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Treacherous Transparencies analyzes transparency as expressed in architecture and art in an attempt to understand the intentions and objectives that underlie its use by pertinent architects and artists. The publication looks at a few important works by selected artists and architects who work with transparency as an artistic strategy, which they implement primarily by using glass and mirrors but other media as well. e architects and artists listed together in this context form an unlikely alliance: Bruno Taut, Ivan Leonidov, Marcel Duchamp, Mies van der Rohe, Dan Graham, and Gerhard Richter. But they do have something in common: their work marks salient way stations in the story of modernism up to the present day. Concept & text by Jacques Herzog and photographs of Farnsworth House by Pierre de Meuron.
As political polarisation undermines confidence in the shared values and established constitutional orders of many nations, it is imperative that we explore how parliaments are to stay relevant and accessible to the citizens whom they serve. The rise of modern democracies is thought to have found physical expression in the staged unity of the parliamentary seating plan. However, the built forms alone cannot give sufficient testimony to the exercise of power in political life. Parliament Buildings brings together architecture, history, art history, history of political thought, sociology, behavioural psychology, anthropology and political science to raise a host of challenging questions. How do parliament buildings give physical form to norms and practices, to behaviours, rituals, identities and imaginaries? How are their spatial forms influenced by the political cultures they accommodate? What kinds of histories, politics and morphologies do the diverse European parliaments share, and how do their political trajectories intersect? This volume offers an eclectic exploration of the complex nexus between architecture and politics in Europe. Including contributions from architects who have designed or remodelled four parliament buildings in Europe, it provides the first comparative, multi-disciplinary study of parliament buildings across Europe and across history. Praise for Parliament Buildings ‘In its totality, this is an invaluable book, both as a comprehensive review of the wider implications of architecture and building in culture and society, and as a specific resource in the understanding of one highly specialised, but profoundly significant building type.’ Dean Hawkes, Cardiff University and University of Cambridge ‘Symbols of history and of hope, theatres of struggle, cradles of consensus: parliamentary buildings, as these diverse essays show, both reflect our democracies and can help them function better.’ David Anderson, House of Lords ‘Parliament Buildings is a brilliant interdisciplinary exploration of a fascinating topic. Theoretically sophisticated, empirically rich and historically informed, it demonstrates the multiple ways in which politics and the built environment intersect, and sheds light on the symbolic and material practices central to contemporary representative politics.’ Duncan Bell, University of Cambridge
Now in paperback, the definitive, life-spanning, bilingual edition of the poems by the Nobel Prize laureate The Poems of Octavio Paz is the first retrospective collection of Paz’s poetry to span his entire writing career from his first published poem, at age seventeen, to his magnificent last poem. This landmark bilingual edition contains many poems that have never been translated into English before, plus new translations based on Paz’s final revisions. Assiduously edited by Eliot Weinberger—who has been translating Paz for over forty years—The Poems of Octavio Paz also includes translations by the poet-luminaries Elizabeth Bishop, Paul Blackburn, Denise Levertov, Muriel Rukeyser, and Charles Tomlinson. Readers will also find Weinberger’s capsule biography of Paz, as well as notes on many poems in Paz’s own words, taken from various interviews he gave throughout his long and singular life.
Permanence as an architectural concept is no longer restricted to the Vitruvian virtue of firmitas. To think about it in this sense today produces a schism: absolutism in a world of relativism. The fourth volume of Inflection extrapolates the permanent and the temporary not as opposing forces, but as a spectrum to be navigated at each stage of architecture's unfolding narrative. Through each of the responses presented in this year's edition, Permanence provides a critical voice as architecture and design continually seek an enduring foothold in an inherently evolving landscape, physical or otherwise. Inflection is a student-run design journal based at the Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne. Born from a desire to stimulate debate and generate ideas, it advocates the discursive voice of students, academics and practitioners. Founded in 2013, Inflection is a home for provocative writing—a place to share ideas and engage with contemporary discourse.
"The scene with which I begin this chapter is the kind of scene that interests Carson. In the words of her 'Essay on What I Think About Most' (1999), a disquisition on mistake in stanzas of unrhyming verse, the 'wilful creation of error' is the action of the 'master contriver' - the poet: 'what Aristotle would call an "imitator" of reality'. Like the 'true mistakes of poetry', the matter Carson confesses to 'think about most', Streb's choreographed falls perform the conversion of human error into an art form. Under the dancer's regime, and by an extraordinary coup of artifice, the emotions of mistake - shame, exposure, thrill - are handed to us, putting our own contradictions and 'odd longings' centre-stage"--
The true story of the intimate relationship that gave birth to the Farnsworth House, a masterpiece of twentieth-century architecture—and disintegrated into a bitter feud over love, money, gender, and the very nature of art. “An intimate portrait . . . alive with architectural intrigue.”—Architect Magazine In 1945, Edith Farnsworth asked the German architect Mies van der Rohe, already renowned for his avant-garde buildings, to design a weekend home for her outside of Chicago. Edith was a woman ahead of her time—unmarried, she was a distinguished medical researcher, as well as an accomplished violinist, translator, and poet. The two quickly began spending weekends together, talking philosophy, Catholic mysticism, and, of course, architecture over wine-soaked picnic lunches. Their personal and professional collaboration would produce the Farnsworth House, one of the most important works of architecture of all time, a blindingly original structure made up almost entirely of glass and steel. But the minimalist marvel, built in 1951, was plagued by cost overruns and a sudden chilling of the two friends’ mutual affection. Though the building became world famous, Edith found it impossible to live in, because of its constant leaks, flooding, and complete lack of privacy. Alienated and aggrieved, she lent her name to a public campaign against Mies, cheered on by Frank Lloyd Wright. Mies, in turn, sued her for unpaid monies. The ensuing lengthy trial heard evidence of purported incompetence by an acclaimed architect, and allegations of psychological cruelty and emotional trauma. A commercial dispute litigated in a rural Illinois courthouse became a trial of modernist art and architecture itself. Interweaving personal drama and cultural history, Alex Beam presents a stylish, enthralling narrative tapestry, illuminating the fascinating history behind one of the twentieth century’s most beautiful and significant architectural projects.
A magnificent city existing on the ringes of the past, and on the brink of destruction, Viriconium • With a foreword by Neil Gaiman Available to American readers for the first time, this landmark collection gathers four groundbreaking fantasy classics from the acclaimed author of Light. Set in the imagined city of Viriconium, here are the masterworks that revolutionized a genre and enthralled a generation of readers: The Pastel City, A Storm of Wings, In Viriconium, and Viriconium Nights. Back in print after a long absence, these singular tales of a timeless realm and its enigmatic inhabitants are now reborn and compiled to captivate a whole new generation. Praise for M. John Harrison’s Viriconium “The world that Harrison depicts is intricate and authentic, peopled with a multitude of strange yet lifelike characters—a combination which serves to make his richly imagined empire of Viriconium feel very real indeed. . . . This omnibus collection from the author of Light is canon-reading for those who wish to know the genre's roots, as well as the heights, to which it can aspire.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Brilliant, beautiful, and absolutely essential reading. The breadth of vision and imagination alone in these books is unparalleled. It is truly one of a kind and will continue to haunt you in the best possible way for years.”—Jonathan Carroll, author of White Apples “Harrison’s Viriconium sequence is the jewel in the crown of 20th-century fantasy, a work that proves irrefutably that fantastic literature can be Art with a capital A, holding its own alongside the very finest writing of our time, or any other.”—Elizabeth Hand, author of Mortal Love “M. John Harrison is a true master of English prose. He possesses the eye of a painter, the ear of a bard, and a rigorous and playful intellect. The Viriconium novels and stories are infused with a haunting genius that never falters.”—K.J. Bishop, author of The Etched City
This illustrated journey through lost, overlooked, and uncompleted works is “a fascinating enrichment of the history of sf and fantasy” (Booklist). Science fiction and fantasy reign over popular culture now, associated in our mind with blockbuster movies and massive conventions. But there’s much more to the story than the headline-making hits. Lost Transmissions is a rich trove of forgotten and unknown, imagined-but-never-finished, and under-appreciated-but-influential works from those imaginative genres, as well as little-known information about well-known properties. Divided into sections on Film & TV, Literature, Art, Music, Fashion, Architecture, and Pop Culture, the book examines: Jules Verne’s lost novel AfroFuturism and Space Disco E.T.’s scary beginnings William Gibson’s never-filmed Aliens sequel Weezer’s never-made space opera the 8,000-page metaphysical diary of Philip K. Dick, and more Featuring more than 150 photos, this insightful volume will become the bible of science fiction and fantasy’s most interesting and least-known chapters. “Will broaden your horizons and turn you on to wonders bubbling under the mass-market commodified pleasures to which we all too often limit ourselves.” —The Washington Post
In its front-page review of Alternating Current, The New York Times Book Review called Octavio Paz “an intellectual literary one-man band” for his ability to write incisively and with dazzling originality about a wide range of subjects. This collection of his essays is divided into three parts. Part 1 sets forth his credo as an artist and poet, steeped in his knowledge of world literature and Mexican art and history and buttressed by readings of writers from Mexican poet Luis Cernuda to D. H. Lawrence, Malcolm Lowry, André Breton, and Carlos Fuentes. Part 2 deals with themes such as Western individualism versus plurality and flux in Eastern philosophy, atheism versus belief, nihilism, liberated man, and versions of paradise. In Part 3, Paz writes of politics and ethics in essays on revolt and revolution, existentialism, Marxism, the third world, and the new face of Latin America. A scintillating thinker and a prescient voice on emerging world culture, Paz reveals himself here as “a man of electrical passions, paradoxical visions, alternating currents of thoughts, and feeling that runs hot but never cold” (Christian Science Monitor).
We are living through the wrack of the White Male. As the compact between social hierarchy, inherited privilege, and race (reinforced by gender and other normative categories) shows signs of buckling, his rage and resentment threaten us all. For he is a thing possessed: possessed by his own love of possession, and born to a sense that the world belongs to him and him alone. The spoils of oppression lie coiled inside him, a glut he can't digest, and murder beckons behind the respect that he conceives of as his due." A hybrid of critical essay and memoir, and Rough Notes to Erasure contributes to a growing body of work that wrestles with the tacit and embodied nature of privilege and prejudice, and it contributes not only via argument but also through style. Taking inspiration from feminist/queer poetics and what Fred Moten calls “the black avant-garde,” these rough notes address the remainder that gets lost in explicit argument, which is the flesh. Where privilege roils through history, and empire whets the appetites. But also where the world catches on its own fractalization by thought, feeling, and desire; and language recovers, for a moment or two, the power to entangle us with our mother tongue.