Architecture can influence the way we feel, and can
help us along as we go about our lives, or sabotage our
habitual ways of doing things. The essays collected here
challenge, and help to define a view of architecture
which ranges from the minimal domesticity of Diogenes'
barrel, to the exuberant experiments of the contemporary
avant-garde. Architecture is always more than building,
but is a folding together of buildings and culture, so
that the buildings come to have meaning as they are
caught up in a way of life, and architecture is best
appreciated as part of an art of living. Andrew
Ballantyne's substantial essay ''The Nest and the Pillar
of Fire'' introduces the collection, which explores some
themes and problems generated by architecture, from the
everyday to the extraordinary, by looking at
architecture and what people have to say about it.
Collected here, there are reflections on everyday life
and the posthumanist subject, and on both the words and
the deeds of philosophers such as Wittgenstein,
Heidegger and Deleuze.There are essays by philosophers,
architects and art historians, including Roger Scruton,
Bernard Tschumi, Demetri Pophyrios, Kenneth Frampton,
Diane Ghirardo and David Goldblatt. They consider what
architecture should be, what it does, and how it is
involved in our lives, whether by reminding us of lofty
ideals, or exasperating us by generating housework.
Philosophy has a role to play, either by helping to make
an exacting and incisive analysis, or by being deployed
as a means of seduction. Roger Scruton, Diane Ghirardo,
Michel de Certeau, Neil Leach, Kathleen McHugh, Joyce
Henri Robinson, Demetri Porphyrios, Kenneth Frampton,
David Goldblatt, Bernard Tschumi |
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