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Joel Sternfeld: Sweet Earth
Manufacturer: Steidl
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects
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Richard Misrach: Chronologies
ASIN: 3865211240
Release Date: 2006-04-01 |
Book Description
As laissez-faire market forces sweep the globe and the earth's future seems endangered, the dream of living in concert with nature and with one another is increasingly essential. A common human longing throughout history, the utopian community ideal has taken root firmly in America over the past 200 years. In Sweet Earth: Experimental Utopias in America, Joel Sternfeld looks at 60 representative historic or present American utopias. Neither a conventional history nor a conventional book of photography, Sweet Earth brings together what might otherwise seem disparate, individualized social phenomena and makes visible the community of communities. This tradition of thinking has ancient, universal precedents. When Thomas More wrote Utopia in 1516, he gave a name to an idea that had included the Epic of Gilgamesh, Plato's Republic and the Old Testament's and he started an argument. Francis Bacon (who believed in utopia through science) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (utopia through nature) soon joined the debate, but it was the harsh changes in daily life engendered by the factory systems of the early Industrial Revolution that brought an urgency to the discussion, as seen in the writings of David Owens, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. While the early social theorists were largely European, it was in the fluid environment of young America that true utopian communities were built and utopian experimentation flourished. In the years between 1810 and 1850, hundreds of secular and religious societies bravely tried to build a "perfect" life for their members. In the 20th century, experimentation began again, reaching a fever pitch in the turbulent days of the Vietnam War. Some of the late-1960s communes still survive and continue to flourish. The 1990s and the early years of the new millennium have become yet another hotbed of social experimentation. The co-housing movement is sweeping America with at least 70 communities fully completed and occupied and numerous others planned. At the same time, the rapid global expansion of sustainable communities known as ecovillages has been widely adopted in America. This book by one of America's foremost artists includes a photograph of each community and is accompanied by brief text that summarizes the most salient aspects of the history or organization. A book that functions both as art, as well as a hopeful guide to alternative ways of life.
Customer Reviews:
nice new book.......2007-01-07
This a great photography book. The prints are very nice.
If you like Joel Sternfeld, you will love this book.
Book Description
This topical examination of a key moment in modern architecture pointedly and critically evaluates the role of the neo-avant-garde in today's world.
International in scope and exhaustive in detail, the book explores important exponents of "visionary" and "utopian" architecture in the closing juncture of the modernist era, coinciding with the cultural upheavals and social transformations of the 1960s and '70s. By revisiting "New Babylon," the magnum opus of the Dutch painter Constant Nieuwenhuys, whose vision of a situationist urban environment made him one of the most influential artists of this time, this collection of essays re-examines decisive work by Yona Friedman, the Archigram group, the Italian Radicals Superstudio and Archizoom, Koolhaas/Zenghelis and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, and Léon Krier. Timely, in-depth essays and exhaustive project documentations trace the decline of avant-garde projects in architecture. The result is a significant work of architectural theory and history, which will interest anyone studying ideologies of the past and dreaming the cities of tomorrow.
Book Description
This vast panorama spans more than two millennia of Western attempts to invent the perfect city, cradle of the ideal society. Embracing not only architecture and town planning but also art, literature, philosophy, and politics, the book takes us through the imaginary environments of a wide variety of fascinating and often controversial movements and figures, including Plato, Filarete, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas More, Thomas Jefferson, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, Charles Fourier, Etienne Cabet, Robert Owen, William Morris, Ebenezer Howard, Bruno Taut, Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, the European Situationalists, the Japanese Metabolists, Archigram, Superstudio, and many more.
The ideal cities in this richly illustrated book exist for the most part in the domain of ideas. Ruth Eaton explores the ability of ideal cities to stimulate reflection and change, and she suggests under what conditions they might continue to exercise their vital function in relation to the urban environment of the future. While it is true that notorious attempts to cross the border into reality have greatly discredited utopianism, it is good to recall—with the famous historian of cities, Lewis Mumford—that "a map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at." 300 illustrations, 250 in color.
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Kiyonori Kikutake: From Tradition to Utopia (Arco)
Kiyonori Kikutake
Manufacturer: L'Arcaedizioni
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 8878380210 |
Book Description
Kiyonori Kikutake's personal vision of building and design has left its mark on the history of architecture worldwide, ever since he relaunched a utopian concept of architecture, as a member of the Metabolist Movement, with his marine city project. Indeed, his vision actually projects beyond this century: his latest constructions, and above all his most recent projects, show the way for the architects of the future, even though he has basically remained faithful to the underlying principles that inspired his earliest work.
Book Description
This landmark collection of illustrated essays explores the vastly underappreciated history of America's other cities -- the great metropolises found south of our borders in Central and South America.
Buenos Aires, S o Paulo, Mexico City, Caracas, Havana, Santiago, Rio, Tijuana, and Quito are just some of the subjects of this diverse collection. How have desires to create modern societies shaped these cities, leading to both architectural masterworks (by the likes of Luis Barrag n, Juan O'Gorman, L cio Costa, Roberto Burle Marx, Carlos Ra l Villanueva, and Lina Bo Bardi) and the most shocking favelas? How have they grappled with concepts of national identity, their colonial history, and the continued demands of a globalized economy?
Lavishly illustrated, Cruelty and Utopia features the work of such leading scholars as Carlos Fuentes, Edward Burian, Lauro Cavalcanti, Fernando Oayrz n, Roberto Segre, and Eduardo Subirats, along with artwork ranging from colonial paintings to stills from Chantal Akerman's film From the Other Side. Also included is a revised translation of Spanish King Philip II's influential planning treatise of 1573, the "Laws of the Indies," which did so much to define the form of the Latin American city.
Customer Reviews:
HAY QUE TENERLO. . . .a must have. .......2007-06-15
Un excelente libro con una base teorica excepcional, ademas de una calidad grafica envidiable. El libro es un paseo por las cualidades fisicas de la ciudad y la arquitectura latinoamericanas. Es uno de los pocos libros sobre la arquitectura latinoamericana que responde a unos niveles altos de calidad expositiva, grafica, documental y teorica.
Book Description
As Robert Fishman writes of three of urban planning's greatest visionaries, Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier, they 'hated the cities of their time with an overwhelming passion. The metropolis was the counter-image of their ideal cities, the hell that inspired their heavens.'
Customer Reviews:
Good subject matter, even better narrative.......2004-12-31
Although an interesting subject matter, the author does an amazing job using the narrative of the thinkers lives to cooincide with their belief system, the only problem is he probably could have done it in about 50 pages less, but overall its a good fast read
Customer Reviews:
YEA!.......2007-02-18
I have placed about 8 orders the same day as this product and this came the fastest. thanks!
Book Description
The Utopie group was born in 1966 at Henri Lefebvre's house in the Pyrenees. The eponymous journal edited by Hubert Tonka brought together sociologists Jean Baudrillard, René Lourau, and Catherine Cot, architects Jean Aubert, Jean-Paul Jungmann, Antoine Stinco, and landscape architect Isabelle Auricoste. Over the next decade, both in theory and in practice, the group articulated a radical ultra-leftist critique of architecture, urbanism, and everyday life. Utopia Deferred collects all of the essays Jean Baudrillard published in Utopie as well as recent interviews with Jean Baudrillard and Hubert Tonka.
Utopie served as a workshop for Baudrillard's thought. Many of the essays he first published in Utopie were seminal for some of his most shockingly original books: For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, The Mirror of Production, Simulations, Symbolic Exchange and Death, and In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities. But Utopie was also a topical journal and a political one; the topics of these essays are often torn from the headlines of the tumultuous decade following the uprisings of May 1968.
Book Description
An indispensable and innovative resource for anyone involved in contemporary architecture and urban development.
Cities are the ultimate and most complex manifestations of human civilization. For millennia, architects and builders have attempted to rationalize them into well-functioning and livable places for their inhabitants. While many aspects of a city evolve naturally, other facets result from masterful human interventions and radical imagination. Future City celebrates the visionary urban plans that have preoccupied architects trying to create a better world from the 1950s to the present.
The book features hundreds of seminal and influential works by some sixty architects, ranging from the groundbreaking experiments of Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, Peter Cook, and Daniel Libeskind to a new generation of rising stars, including Asymptote, NOX, UN Studio, and Greg Lynn. 500+ illustrations.
Amazon.com's Best of 2001
The beach house was "the sonnet form of American architecture," writes Alastair Gordon. "This was where the revolution began." In his gracefully written, stunningly illustrated book, he shows how the evolution of summer housing on the once-rural eastern end of Long Island, New York, heralded key developments in architecture.
By the late 1920s, the sprawling Southampton mansions of Stanford White and others were passé. The new style was a modernist box, raised up on supporting columns for protection and a better view, with a sun deck and floor-to-ceiling windows. (See Palm Springs Weekend: The Architecture and Design of a Midcentury Oasis or Palm Springs Modern: Houses in the California Desert for a West Coast version of modernist vacation home design.)
After World War II, the Hamptons became a favorite destination of New York artists, architects, and writers, who ushered in a period of fanciful experimentation. Then came the deluge. Gordon's own family, who bought their prefab beach home in the '50s, was part of a trend celebrated by Life magazine in 1959, the year Nixon and Khrushchev held their Kitchen Debate at a Leisurama house.
Gordon vividly describes the innovations of the '50s and '60s, from the stunningly pure Blake House (two square, ground-hugging sections with a central breezeway framing the ocean view) to the proud verticals of the Gwathmey House, clad in vertical cedar siding approximating the look of carved concrete. In the '70s, as ocean-view lots became scarce, some architects ignored the natural setting, creating imposing sculptural statements craning to isolate an elusive view. Others, including Robert Venturi and Jack Lenore Larsen, gave vernacular styles a postmodern twist.
Rightly decrying the neotraditional behemoths built in the '80s to satisfy the insecurities of the megarich, Gordon takes the long view. Each wave of newcomers remade this flat land in their own image, yet "something about it resists change." --Cathy Curtis
Book Description
The Hamptons, New York's fashionable summer beach resorts, are well known as weekend havens for city-dwellers who relish their idyllic setting on the Atlantic shore. Once quiet agricultural land, Eastern Long Island first became popular among artists, architects, writers, and society patrons in the 1920s, when it served as a breeding ground for modernism. From the avant-garde influence of luminaries like Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, and Willem de Kooning, to the high modernism of Le Corbusier, Philip Johnson, and Richard Meier, new ideas about art, architecture, and modern living transformed the Hamptons and ultimately made it the destination of choice for those seeking respite from the battles of Wall Street and Madison Avenue. In Weekend Utopia Alastair Gordon traces this fascinating and complicated trajectory, both in architectural terms-looking at modest beach houses and modern mansions alike-and in the life stories of the world-famous artists and designers, whose influence is felt on "The Island" even today. Over 175 photographs and illustrations detail the architecture, interiors, and nuances of these beautiful weekend homes, and provide an intimate portrait of the people who inhabit them. This engrossing book combines architectural history with a broad social perspective and paints a comprehensive picture of an area that in many ways shaped modern American culture.
Customer Reviews:
Warmed Me Up on Winter Weekend.......2002-02-24
Finally got the chance to sit and read Gordon's excellent text in Weekend Utopia. The book goes way beyond an illustrated coffee book. Gordon manages to weave together stories about the characters who shaped the place (like developer Carl Fisher who created Montauk to be the "Miami Beach of the North")with stories about the flamboyant architecture, post-war artists like Pollock and Motherwell and his own personal memories as a boy spending summers there. While the book has a large format with hundreds of illustrations it is most readable and explains so much about how a rural American landscape was transformed into a resort for show-offs. I loved it and can't comprehend what reviewers from Hong Kong and the Netherlands were talking about. It is neither trying to be a professional book on architecture nor a cheap gossip book about pseudo-celebrities. It is an intelligent cultural history that also happens to be well designed and illustrated. It warmed my soul on a chilly winter weekend and made me want to go to the beach as soon as possible.
Historical Monograph.......2001-10-11
Wonderfully written and researched. Architecturally lacking photographs, drawings, or any substance for inspiration or idea generation. Cover and size of book suggests more pictorial content, but fails to deliver.
Don't let the cover mislead you.......2001-08-15
When i saw the cover of this book i thought this would be a great book. I wanted to find pictures of beautiful decorated houses,nice gardens and offcourse the habitants of the mansions. Well, that's not quite what's inside this book. For the most only pictures of houses taken in the 50's and 60's and a lot of text!! I want pictures of Aerin Lauder and the Miller sisters!!
Don't shoot the messenger.......2001-07-05
I'm a bit mystified by the comments below that seem to implicate this book and its author in what the Hamptons have become. To the contrary, Weekend Utopia celebrates happier days pre-mega mansions: when culture and architecture and some fascinating characters created some truly exceptional houses, most of them modest in scale. In fact, today's Hamptons home-builders could learn a lesson or two from this book (like small can be very beautiful), and stop the further despoilment of what the Hamptons used to be: something Weekend Utopia shows with great clarity and style. This wonderful book is certainly no apologia for the mess that awaits you at the end of I-495...
An interesting if sad look back.......2001-06-28
I agree with the reviewer who said that the Hamptons were ruined long ago -- by the very succession of waves of development that this book touts. I do love looking at some of the quality design of the past that this book shows, but the new reality is overbuilding and, even worse, tasteless building. The feeling of getting away to a charming, easy-going, and low-key place with rural roots is gone forever in the Hamptons. We left because of the continuing intrusion of the nouveau riche who are more interested in showing off than in quietly relaxing-----peoplewho have now made the Hamptons a decidedly UNCOOL place to be.
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