Architecture, Animal, Human: The Asymmetrical Condition

by Ingraham; Catherine T.

• ISBN13: 9780415701068
• ISBN10: 0415701066
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-01-13
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This book looks at specific instances in the Renaissance, Enlightenment and our own time when architectural ideas and ideas of biological life come into close proximity with each other. These convergences are fascinating and complex, offering new insights into architecture and its role. Establishing architecture as a product of the ascendancy of the position of human life, the author shows here that while architecture is dependent on life forces for its existence, at the same time it must be, at some level, indifferent to the life within it. Life, for its part, privileges itself above all else, and seeks to continuously expand its field of expression. This, then, is the asymmetrical condition, and to understand it is to gain important new theoretical perspectives into the nature of architecture.

Author Biography

Catherine Ingraham is Professor of Architecture at Pratt Institute.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Life (before)

Partitioning the orthopedic whole

Inside and outside

Life (before)

Life (after): post-animal life

Post-animal life

After

Ways of life

Hyena: totem animal of the late twentieth century

The divide

Birds (from above)

Birds (from below)

Space: the animal-field

Praying mantis: totem animal of the thirties

Mimicry

Milieu

Vertical, standing upright

Framing

Lascaux: totem milieu of the sixties

Animal urbanism

Stock exchange: standing upright, idle

The City: horizontal, upright, working

Processing

Engineering

Processing

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