Architecture Or Revolution

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.

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.

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.

Architecture and Revolutionpresents a series of essays which explore the consequences of the 1989 revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe from an architectural perspective.

Le Corbusier is widely acknowledged as the most influential architect of the twentieth century. As extensively researched and documented as his works are, however, they have never been exhaustively surveyed in photographs until now. Photographer Richard Pare has crossed the globe for years to document the extant works of Le Corbusier - from his first villas in Switzerland to his mid-career works in his role as the first global architect in locations as far-flung as Argentina and Russia, and his late works, including his sole North American project, at Harvard University, and an extensive civic plan for Chandigarh, India.Le Corbusier: The Buildings provides numerous views of each project to bring a fuller understanding of the architect's command of space, sometimes surprising use of materials and color, and the almost ineffable qualities that only result from a commanding synthesis of all aspects of design. With an authoritative text by scholar and curator Jean-Louis Cohen, Le Corbusier: The Buildings is a groundbreaking opportunity to appreciate the master's work anew.

Pioneering manifesto by founder of "International School." Technical and aesthetic theories, views of industry, economics, relation of form to function, "mass-production split," and much more. Profusely illustrated.

Published in 1923, Toward an Architecture had an immediate impact on architects throughout Europe and remains a foundational text for students and professionals. Le Corbusier urges readers to cease thinking of architecture as a matter of historical styles and instead open their eyes to the modern world. Simultaneously a historian, critic, and prophet, he provocatively juxtaposes views of classical Greece and Renaissance Rome with images of airplanes, cars, and ocean liners. Le Corbusier's slogans--such as "the house is a machine for living in"--and philosophy changed how his contemporaries saw the relationship between architecture, technology, and history. This edition includes a new translation of the original text, a scholarly introduction, and background notes that illuminate the text and illustrations.

Massive modern skyscrapers, obelisks, towers—all are structures that, thanks to their phallic shape, are often associated with sex. But other buildings are more subtly connected, as they provide the frameworks for our sexual lives and act as reminders of our sexual memories. This relationship between sex and buildings mattered more than ever in the United States and Europe during the turbulent twentieth century, when a culture of unprecedented sexual frankness and tolerance emerged and came to dominate many aspects of public life. Part architectural history, part cultural history, and part travelogue, Sex and Buildings explores how progressive sexual attitudes manifest themselves in architecture, asking what progressive sexuality might look like architecturally and exploring the successes and failures of buildings' attempts to reflect it. In search of structures that reflect the sexual mores of their inhabitants, Richard J. Williams visits modernist buildings in Southern California, the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, the Playboy Mansion in Chicago, the Seagram in New York, communes from the 1960s, and more. A fascinating and often funny look at a period of extraordinary social change coupled with aesthetic invention, Sex and Buildings will change the way we look at the buildings around us.