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Architectural atmospheres : on the experience and politics of architecture

Architecture is increasingly understood to be a sensual, spatial experience, which means that the experience of buildings and spatial constellations is also a perception of atmospheres that are rated as positive or negative. Architects, planners, investors, and politicians must produce effects such as these according to intersubjective and communicable criteria, and not intuitively or randomly. Architectural Atmospheres addresses the growing awareness of the atmospheric dimension of architecture and provides a current, programmatic discussion of this topic. What possibilities does this approach open to architecture, what value does this knowledge have? Three essays and a conversation lead a cross-discipline discussion on the impact of architecture, and contribute to the debate first initiated by Peter Zumthor. The texts are accompanied bythirty-five color images that capture architectural moods in a variety of ways. Gernot Boehme is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Darmstadt Technical University and Director of the Institute for Practical Philosophy, e.V., Ipph, in Darmstadt, Germany. Christian Borch is Professor of Political Sociology at the Department of Management, Politics, and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. Olafur Eliasson is a Danish-Icelandic artist. Eliasson incessantly explores our modes of perceiving. His work spans photography, installation, sculpture, and film. Juhani Pallasmaa is one of Finland's most distinguished architects and architectural thinkers.

Architecture, philosophy and the pedagogy of cinema : from Benjamin to Badiou

"Philosophers on the art of cinema mainly remain silent about architecture. Discussing cinema as 'mass art', they tend to forget that architecture, before cinema, was the only existing 'mass art'. In this work author Nadir Lahiji proposes that the philosophical understanding of the collective human sensorium in the apparatus of perception must once again find its true training ground in architecture. Building art puts the collective mass in a position of 'expert critic', who identifies themselves with the technical apparatus. Only then can architecture regain its status as 'mass art' and, as the book contends, only then can it resume its function as the only 'artform' that is designed for the political pedagogy of masses, which originally belonged to it in modernity before the invention of cinema"--Philosophers on the art of cinema mainly remain silent about architecture. Discussing cinema as 'mass art', they tend to forget that architecture, before cinema, was the only existing 'mass art'. In this work author Nadir Lahiji proposes that the philosophical understanding of the collective human sensorium in the apparatus of perception must once again find its true training ground in architecture. Building art puts the collective mass in the position of an 'expert critic' who identifies themselves with the technical apparatus of architecture. Only then can architecture regain its status as 'mass art' and, as the book contends, only then can it resume its function as the only 'artform' that is designed for the political pedagogy of masses, which originally belonged to it in the period of modernity before the invention of cinema.

Fascist modernism in Italy : arts and regimes

Between 1917 to 1975 Germany, Italy, Portugal, the Soviet Union, and Spain shifted from liberal parliamentary democracies to authoritarian and totalitarian dictatorships, seeking total control, mass consensus, and the constitution of a 'new man/woman' as the foundation of a modern collective social identity. As they did so these regimes uniformly adopted what we would call a modernist aesthetic - huge-scale experiments in modernism were funded and supported by fascist and totalitarian dictators. Famous examples include Mussolini's New Rome at EUR, or the Stalinist apartment blocks built in urban Russia. Focusing largely on Mussolini's Italy, Francesca Billiani argues that modernity was intertwined irrecoverably with fascism - that too often modernist buildings, art and writings are seen as a purely cultural output, when in fact the principles of modernist aesthetics constitute and are constituted by the principles of fascism. The obsession with the creation of the 'new man' in art and in reality shows this synergy at work. This book is a key contribution to the field of twentieth century history - particularly in the study of fascism, while also appealing to students of art history and philosophy.

Amos Gitai: Architecture, Cinema, Politics

Announcing the Martin Wong Catalogue Raisonné