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Book Utopias and Architecture

Download or read book Utopias and Architecture written by Nathaniel Coleman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-05-07 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Utopian thought, though commonly characterized as projecting a future without a past, depends on golden models for re-invention of what is. Through a detailed and innovative re-assessment of the work of three architects who sought to represent a utopian content in their work, and a consideration of the thoughts of a range of leading writers, Coleman offers the reader a unique perspective of idealism in architectural design. With unparalleled depth and focus of vision on the work of Le Corbusier, Louis I Kahn and Aldo van Eyck, this book persuasively challenges predominant assumptions in current architectural discourse, forging a new approach to the invention of welcoming built environments and transcending the limitations of both the postmodern and hyper-modern stance and orthodox modernist architecture.

Book Bangkok Utopia

    Book Details:
  • Author : Lawrence Chua
  • Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
  • Release : 2021-02-28
  • ISBN : 0824887735
  • Pages : 292 pages

Download or read book Bangkok Utopia written by Lawrence Chua and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2021-02-28 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Utopia” is a word not often associated with the city of Bangkok, which is better known for its disorderly sprawl, overburdened roads, and stifling levels of pollution. Yet as early as 1782, when the city was officially founded on the banks of the Chao Phraya river as the home of the Chakri dynasty, its orientation was based on material and rhetorical considerations that alluded to ideal times and spaces. The construction of palaces, monastic complexes, walls, forts, and canals created a defensive network while symbolically locating the terrestrial realm of the king within the Theravada Buddhist cosmos. Into the twentieth century, pictorial, narrative, and built representations of utopia were critical to Bangkok’s transformation into a national capital and commercial entrepôt. But as older representations of the universe encountered modern architecture, building technologies, and urban planning, new images of an ideal society attempted to reconcile urban-based understandings of Buddhist liberation and felicitous states like nirvana with worldly models of political community like the nation-state. Bangkok Utopia outlines an alternative genealogy of both utopia and modernism in a part of the world that has often been overlooked by researchers of both. It examines representations of utopia that developed in the city—as expressed in built forms as well as architectural drawings, building manuals, novels, poetry, and ecclesiastical murals—from its first general strike of migrant laborers in 1910 to the overthrow of the military dictatorship in 1973. Using Thai- and Chinese-language archival sources, the book demonstrates how the new spaces of the city became arenas for modern subject formation, utopian desires, political hegemony, and social unrest, arguing that the modern city was a space of antinomy—one able not only to sustain heterogeneous temporalities, but also to support conflicting world views within the urban landscape. By underscoring the paradoxical character of utopias and their formal narrative expressions of both hope and hegemony, Bangkok Utopia provides an innovative way to conceptualize the uneven economic development and fractured political conditions of contemporary global cities.

Book Seven American Utopias

Download or read book Seven American Utopias written by Dolores Hayden and published by Mit Press. This book was released on 1979 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the time of its discovery, the new world was regarded by American settlers as a new Eden and a new Jerusalem. Although individual pioneers' visions of paradise were inevitably corrupted by reality, some determined ideatists carved out enclaves in order to develop collective models of what they believed to be more perfect societies. All such communitarian groups consciously attempted to express their social ideals in their buildings and landscapes; invariably, ideological predispositions can be inferred from a close study of the environments they created. The interplay between ideology and architecture, the social design and the physical design of American utopian communities, is the basis of this remarkable book by Dolores Hayden.At the heart of the book are studies of seven communitarian groups, collectively stretching over nearly two centuries and the full breadth of the American continent-the Shakers of Hancock, Massachusetts; the Mormons of Nauvoo, lllinois; the Fourierists of Phalanx, New Jersey; the Perfectionists of Oneida, New York; the Inspirationists of Amana, Iowa; the Union Colonists of Greeley, Colorado; and the Cooperative Colonists of Llano del Rio, California. Hayden examines each of these groups to see how they coped with three dilemmas that all socialist' societies face: conflicts betweeft authoritarian and participatory processes, between communal and private territory, and between unique and replicable community plans.The book contains over 260 historic and contemporary photographs and drawings which illustrate the communitarian processes of design and building. The drawings range in scale from regional plans showing land ownership, access to transportation, and availability of natural resources, through site plans of communal domains and building plans of dwellings and assembly halls, down to detailed diagrams of furniture configurations. To aid readers in making comparisons, a series of site and building plans drawn at constant scales has been provided for all seven case studies.

Book Unbuilt Utopian Cities 1460 to 1900  Reconstructing their Architecture and Political Philosophy

Download or read book Unbuilt Utopian Cities 1460 to 1900 Reconstructing their Architecture and Political Philosophy written by Dr Tessa Morrison and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2015-10-28 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together ten utopian works that mark important points in the history and an evolution in social and political philosophies, this book not only reflects on the texts and their political philosophy and implications, but also, their architecture and how that architecture informs the political philosophy or social agenda that the author intended. Each of the ten authors expressed their theory through concepts of community and utopian architecture, but each featured an architectural solution at the centre of their social and political philosophy, as none of the cities were ever built, they have remained as utopian literature.

Book Utopia s Ghost

    Book Details:
  • Author : Reinhold Martin
  • Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
  • Release : 2010-04-15
  • ISBN : 1452915326
  • Pages : 269 pages

Download or read book Utopia s Ghost written by Reinhold Martin and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2010-04-15 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written at the intersection of culture, politics & the city, particularly in the context of corporate globalization, 'Utopia's Ghost' challenges dominant theoretical paradigms & opens new avenues for architectural scholarship & cultural analysis.

Book Utopia Forever

Download or read book Utopia Forever written by Matthias Böttger and published by Die Gestalten Verlag-DGV. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An inspirational exploration of utopias and radical approaches to city planning.

Book Architecture and Utopia

Download or read book Architecture and Utopia written by Manfredo Tafuri and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1979-10-02 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Architecture and Utopia leads the reader beyond architectural form into a broader understanding of the relation of architecture to society and the architect to the workforce and the marketplace. Written from a neo-Marxist point of view by a prominent Italian architectural historian, Architecture and Utopia leads the reader beyond architectural form into a broader understanding of the relation of architecture to society and the architect to the workforce and the marketplace. It discusses the Garden Cities movement and the suburban developments it generated, the German-Russian architectural experiments of the 1920s, the place of the avant-garde in the plastic arts, and the uses and pitfalls of seismological approaches to architecture, and assesses the prospects of socialist alternatives.

Book Imagining and Making the World

Download or read book Imagining and Making the World written by Nathaniel Coleman and published by Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the association between architecture and utopia (the relationship between imagining a new world and exploring how its new conditions can best be organized) might appear obvious from within the domain of utopian studies, architects have long attempted to dissociate themselves from utopia. Concentrating on the difficulties writers from both perspectives experience with the topic, this collection interrogates the meta-theoretical problematic for ongoing intellectual work on architecture and utopia. The essays explore divergent manifestations of the play of utopia on architectural imagination, situated within specific historical moments, from the early Renaissance to the present day. The volume closes with an exchange between Nathaniel Coleman, Ruth Levitas, and Lyman Tower Sargent, reflecting on the contributions the essays make to situating architecture and utopia historically and theoretically within utopian studies, and to articulating utopia as a method for inventing and producing better places. Intriguing to architects, planners, urban designers, and others who study and make the built environment, this collection will also be of interest to utopian studies scholars, students, and general readers with a concern for the interrelationships between the built environment and social dreaming.

Book No Place Like Utopia

Download or read book No Place Like Utopia written by Peter Blake and published by W. W. Norton. This book was released on 1996 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No Place Like Utopia has a deep theme: how modern architecture, born and raised between the wars and after with a strong sense of social and political idealism, gradually fell back in the 1960s into its ancient role as an elitist pursuit dedicated to flattering the rich and powerful.

Book Embodied Utopias

    Book Details:
  • Author : Amy Bingaman
  • Publisher : Psychology Press
  • Release : 2002
  • ISBN : 9780415248136
  • Pages : 338 pages

Download or read book Embodied Utopias written by Amy Bingaman and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays from both established and younger scholars from a variety of disciplines address the relationship between gender and projects of social transformation through architecture, design and urban planning.

Book Advances in Utopian Studies and Sacred Architecture

Download or read book Advances in Utopian Studies and Sacred Architecture written by Claudio Gambardella and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-02-02 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a time dominated by the disappearance of Future, as claimed by the French anthropologist Marc Augé, Utopia and Religion seem to be two different ways of giving back an inner horizon to mankind. Therefore this book, on the one hand, considers the importance of utopia as a tool and how it offers an economic and social resource to improve cities’ wealth, future and livability. On the other, it explores the impact of religious and cultural ideals on cities that have recently emerged in this context. Based on numerous observations, the book examines the intellectual legacy of utopian theory and practices across various academic disciplines. It also presents discussions, theories, and case studies addressing a range of issues and topics related to utopia.

Book Last Futures

    Book Details:
  • Author : Douglas Murphy
  • Publisher : Verso Books
  • Release : 2016-01-12
  • ISBN : 1781689806
  • Pages : 298 pages

Download or read book Last Futures written by Douglas Murphy and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2016-01-12 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late 1960s the world was faced with impending disaster: the height of the Cold War, the end of oil, and the decline of great cities throughout the world. Out of this crisis came a new generation of thinkers, designers and engineers who hoped to build a better future, influenced by visions of geodesic domes, walking cities, and a meaningful connection with nature. In this brilliant work of cultural history, architect Douglas Murphy traces the lost archeology of the present-day through the works of thinkers and designers such as Buckminster Fuller, the ecological pioneer Stewart Brand, the Archigram architects who envisioned the Plug-In City in the '60s, as well as co-operatives in Vienna, communes in the Californian desert, and protesters on the streets of Paris. In this mind-bending account of the last avant garde, we see not just the source of our current problems but also some powerful alternative futures.

Book Architecture Or Techno utopia

Download or read book Architecture Or Techno utopia written by Felicity Dale Elliston Scott and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Felicity Scott traces an alternative genealogy of the postmodern turn in American architecture, focusing on a set of experimental practices and polemics that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Book Lost Utopias

    Book Details:
  • Author : Richard Pare
  • Publisher : Black Dog Press
  • Release : 2016
  • ISBN : 9781911164111
  • Pages : 127 pages

Download or read book Lost Utopias written by Richard Pare and published by Black Dog Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The pictures in this book bring the argument about reuse and preservation into focus. What is worthy of retaining and what is dispensable? What are the criteria for considering whether a structure should be retained or demolished? How do you define the parameters of taste and utility in making decisions to preserve or destroy? How will future generations regard the destruction of certain structures, will we be considered cultural vandals for not having retained more of the structures that seemed irrelevant at the time? The preservation argument is heightened in the case of the exhibitions sites, as by definition an exhibition is considered a temporary event."--Page 9.

Book Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist Movement

Download or read book Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist Movement written by Zhongjie Lin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-02-25 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Metabolism, the Japanese architectural avant-garde movement of the 1960s, profoundly influenced contemporary architecture and urbanism. This book focuses on the Metabolists’ utopian concept of the city and investigates the design and political implications of their visionary planning in the postwar society. At the root of the group’s urban utopias was a particular biotechical notion of the city as an organic process. It stood in opposition to the Modernist view of city design and led to such radical design concepts as marine civilization and artificial terrains, which embodied the metabolists’ ideals of social change. Tracing the evolution of Metabolism from its inception at the 1960 World Design Conference to its spectacular swansong at the Osaka World Exposition in 1970, this book situates Metabolism in the context of Japan’s mass urban reconstruction, economic miracle, and socio-political reorientation. This new study will interest architectural and urban historians, architects and all those interested in avant-garde design and Japanese architecture.

Book Utopias on Puget Sound  1885 1915

Download or read book Utopias on Puget Sound 1885 1915 written by Charles Pierce LeWarne and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2002-07-01 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Postmaster General James A Farley�s famous toast �to the forty-seven states and the soviet of Washington� introduces and sets the tone for this study of Washington State radicalism. The state�s colorful reputation for radical movements was established in the 1920s and 1930s by free speech fights, strikes, strong labor organizations, and woman suffrage reforms. Charles LeWarne finds the roots of this radicalism in the communitarian experiments of the late nineteenth century. Through analyses of several of these experiments, LeWarne demonstrates that the influence of a coterie of liberals and radicals centered on Puget Sound in such communities as Home, Burley, Freeland, Equality, and Port Angeles was felt in the state long after the �utopias� they came to colonize had ceased to exist. Probably the most famous of the experiments was Home Colony on Joe�s Bay near Tacoma. From a nucleus of three families, Home grew to over two hundred residents and lasted for more than twenty years. Its reputation for anarchism and flamboyance contributed to a jail sentence conviction for one editor of the Home newspaper for publishing an editorial called �The Nude and the Prudes.� Readers interested in current social movements and lifestyles will find many enlightening parallels with recent communal attempts, particularly the rejection of traditional values and the belief in a perfectible world. Whatever the differences within individual colonies, the communitarian ideal has certain general characteristics that find their way into each of these attempts to form a perfect society. Historians will welcome this treatment of an important part of the social and cultural history of the area. The book contains a mine of previously scattered information on the subject. It is a delightful footnote to the history of the Puget Sound region.

Book Architecture and Dystopia

Download or read book Architecture and Dystopia written by Dario Donetti and published by Actar D, Inc.. This book was released on 2020-02-08 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A homage to the 1973 publication of Architecture and Utopia by Manfredo Tafuri—echoed in the title—this book is devoted to the radical experiences of the 1960s and to their consequences for the most recent developments in contemporary architecture. As a response to the profound crisis of Western culture the emerged in the 1960s, radical artists from Italy, Austria, England and Japan called into question the foundations of modernist utopias. They transmuted the difficulties of capitalism into a repertory of startling images that revealed the disturbing realities of consumer society, even in those places still resistant to the penetration of modern architecture, such as Superstudio and Archizoom’s Florence. Their model, though exhausted in the space of experimentation, went on to inspire a generation of architects, from the High Tech movement to Rem Koolhaas, who sought to employ the paradigm of dystopia as both a visionary and a constructive method, one which could operate on the architecture of late capitalism and generate unexpected possibilities for urban planning. In the light of these examples, how to define a unified “dystopian” method of design, i.e. a common ground for an architecture that, by its very nature, seems to resist systematization? Are the most recognizable architectural expressions of this theoretical framework—characterized by brazen displays of technology and structures of overwhelming scale—merely isolated cases, albeit of particular iconic power? Or do they belong to a wider landscape of antirational architectural projects? And to what extent are these disturbing expressions premised on the utopian tradition or, better yet, the conceptual model of “negative thought”? The goal of this book is to respond to such questions, thus initiating an open dialogue about the legitimacy of this critical category. With contributions by Dario Donetti, Marco De Michelis, Oliver Elser, Dominique Rouillard, Marco Biraghi, Marie Theres Stauffer, Maddalena Scimemi, Simon Sadler, Massimiliano Savorra,and Anthony Vidler