(H/B) IMAGINED UTOPIAS IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

Παρουσίαση

Beginning with the early history of London's Vauxhall pleasure gardens, this volume surveys visionary architecture and urban planning from the 18th century to the present. The recurrence of themes of technology, individual agency and communal living in the work of Le Corbusier, Eileen Gray, Charles and Ray Eames and Constant Nieuwenhuys, testifies to the continued search for an ideal personal and public space.
Inspired by works of fiction such as Utopia, Herland, Mizora: World of Women and Homo Ludens and the films Metropolis and Stalker, artists and architects created fantastic plans for individual homes, housing complexes and entire urban centers. The resulting projects discussed here manifest the modern anxiety between the liberation of the individual and the needs of the collective. The urban landscape from the 18th to the 21st centuries has been woven into the fabric of architecture as a way to improve day-to-day life, as well as to create personal identity within an expanding public world.
The seven chapter topics are arranged chronologically, and begin with the design of social space in Georgian-era pleasure gardens and conclude with a study of contemporary Utopian groups that utilize early literary references as a focus for their societies. As such, the book builds upon the understanding of technology and architecture in its many forms as a shared benchmark for the expansion of individual rights and the growth of Utopian ideas in modern European and American society. (From the publisher)

Περιεχόμενα

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
From a Walk in the Park to a Trek through the Ruins
Chapter One
Arcadian Drift: London's Vauxhall Garden and Denbies' Il Penseroso - a memento mori
Chapter Two
Glass Haven: The Social Life of Greenhouses
Chapter Three
Primeval Forest: Mid-Century Modernist Architecture in Brazil
Chapter Four
Floating Elysium: Counter-Culture Islands
Chapter Five
Staging Dreamland: Case Study Homes and Suburban Subdivisions
Chapter Six
Gimme Shelter: The 1920s machine-a-habiter and 21st Century Shelter Art
Chapter Seven
Mapping Utopias: From New Babylon to Black Rock City
Conclusion
Private Utopias in a Digital World