on 2017-12-05 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of The New Yorker's "Books We Loved in 2017," a BOMB's Looking Back on 2017: Literature Selection, a Paris Review Staff Pick, and one of Vulture's 10 Best Thriller Books of 2017. Girlfriend. Prostitute. Addict. Terrorist? Who is K? The daring new novel from Katherine Faw, the brilliant author of Young God, is a scintillating story of money, sex, and power told in Faw’s viciously sharp prose. A high-end, girlfriend-experience prostitute has just returned to her native New York City after more than a decade abroad—in Dubai, with a man she recalls only as the Sheikh—but it’s unclear why exactly she’s come back. Did things go bad for her? Does she have scores to settle? Regardless, she has quickly made herself at home. She’s set up a rotation of clients—all of them in finance—each of whom has different delusions of how he is important to her. And she’s also met a man whom she doesn’t charge—a damaged former Army Ranger, back from Afghanistan. Her days are strangely orderly: A repetition of dinners, personal grooming, museum exhibitions, sex, Duane Reades (she likes the sushi), cosmology, sex, gallery shows, nightclubs, heroin, sex, and art films (which she finds soothing). She finds the pattern confirming, but does she really believe it’s sustainable? Or do the barely discernible rifts in her routine suggest that something else is percolating under the surface? Could she have fallen for one of her bankers? Or do those supposed rifts suggest a pattern within the pattern, a larger scheme she’s not showing us, a truth that won’t be revealed until we can see everything?
Download or read book Ephemeral Urbanism written by Rahul Mehrotra and published by List. This book was released on 2017 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "As one of the outcomes of the Ephemeral City Research Project conceived in the Harvard Graduate School of Design with the aim of bringing to light the idea that nonpermanent configurations of the urban landscape are legitimate within the discourse on cities this book describes temporary settlements from all over the world that challenge the illusion of the permanence of the urban landscape. Ephemeral Urbanism invites us to ponder over aspects of material impermanence such as dematerialization and disassembly as an integral part of the designand construction processes of cities. Ranging from the scale of the small temporary infill within the urban, to the scale of the ephemeral mega cities, this book gives an overview of hundreds of cases, analyzing settlements or configurations that are constructed for a limited period of time. Through diagrams, photographs and aerial images, this preliminary survey presents an exploration of ome interesting prototypes of flexible urban planning and design. Texts by Richard Sennett and Ricky Burdett give the appropriate framework to understand the relevance of this book."--Provider.
Download or read book Nine Gates written by Jane Hirshfield and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 1998-08-26 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Gate Enables passage between what is inside and what is outside, and the connection poetry forges between inner and outer lives is the fundamental theme of these nine essays. Nine Gates begins with a close examination of the roots of poetic craft in "the mind of concentration" and concludes by exploring the writer's role in creating a sense of community that is open, inclusive and able to bind the individual and the whole in a way that allows each full self-expression. in between, Nine Gates illumines the nature of originality, translation, the various strategies by which meaning unfolds itself in language, poetry's roots in oral memory and the importance of the shadow to good art. A person who enters completely into the experience of a poem is initiated into a deeper intimacy with life. Delving into the nature of poetry, Jane Hirshfield also writes on the nature of the human mind, perception and experience. Nine Gates is about the underpinnings of poetic craft, but it is also about a way of being alive in the world -- alertly, musically, intelligently, passionately, permeably. In part a primer for the general reader, Nine Gates is also a manual for the working writer, with each "gate" exploring particular strategies of language and thought that allow a poem to convey meaning and emotion with clarity and force. Above all, Nine Gates is an insightful guide to the way the mind of poetry awakens our fundamental consciousness of what can be known when a person is most fully alive.
Download or read book Imagined Cities written by Robert Alter and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Imagined Cities, Robert Alter traces the arc of literary development triggered by the runaway growth of urban centers from the early nineteenth century through the first two decades of the twentieth. As new technologies and arrangements of public and private space changed the ways people experienced time and space, the urban panorama became less coherent—a metropolis defying traditional representation and definition, a vast jumble of shifting fragments and glimpses—and writers were compelled to create new methods for conveying the experience of the city.In a series of subtle and convincing interpretations of novels by Flaubert, Dickens, Bely, Woolf, Joyce, and Kafka, Alter reveals the ways the city entered the literary imagination. He shows how writers of diverse imaginative temperaments developed innovative techniques to represent shifts in modern consciousness. Writers sought more than a journalistic representation of city living, he argues, and to convey meaningfully the reality of the metropolis, the city had to be re-created or reimagined. His book probes the literary response to changing realities of the period and contributes significantly to our understanding of the history of the Western imagination.
Download or read book Modern Gods written by Nick Laird and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-06-27 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful novel about two sisters who must reclaim themselves after their lives are dramatically upended, from an award-winning author with “a wonderfully original and limber voice” (The New York Times) “[Nick Laird’s] kinetic prose, full of insight about politics, history and religion, dazzles eye and ear." –The New York Times Book Review “Nick Laird takes two experiences poles apart and unites them in gorgeous language…[with] fierce tenderness. ” –Dave Eggers, author of Heroes of the Frontier Alison Donnelly has suffered for love. Still stuck in the small Northern Irish town where she was born, working for her father’s real estate agency, she hopes a second marriage will help her get her life back together. Her sister Liz, a fiercely independent professor who lives in New York City, is about to return to Ulster for Alison’s wedding, before heading to an island off the coast of Papua New Guinea to make a TV show about the world’s newest religion. Both sisters hope to write their own futures, but the past has other ideas. Alison wakes up the day after her wedding to find that her new husband has a past neither of them can escape. While Liz, in a rainforest on the other side of the planet, finds herself increasingly entangled in the eerie, charged world of Belef, the charismatic middle-aged woman she has come to film, the leader of a cargo cult. As Modern Gods ingeniously interweaves the stories of Liz and Alison, it becomes clear that both sisters must learn how to negotiate with the past, with the sins of fanaticism, and decide exactly what the living owe to the dead. Laird’s brave, innovative novel charts the intimacies and disappointments of a family trying to hold itself together, and the repercussions of history and belief.
Download or read book The Hard Crowd written by Rachel Kushner and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A career-spanning anthology of essays on politics and culture by the best-selling author of The Flamethrowers includes entries discussing a Palestinian refugee camp, an illegal Baja Peninsula motorcycle race, and the 1970s Fiat factory wildcat strikes.
