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Buildings are driven by human emotions and desires; hope, power, money, sex, the idea of home. In Why We Build Rowan Moore explores the making of buildings from conception to inhabitation and reveals the paradoxical power of architecture: it looks fixed and solid, but is always changing in response to the lives around it. Moving across the globe and through history, through works of folly, beauty, spectacle, and subtlety, Moore gives a provocative and iconoclastic view of what makes architecture, why it matters, and why we find it fascinating. You will never look at a building in the same way again.
The Royal College of Physicians celebrates its 500th anniversary in 2018, and to observe this landmark is publishing this series of ten books. Each of the books focuses on fifty themed elements that have contributed to making the RCP what it is today, together adding up to 500 reflections on 500 years. Some of the people, ideas, objects and manuscripts featured are directly connected to the College, while others have had an influence that can still be felt in its work. Written exactly fifty years after the opening of the building in 1964, this first book in the series, Anatomy of a Building, is a meditation on the architecture of the college, focusing particularly on its current home, a Grade 1 listed building, designed by Denys Lasdun.
A powerful examination of how property shaped the modern world - and why it now threatens the freedoms and stability it was meant to sustain. Property carries a great promise: that it will make you rich and set you free. But it is also a weapon, an agent of displacement and exploitation, the currency of kleptocrats and oligarchs. In Britain, it has led to a new class division between those who own and those who don't. Property is a vivid, far-reaching analysis of our concept of property ownership, from 16th-century enclosures to the present day. It tells powerful stories - of life in the developer-led boomtown of Gurgaon in India, of the struggles to form Black communities in Missouri and Georgia, of a giant experiment in co-operative living in the Bronx, of the impacts of Margaret Thatcher's "property-owning democracy." Above all, Property asks how we have come to view our homes as investments - and it offers hope for how things could be better, with reform that might enable the social wealth of property to be returned to society.
Whispers in the Cedars: Port Gibson, Mississippi's Wintergreen Cemetery by William L. Sanders “The purpose of this book is not only to list those laid to rest in this beautiful, historic burial ground, but also to provide an easy and accurate way to locate specific graves, by using the maps and locations referenced within.” In this, author Sanders has admirably succeeded. Thoroughly researched, Whispers in the Cedars provides a systematic guide to this revered resting place in Port Gibson, Mississippi. Wanting “to let the stones speak” for themselves, Mr. Sanders records the information contained on each gravestone. And an extensive Index of Last Names offers ready access to the contents. “It is my sincere wish that the reader will find this book not only valuable as a genealogical reference tool, but may find it entertaining as well. I hope you enjoy it!” Again, a wish fulfilled in this book of remembrance and dedication.
Monuments of Diverse Heritage in Early America: Placemaking and Preservation by Black, Indigenous, and Jewish Peoples explores a more inclusive history of preserving public historic sites. At a time when some Americans have embraced white nationalism in response to unfolding demographic changes and others celebrate individual identities over all else, an inclusive, tolerant, and unifying historical vision is sorely needed. While past preservation efforts sometimes resulted in exclusionary forms of historical inspiration, that need not be the case in the future. Bringing greater attention to the diverse heritage of the United States will not only help dismantle the lingering remnants of exclusionary and elitist narratives but also celebrate a pluralistic and diverse past and present. An inclusive, empowering history can provide social cohesion while allowing room for individual groups to have authority over their pasts and representation in public, side-by-side with one another.
Sculpture and the Museum is the first in-depth examination of the varying roles and meanings assigned to sculpture in museums and galleries during the modern period, from neo-classical to contemporary art practice. It considers a rich array of curatorial strategies and settings in order to examine the many reasons why sculpture has enjoyed a position of such considerable importance - and complexity - within the institutional framework of the museum and how changes to the museum have altered, in turn, the ways that we perceive the sculpture within it. In particular, the contributors consider the complex issue of how best to display sculpture across different periods and according to varying c...
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'We were told we would never get planning consent and we did. We were told we would never be able to fund it and we did. Then we were told we would never be able to build it and we did.' Irvine Sellar In 2000, Irvine Sellar, a former market trader famous for helping to create the look of the Swinging Sixties on Carnaby Street, stood on a rooftop in Southwark, London, and decided to build the tallest building in western Europe. He had virtually no experience, and he wanted to build at the wrong height, in the wrong place, on the wrong side of the river and at the wrong time. Twelve years later, the Shard, a 'vertical city' designed by one of the world's leading architects, Renzo Piano, change...