Of Grammatology
Jacques Derrida - 1967
The ideas in De la grammatologie sparked lively debates in intellectual circles that included students of literature, philosophy, and the humanities, inspiring these students to ask questions of their disciplines that had previously been considered improper. Thirty years later, the immense influence of Derrida's work is still igniting controversy, thanks in part to Gayatri Spivak's translation, which captures the richness and complexity of the original. This corrected edition adds a new index of the critics and philosophers cited in the text and makes one of contemporary criticism's most indispensable works even more accessible and usable.
Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space
Michael Sorkin - 1992
A new Kind of urbanism--manipulative, dispersed, and hostile to traditional public space--is emerging both at the heart and at the edge of town in megamalls, corporate enclaves, gentrified zones, and psuedo-historic marketplaces. If anything can be described as a paradigm for these places, it's the theme park, an apparently benign environment in which all is structured to achieve maximum control and in which the idea of authentic interaction among citizens has been thoroughly purged. In this bold collection, eight of our leading urbanists and architectural critics explore the emblematic sites of this new cityscape--from Silicon Valley to Epcot Center, South Street Seaport to downtown Los Angeles--and reveal their disturbing implications for American public life.
Chicago Then and Now
Elizabeth McNulty - 2000
Chicago's change and growth over the last century is captured in this photographic history. Modern color photos sit side by side with black and white archival photographs. Every important building, avenue, neighborhood, and point of interest is documented. It covers all of Chicago's landmarks from Navy Pier to the Stockyards and from the Southside all the way up the Magnificent Mile. Take in a game at Wrigley Field, then take it all in from the top of the Sear's Tower. The Water Tower and all the other architectural features that make Chicago great are also included.
The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
William H. Whyte - 1980
Whyte published the findings from his revolutionary Street Life Project in The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Both the book and the accompanying film were instantly labeled classics, and launched a mini-revolution in the planning and study of public spaces. They have since become standard texts, and appear on syllabi and reading lists in urban planning, sociology, environmental design, and architecture departments around the world.Project for Public Spaces, which grew out of Holly's Street Life Project and continues his work around the world, has acquired the reprint rights to Social Life, with the intent of making it available to the widest possible audience and ensuring that the Whyte family receive their fair share of Holly's legacy.From the forward: For more than 30 years, Project for Public Spaces has been using observations, surveys, interviews and workshops to study and transform public spaces around the world into community places. Every week we give presentations about why some public spaces work and why others don't, using the techniques, ideas, and memorable phrases from William H. "Holly" Whyte's The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces.Holly Whyte was both our mentor and our friend. Perhaps his most important gift was the ability to show us how to discover for ourselves why some public spaces work and others don't. With the publication of The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces and its companion film in 1980, the world could see that through the basic tools of observation and interviews, we can learn an immense amount about how to make our cities more livable. In doing so, Holly Whyte laid the groundwork for a major movement to change the way public spaces are built and planned. It is our pleasure to offer this important book back to the world it is helping to transform.
The Man Without Content
Giorgio Agamben - 1970
He takes seriously Hegel's claim that art has exhausted its spiritual vocation, that it is no longer through art that Spirit principally comes to knowledge of itself. He argues, however, that Hegel by no means proclaimed the "death of art" (as many still imagine) but proclaimed rather the indefinite continuation of art in what Hegel called a "self-annulling" mode.With astonishing breadth and originality, the author probes the meaning, aesthetics, and historical consequences of that self-annulment. In essence, he argues that the birth of modern aesthetics is the result of a series of schisms—between artist and spectator, genius and taste, and form and matter, for example—that are manifestations of the deeper, self-negating yet self-perpetuating movement of irony.Through this concept of self-annulment, the author offers an imaginative reinterpretation of the history of aesthetic theory from Kant to Heidegger, and he opens up original perspectives on such phenomena as the rise of the modern museum, the link between art and terror, the natural affinity between "good taste" and its perversion, and kitsch as the inevitable destiny of art in the modern era. The final chapter offers a dazzling interpretation of Dürer's Melancholia in the terms that the book has articulated as its own.The Man Without Content will naturally interest those who already prize Agamben's work, but it will also make his name relevant to a whole new audience—those involved with art, art history, the history of aesthetics, and popular culture.
The Plenitude: Creativity, Innovation, and Making Stuff
Rich Gold - 2007
The average kitchen, for example, is home to stuff galore, and every appliance, every utensil, every thing, is compound--composed of tens, hundreds, even thousands of other things. Although each piece of stuff satisfies some desire, it also creates the need for even more stuff: cereal demands a spoon; a television demands a remote. Rich Gold calls this dense, knotted ecology of human-made stuff the Plenitude. And in this book--at once cartoon treatise, autobiographical reflection, and practical essay in moral philosophy--he tells us how to understand and live with it.Gold writes about the Plenitude from the seemingly contradictory (but in his view, complementary) perspectives of artist, scientist, designer, and engineer--all professions pursued by him, sometimes simultaneously, in the course of his career. I have spent my life making more stuff for the Plenitude, he writes, acknowledging that the Plenitude grows not only because it creates a desire for more of itself but also because it is extraordinary and pleasurable to create.Gold illustrates these creative expressions with witty cartoons. He describes seven patterns of innovation--including The Big Kahuna, Colonization (which is illustrated by a drawing of The real history of baseball, beginning with Play for free in the backyard and ending with Pay to play interactive baseball at home), and Stuff Desires to Be Better Stuff (and its corollary, Technology Desires to Be Product). Finally, he meditates on the Plenitude itself and its moral contradictions. How can we in good conscience accept the pleasures of creating stuff that only creates the need for more stuff? He quotes a friend: We should be careful to make the world we actually want to live in.
The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning
Maggie Nelson - 2011
The pervasiveness of images of torture, horror, and war has all but demolished the twentieth-century hope that such imagery might shock us into a less alienated state, or aid in the creation of a just social order. What to do now? When to look, when to turn away?Genre-busting author Maggie Nelson brilliantly navigates this contemporary predicament, with an eye to the question of whether or not focusing on representations of cruelty makes us cruel. In a journey through high and low culture (Kafka to reality TV), the visual to the verbal (Paul McCarthy to Brian Evenson), and the apolitical to the political (Francis Bacon to Kara Walker), Nelson offers a model of how one might balance strong ethical convictions with an equally strong appreciation for work that tests the limits of taste, taboo, and permissibility.
Studio Anywhere: A Photographer's Guide to Shooting in Unconventional Locations
Nick Fancher - 2015
In a perfect world, where every day is a breezy 72 degrees with partial cloud coverage, we would all have a 5,000-square-foot studio-and the entire catalog of B&H(TM) in our equipment lockups. But the reality is that you may have an outdated DSLR with two decent lenses (which took you several years to save up for), and all you have at your disposal is an unfinished basement, your garage, or the empty conference room at your office. That's where "Studio Anywhere" comes in. With photographer Nick Fancher as your guide, you'll learn how to get portfolio-ready photos while working in some of the most problematic scenarios imaginable. Whether shooting a corporate portrait, a test shoot with a model, or a promo shoot with a band, you'll discover that most of the time, there's no need for an expensive studio-you just have to get creative." ""Studio Anywhere" is a resource for photographers to learn through behind-the-scenes photos and lighting diagrams from a range of photo shoots-but it doesn't stop there. Because directing a photo shoot involves more than simply knowing how to wield a camera or process a raw file, Nick also lets you in on the aesthetic decisions he makes in his signature photos, inspiring you to develop your own vision. And, finally, he describes his Lightroom and Photoshop workflow so you can learn how to deftly navigate post-processing. Shows how to create images with minimal equipment that is within reach of anyone's budgetTakes you through the entire shoot, from concept to lighting to exposure to post-processing in Lightroom and PhotoshopTeaches how to build a portfolio without a dedicated studio space
Beautiful: All-American Decorating and Timeless Style
Mark D. Sikes - 2016
Sikes is a celebration of American style today, showcasing chic and accessible ideas for every home. Modern and unfussy, Mark D. Sikes's interiors are classic takes on California indoor/outdoor living, with natural fibers and crisp coloration, informed and influenced by the fashion world where he began his career. In eight chapters, he explores approachable, stylish looks, from Blue and White Forever, which features indigos, stripes, batiks, and wicker in casual rooms such as porches and pool houses; to Timeless Neutrals, presenting semiformal rooms filled with chinoiserie, gilt, glass, mirrors, banquettes, and French chairs; to Garden Greens, featuring happy, casual family rooms and kitchens inspired by the garden with treillage woodwork, rattan, and cotton. There are also Beautiful Brights, colorful rooms that are eclectic, layered, and fun, with chintz, florals, and Middle Eastern influences; and Sun Faded Hues, rustic coastal rooms with weathered fabrics and furniture. Each chapter presents light-filled images of the designer's looks and offers the reader inspiration and advice. As famed film director Nancy Meyers writes in the book's foreword, this is a book that shows design lovers how classic can look fresh, how style and comfort go hand-in-hand.
Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory
Edward W. Soja - 1989
Building on the work of Foucault, Giddens, Jameson and Lefebvre, one of America's geographers argues for a rethinking of the dialectics of space, time and social being.
Introducing Postmodernism
Richard Appignanesi - 1995
Has the 21st century resolved the question of postmodernism or are we more than ever ensnared in its perplexities? Postmodernism seemed to promise an end to the grim Cold War era of nuclear confrontation and oppressive ideologies. Fukuyama's notoriously proclaimed end of history, the triumph of liberal democracy over Communist tyranny, has proved an illusion. We awoke in the anxious grip of globalization, unpredictable terrorism and unforeseen war. Introducing Postmodernism traces the pedigrees of postmodernism in art, theory, science and history, providing an urgent guide to the present. Derrida, Baudrillard, Foucault and many other icons of postmodern complexity are brilliantly elucidated by Richard Appignanesi and enlivened by the Guardian's Biff cartoonist Chris Garratt.
The Story of Architecture
Jonathan Glancey - 2000
This beautifully illustrated book features photographs, plans and diagrams that help put significant periods into historical, geographical and cultural contexts.
Chromophobia
David Batchelor - 2000
This is apparent in the many attempts to purge colour from art, literature and architecture, either by making it the property of some "foreign" body - the oriental, the feminine, the infantile the vulgar or the pathological - or by relegating it to the realm of the superficial, the inessential or the cosmetic, which in many cases amounts to the same thing. In Chromophobia, David Batchelor analyzes the history of, and motivations behind, chromophobia, from its beginnings through examples of nineteenth-century literature, twentieth-century architecture and film, to Pop art, minimalism and the art and architecture of the present day. Batchelor suggests how colour fits, or fails to fit, into the cultural imagination of the West, exploring such diverse themes as Melville's "great white whale," Le Corbusier's "journey to the East," Huxley's experiments with mescaline. Dorothy's travels in the Land of Oz and the implication of modern artists' experiments with industrial paints and materials.
The Book of Tea
Kakuzō Okakura - 1906
A keepsake enjoyed by tea lovers for over a hundred years, The Book of Tea Classic Edition will enhance your enjoyment and understanding of the seemingly simple act of making and drinking tea.In 1906 in turn-of-the-century Boston, a small, esoteric book about tea was written with the intention of being read aloud in the famous salon of Isabella Gardner, Boston's most notorious socialite. It was authored by Okakura Kakuzo, a Japanese philosopher, art expert, and curator. Little known at the time, Kakuzo would emerge as one of the great thinkers of the early 20th century, a genius who was insightful, witty—and greatly responsible for bridging Western and Eastern cultures. Okakura had been taught at a young age to speak English and was more than capable of expressing to Westerners the nuances of tea and the Japanese Tea Ceremony.In The Book of Tea Classic Edition, he discusses such topics as Zen and Taoism, but also the secular aspects of tea and Japanese life. The book emphasizes how Teaism taught the Japanese many things; most importantly, simplicity. Kakuzo argues that tea-induced simplicity affected the culture, art and architecture of Japan.Nearly a century later, Kakuzo's The Book of Tea Classic Edition is still beloved the world over, making it an essential part of any tea enthusiast's collection. Interwoven with a rich history of Japanese tea and its place in Japanese society is a poignant commentary on Asian culture and our ongoing fascination with it, as well as illuminating essays on art, spirituality, poetry, and more. The Book of Tea Classic Edition is a delightful cup of enlightenment from a man far ahead of his time.