Unknown City : Contesting Architecture and Social Space

by Iain Borden, Jane Rendell and Joe Kerr (Eds.)

• ISBN13: 9780262024716
• ISBN10: 0262024713
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-12-11
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

The Unknown Citytakes its place in the emerging architectural literature that looks beyond design process and buildings to discover new ways of looking at the urban experience. A multistranded contemplation of the notion of "knowing a place," it is about both the existence and the possibilities of architecture and the city. An important inspiration for the book is the work of Henri Lefebvre, in particular his ideas on space as a historical production. Many of the essays also draw on the social critique and tactics of the Situationist movement. The international gathering of contributors includes art, architectural, and urban historians and theorists; urban geographers; architects, artists, and filmmakers; and literary and cultural theorists. The essays range from abstract considerations of spatial production and representation to such concrete examples of urban domination as video surveillance and Regency London as the site of male pleasure. Although many of the essays are driven by social, cultural, and urban theory, they also tell real stories about real places. Each piece is in some way a critique of capitalism and a thought experiment about how designers and city dwellers working together can shape the cities of tomorrow.

Table of Contents

Preface	x
Acknowledgments	xvi
Contributors	xx
Things, Flows, Filters, Tactics	2	(26)
Iain Borden
Jane Rendell
Joe Kerr
Alicia Pivaro
Part I Filters	28	(148)
Twice-Told Stories: The Double Erasure of Times Square	30	(24)
M. Christine Boyer
That Place Where: Some Thoughts on Memory and the City	54	(14)
Barry Curtis
The Uncompleted Monument: London, War, and the Architecture of Remembrance	68	(22)
Joe Kerr
From Tribeca to Triburbia: A New Concept of the City	90	(14)
William Menking
``Bazaar Beauties'' or ``Pleasure Is Our Pursuit'': A Spatial Story of Exchange	104	(18)
Jane Rendell
I Am a Videocam	122	(16)
Philip Tabor
Stories of Plain Territory: The Maidan, Calcutta	138	(22)
Helen Thomas
Colonialism, Power, and the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank	160	(16)
Shirley Wong
Part II Filtering Tactics	176	(136)
Another Pavement, Another Beach: Skateboarding and the Performative Critique of Architecture	178	(22)
Iain Borden
The Royal Festival Hall---a ``Democratic'' Space?	200	(12)
Adrian Forty
The Cityscape and the ``People'' in the Prints of Jose Guadalupe Posada	212	(16)
Tom Gretton
The Claremont Road Situation	228	(18)
Sandy McCreery
The Lesbian Flaneur	246	(16)
Sally R. Munt
The Un(known) City ... or, an Urban Geography of What Lies Buried below the Surface	262	(18)
Steve Pile
On Spuistraat: The Contested Streetscape in Amsterdam	280	(16)
Edward W. Soja
Home and Away: The Feminist Remapping of Public and Private Space in Victorian London	296	(16)
Lynne Walker
Part III Tactics	312	(94)
Brief Encounters	314	(42)
Nigel Coates
Live Adventures	328	(12)
Cornford & Cross
It's Not Unusual: Projects and Tactics	340	(16)
Fat
Claiming Women's History in the Urban Landscape: Projects from Los Angeles	356	(14)
Dolores Hayden
Architecture and the City	370	(16)
Bernard Tschumi
``The Accident of Where I Live''---Journeys on the Caledonian Road	386	(20)
Richard Wentworth
Part IV Tactical Filters	406	(98)
Architecture, Amnesia, and the Emergent Archaic	408	(14)
Iain Chambers
Reflections from a Moscow Diary, 1984--1994	422	(14)
Jonathan Charley
City Living: Love's Meeting Place	436	(6)
bell hooks
Port Statistics	442	(16)
Patrick Keiller
Living in Wythenshawe	458	(18)
Doreen Massey
The Last Days of London	476	(16)
Patrick Wright
Around the World in Three Hundred Yards	492	(12)
Patrick Wright
Sources of Illustrations	504	(2)
Index	506