Built, the Unbuilt and the Unbuildable: In Pursuit of Architectural Meaning - Softcover

Harbison, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0500277451 ISBN 13: 9780500277454

Publisher: Thames & Hudson Ltd, 1993

Synopsis

Robert Harbison has acquired a reputation for looking at architecture in a highly original way. The questions he asks are those deliberately suppressed by conventional architectural historians: What draws me to this building? What meaning intended or unintended - does it have? Has that meaning changed through time? To expound his argument, the author chooses examples of buildings "freed from function", the architectural borderland where use and symbolism overlap: gardens - "places of undeclared war between architecture and its antitype nature"; monuments "how sure of themselves yet how entirely fictional"; historic fortifications - "prompting armies of tourists to assault them"; and ruins - "architecture existing only in the mind or in the eye of the beholder". Finally he enters the realm of the imagination in chapters on the internal space of paintings and on projects that have seen the light only as architects' dreams. Robert Harbison has lectured on architecture at MOMA, New York, the University of Toronto, Stanford University, Cornell University and the Architectural Association, London.

About this title

Review

" In this era of ubiquitous mass media, when today's catchword is tomorrow's cliche Robert Harbison has produced that rarity, a thoroughly personal and original book. "The Built, the Unbuilt and the Unbuildable is "a lucid, provocative meditation on architectural meaning, on 'some of the witting and unwitting means by which buildings evade functional necessities, or surpass them even while satisfying them.'" -- Nancy Levinson, Architectural Record

& quot; In this era of ubiquitous mass media, when today's catchword is tomorrow's cliche Robert Harbison has produced that rarity, a thoroughly personal and original book. The Built, the Unbuilt and the Unbuildable is a lucid, provocative meditation on architectural meaning, on 'some of the witting and unwitting means by which buildings evade functional necessities, or surpass them even while satisfying them.'& quot; -- Nancy Levinson, Architectural Record

"In this era of ubiquitous mass media, when today's catchword is tomorrow's cliche Robert Harbison has produced that rarity, a thoroughly personal and original book. "The Built, the Unbuilt and the Unbuildable is "a lucid, provocative meditation on architectural meaning, on 'some of the witting and unwitting means by which buildings evade functional necessities, or surpass them even while satisfying them.'"--Nancy Levinson, Architectural Record

About the Author

Robert Harbison has lectured widely on architecture at the Museum of Modem Art in New York, the University of Toronto, Stanford University, Cornell University, and the Architectural Association, London. His previous books include Eccentric Spaces, Deliberate Regression, and Pharaoh's Dream.

Edition details

• Publisher: Thames & Hudson Ltd
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0500277451
• ISBN 13: 9780500277454
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 192