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A groundbreaking look at sixty works of anarchist architecture. This book documents and illustrates sixty projects, past and present, that key into a libertarian ethos and desire for diverse self-organized ways of building. They are what this book calls "anarchist" architecture, that is, forms of design and building that embrace the core values of traditional anarchist political theory since its divergence from the mainstream of socialist politics in the nineteenth century. As Architecture and Anarchism shows, a vast range of architectural projects reflect some or all of these values, whether they are acknowledged as specifically anarchist or not. From junk playgrounds to Freetown Christiani...
Brings together architecture, fiction, film, and visual art to reconnect the imaginary city with the real, proposing a future for humanity that is firmly grounded in the present and the diverse creative practices already at our fingertips. Though reaching ever further toward the skies, today’s cities are overshadowed by multiple threats: climate change, overpopulation, social division, and urban warfare all endanger our metropolitan way of life. The fundamental tool we use to make sense of these uncertain city futures is the imagination. Architects, artists, filmmakers, and fiction writers have long been inspired to imagine cities of the future, but their speculative visions tend to be see...
The Dead City unearths meanings from such depictions of ruination and decay, looking at representations of both thriving cities and ones which are struggling, abandoned or simply in transition. It reveals that ruination presents a complex opportunity to envision new futures for a city, whether that is by rewriting its past or throwing off old assumptions and proposing radical change. Seen in a certain light, for example, urban ruin and decay are a challenge to capitalist narratives of unbounded progress. They can equally imply that power structures thought to be deeply ingrained are temporary, contingent and even fragile. Examining ruins in Chernobyl, Detroit, London, Manchester and Varosha, this book demonstrates that how we discuss and depict urban decline is intimately connected to the histories, economic forces, power structures and communities of a given city, as well as to conflicting visions for its future.
In the half century after the building of the Crystal Palace (1851), some architects, engineers, manufacturers and theorists believed that the fusion of iron and ornament would reconcile art and technology and create a new, modern architectural language. This book studies the development of mechanised architectural ornament in iron in nineteenth-century architecture, its reception and theorisation, and the contexts in which it flourished. As such, it offers new ways of understanding the notion of modernity in Victorian architecture.
London's sewers could be called the city's forgotten underground: mostly invisible subterranean spaces of absolutely vital importance that nonetheless rarely get the same degree of attention as the Tube. Paul Dobraszczyk here outlines the fascinating history of London's sewers from the nineteenth century onwards, using a rich variety of colour illustrations, photographs and newspaper engravings to show their development from medieval spaces to the complex, modern citywide network, largely constructed in the 1860s, that is still in place today. This book explores London's sewers in history, fiction and film, including how they entice intrepid explorers into their depths, from the Victorian period to the present day.
Rest your eyes long enough on the skylines of Delhi, Guangzhou, Jakarta—even Chicago or London—and you will see the same remarkable transformation, building after building going up with the breakneck speed of twenty-first-century urbanization. But there is something else just as transformative that you won’t see: sprawling networks of tunnels rooting these cities into the earth. Global Undergrounds offers a richly illustrated exploration of these subterranean spaces, charting their global reach and the profound—but often unseen—effects they have on human life. The authors shine their headlamps into an astonishing diversity of manmade underground environments, including subway syste...
The introduction of iron – and later steel – construction and decoration transformed architecture in the nineteenth century. While the structural employment of iron has been a frequent subject of study, this book re-directs scholarly scrutiny on its place in the aesthetics of architecture in the long nineteenth century. Together, its eleven unique and original chapters chart – for the first time – the global reach of iron’s architectural reception, from the first debates on how iron could be incorporated into architecture’s traditional aesthetics to the modernist cleaving of its structural and ornamental roles. The book is divided into three sections. Formations considers the ris...
What is Manchester? Moving far from the glitzy shopping districts and architectural showpieces, away from cool city-centre living and modish cultural centres, this book shows us the unheralded, under-appreciated and overlooked parts of Greater Manchester in which the majority of Mancunians live, work and play. It tells the story of the city thematically, using concepts such a ‘material’, ‘atmosphere’, ‘waste’, ‘movement’ and ‘underworld’ to challenge our understanding of the quintessential post-industrial metropolis. Bringing together contributions from twenty-five poets, academics, writers, novelists, historians, architects and artists from across the region alongside a range of captivating photographs, this book explores the history of Manchester through its chimneys, cobblestones, ginnels and graves. This wide-ranging and inclusive approach reveals a host of idiosyncrasies, hidden spaces and stories that have until now been neglected.
The story of a nineteenth-century invention (essentially a tiny greenhouse) that allowed for the first time the movement of plants around the world, feeding new agricultural industries, the commercial nursery trade, botanic and private gardens, invasive species, imperialism, and more. Roses, jasmine, fuchsia, chrysanthemums, and rhododendrons bloom in gardens across the world, and yet many of the most common varieties have roots in Asia. How is this global flowering possible? In 1829, surgeon and amateur naturalist Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward placed soil, dried leaves, and the pupa of a sphinx moth into a sealed glass bottle, intending to observe the moth hatch. But when a fern and meadow grass s...
In this fascinating and innovative look at the underbelly of Victorian London, Paul Dobraszczyk offers a new account of how the citys sanitation was revolutionised in the 1850s and 1860s by means of gigantic new sewers and magnificent pumping stations. He focuses on the question of how these new spaces were understood and represented by both those who planned and promoted them (reformers and engineers) and also by those whom they impacted, namely Londons populace. Richly illustrated with maps, engineering drawings, newspaper engravings, and architectural photographs, this book suggests new ways of understanding Londons sewers and makes visible these vital, yet hidden spaces of the city.