Items related to Buildings Must Die – A Perverse View of Architecture
Synopsis
Part memento mori for architecture, and part invocation to reimagine the design values that lay at the heart of its creative purpose.
Buildings, although inanimate, are often assumed to have “life.” And the architect, through the act of design, is assumed to be their conceiver and creator. But what of the “death” of buildings? What of the decay, deterioration, and destruction to which they are inevitably subject? And what might such endings mean for architecture's sense of itself? In Buildings Must Die, Stephen Cairns and Jane Jacobs look awry at core architectural concerns. They examine spalling concrete and creeping rust, contemplate ruins old and new, and pick through the rubble of earthquake-shattered churches, imploded housing projects, and demolished Brutalist office buildings. Their investigation of the death of buildings reorders architectural notions of creativity, reshapes architecture's preoccupation with good form, loosens its vanities of durability, and expands its sense of value. It does so not to kill off architecture as we know it, but to rethink its agency and its capacity to make worlds differently.
Cairns and Jacobs offer an original contemplation of architecture that draws on theories of waste and value. Their richly illustrated case studies of building “deaths” include the planned and the unintended, the lamented and the celebrated. They take us from Moline to Christchurch, from London to Bangkok, from Tokyo to Paris. And they feature the work of such architects as Eero Saarinen, Carlo Scarpa, Cedric Price, Arata Isozaki, Rem Koolhaas and François Roche.
Buildings Must Die is both a memento mori for architecture and a call to to reimagine the design values that lay at the heart of its creative purpose.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Authors
Stephen Cairns is Programme Director of the Future Cities Laboratory at the Singapore-ETH Centre.
Jane M. Jacobs is Director of the Division of Social Sciencesand Professor of Urban Studies at Yale-NUS College, Singapore.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherMIT Press
- Publication date2014
- ISBN 10 0262026937
- ISBN 13 9780262026932
- BindingHardcover
- LanguageEnglish
- Edition number1
- Number of pages312
Search results for Buildings Must Die – A Perverse View of Architecture
Stock Image
Buildings Must Die: A Perverse View of Architecture
Published by
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2013
ISBN 10: 0262026937
ISBN 13: 9780262026932
Used
Hardcover
Seller: Montana Book Company, Fond du Lac, WI, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. First Edition. 298 pp. Tightly bound. Corners not bumped. Text is free of markings. No ownership markings. Published without dust jacket. First Edition / First Printing. 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1. This copy is smyth sewn. Smyth sewing is a method of book binding where groups of folded pages (referred to as signatures) are stitched together using binder thread. Each folded signature is sewn together individually with multiple stitches and then joined with other signatures to create the complete book block. This is the traditional and best method of bookbinding. Seller Inventory # 083059
Quantity: 1 available