商品簡介
The authors (both of the Manchester School of Architecture, UK) note an "erosion" or "confusion" of space in modern urban forms associated with paradoxical policies of decentralization and concentration, a fragmented urban landscape full of voids, the high definition of peripheral developments that contrast against the neutrality of the spatial envelopes they contain, the chaotic mix of functions within a chaotic palette of forms, and the blurring of the distinction between categories of space (such as the distinction between social and commercial). It is this "confusion" of space that provides the central theme for their exploration of the contemporary urban environment in mostly stand-alone chapters that look at the role and position of brands (and their hacking and cultural distortions) in the operability of signs and symbols in the urban landscape; the way contemporary artists and architects represent unseen elements in cities (both physical and virtual); audio-visual media as a means of mapping urban inhabitation in a manner that is wider than the idealized and unoccupied depictions of architecture; the role of art in providing a window into the fabric of the urban environment that is not enabled by traditional formal and material architectural discourse; and the way that architecture, within a branded and networked environment, "has simultaneously homogenized by force and polarized by contingency" the order of the urban sign-object dialectic. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
作者簡介
Richard Brook, Senior Lecturer, Manchester School of Architecture, UK and Nick Dunn, Principal Lecturer, Manchester School of Architecture, UK
