House In The Sun

"'A House in the Sun' describes a number of solar house experiments in the 1940s and 1950s. The houses relied on the materials and ideas of modern architecture for both energy efficiency and claims to cultural relevance, and also developed out of a growing concern over global resource limits"--Provided by publisher.

Camus’s Meursault and Thelma and Louise meet up under the blazing sun. Vexed by the ‘unremarkable star’ that ‘presses’ Camus’s Meursault to commit murder, Because the Sun considers the blazing sun as a material symbol of ambient violence – violence absorbed like heat and fired at the nearest victim. Likewise, as a friendship between women confronts gendered aggression in Thelma and Louise, the sun becomes the repository of pain, the high noon that pushes us through desert after desert. Because the Sun’s pastiche of voices embodies both stylistic and formal relentlessness by teasing out tonalities that blend and merge into each other, generating a blinding effect, like looking into the sun. “Breathless and death defying, the poems in Because the Sun are high-wire work. They sway above us in a blazing light of Burgoyne’s making. It is so rare that a book of poems is both a tuning fork for our minds as well as a balm for our bodies. But that is exactly what happens page after page in this blazing book.” —Michael Dickman, author of Days & Days “This beautiful work wraps Camus’s The Stranger in a poetics concerning erasure/+ hope. Out of the titular Sun’s burning punctum burst telling shards of what is erased by Camus’s remarkable construction of whiteness in-the-masculine: the dead ‘Arab,’ the female body’s interminable violations – but also its warming, even blinding capacity for consequential pleasures.” —Gail Scott, author of Heroine “Sarah Burgoyne begins with the sun and ends with flowers. In between is a complicated exploration of what it means to exist within a tradition that is Camus, Rimbaud, Blake. Taking her cue from Sara Ahmed, she notices how hard it is to challenge this tradition and yet that it matters to do it anyway.” —Juliana Spahr, author of That Winter the Wolf Came

A House in the Sun describes a number of experiments in solar house heating in American architectural, engineering, political, economic, and corporate contexts from the beginning of World War II until the late 1950s. Houses were built across the Midwest, Northeast, and Southwestern United States, and also proposed for sites in India, South Africa, and Morocco. These experiments developed in parallel to transformations in the discussion of modern architecture, relying on new materials and design ideas for both energy efficiency and claims to cultural relevance. Architects were among the myriad cultural and scientific actors to see the solar house as an important designed element of the American future. These experiments also developed as part of a wider analysis of the globe as an interconnected geophysical system. Perceived resource limitations in the immediate postwar period led to new understandings of the relationship between energy, technology and economy. The solar house - both as a charged object in the milieu of suburban expansion, and as a means to raise the standard of living in developing economies - became an important site for social, technological, and design experimentation. This led to new forms of expertise in architecture and other professions. Daniel Barber argues that this mid-century interest in solar energy was one of the first episodes in which resource limitations were seen as an opportunity for design to attain new relevance for potential social and cultural transformations. Furthermore, the solar discussion established both an intellectual framework and a funding structure for the articulation of and response to global environmental concerns in subsequent decades. In presenting evidence of resource tensions at the beginning of the Cold War, the book offers a new perspective on the histories of architecture, technology, and environmentalism, one more fully entangled with the often competing dynamics of geopolitical and geophysical pressures.

An insightful exploration and moving meditation on identity, art, and belonging from one of the most celebrated writers of the last decade. What happens when we begin to consider stories at the margins, when we grant them centrality? How does that complicate our certainties about who we are, as individuals, as nations, as human beings? Through the lens of visual art, literature, film, and the author’s lived experience, Out of the Sun examines Black histories in art, offering new perspectives to challenge us. In this groundbreaking, reflective, and erudite book, two-time Scotiabank Giller Prize winner and internationally bestselling author Esi Edugyan illuminates myriad varieties of Black experience in global culture and history. Edugyan combines storytelling with analyses of contemporary events and her own personal story in this dazzling first major work of non-fiction.

Meet Eileen Gray, the female architect behind the world-renowned E-1027 house and a pioneer of the Modern Movement in architecture. In 1924, her work began in earnest on a small villa by the sea in the south of France. Nearly a century later, this structure is a design milestone. But like so many gifted female artists and designers of her time, Eileen Gray's story has been eclipsed by the men with whom she collaborated. Dzierżawska's exquisite visuals illuminate the previously overlooked struggles and triumphs of a young queer Irish designer whose work and life came to bloom during the 'Années Folles' of early 20th century Paris.

"[T]he story of a father and son separated by war and circumstance--and whose encounter with the legendary Holy Grail will change their lives forever-- an epic tale of love, loss, betrayal, vengeance, and retribution that follows Texas Ranger Hackberry Holland on his journey to reunite with his estranged son, Ishmael, a captain in the United States Army"--

An epic comedy about the quest for transcendence in an anything-but-transcendent America, set amid the gorgeous landscapes of the American west: A “spiritual journey” full of “fun, joy, love, courage and compassion” (Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Powers) from the author of the perennial cult bestsellers The River Why and The Brothers K. A random bolt from a DC-8 falls from the sky, killing a child and throwing the faith of a young Jesuit Jesuit into crisis. A boy’s mother dies on his fifth birthday, sparking a lifetime of repressed anger that he unleashes once a year in reckless duels with the Fate, God, or Power who let the coincidence happen. A young woman on a run in Seattle experiences a shooting star moment that pierces her with a love that will eventually help heal the Jesuit, the angry young man, and innumerable others. The journeys of this unintentional menagerie carry them to the healing lands of Montana and a newly founded community—where nothing tastes better than Maker's Mark mixed with glacier ice, and nothing seems less likely than the soul-filling delight a troupe of spiritual refugees, urban sophisticates, road-weary musicians, and local cowboys begin to find in each other's company. With Sun House, David James Duncan continues exploring the American search for meaning and love that he began in his acclaimed novels The River Why and The Brothers K.