Chora

by Perez-Gomez, Alberto; Parcell, Stephen

• ISBN13: 9780773525047
• ISBN10: 0773525041
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-08-30
• Publisher: McGill Queens Univ Pr

Summary

Contributors to this volume strive to uncover architectural alternatives to simplistic models based on concepts of aesthetics, technology, or sociology. Seventeen essays explore historical topics ranging from antiquity, with a study of the Roman Colosseum; through early Renaissance subjects, such as the treatises of Luca Pacioli on architecture; through to the modern era and explorations on topics ranging from seventeenth-century Amsterdam to architectural insights that can be found in the works of the poet and mathematician Lewis Carroll. Authors examining contemporary issues seek to explicate the spatial poetics of architecture by invoking other artistic disciplines. Essays in this group include a discussion of the accomplishments of Gordon Matta-Clark, a reading of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, and an analysis of the implications of ethical/formal questions in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein for architecture. Contributors include Caroline Dionne (Université de Québec à Montréal), Mark Dorrian (University of Edinburgh), Michael Emerson (University of New South Wales), Marc Glaudemans (University of Technology), George Hersey (emeritus, Yale University), Robert Kirkbride (design director, Studiolo), Joanna Merwood (doctoral dissertation, Princeton University), Michel Moussette (Ph.D. at the Université de Montréal), Juhani Pallasmaa (architect, Finland, emeritus Washington University in St. Louis), Alberto Pérez-Gómez (McGill University), David Theodore (McGill University), and Dorian Yurchuk (architect, New York City).

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Lewis Carroll, A Man out of Joint: The Anonymous Architect Of Euclid's Retreat	1	(24)
Caroline Dionne
The Breath on the Mirror: Notes on Ruskin's Theory of the Grotesque	25	(24)
Mark Dorrian
Alberti at Sea	49	(34)
Michael Emerson
The Rediscovery of the Hinterland	83	(20)
Marc Glaudemans
The Colosseum: The Cosmic Geometry of a Spectaculum	103	(24)
George L. Hersey
On the Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro and the Architecture of Memory	127	(50)
Robert Kirkbride
Architecture, Mysticism and Myth: Modern Symbolism in the Writing of William Richard Lethaby	177	(20)
Joanna Merwood
Gordon Matta-Clark's Circling the Circle of the Caribbean Orange	197	(14)
Michel Moussette
Geometry of Terror: Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window	211	(34)
Jubani Pallasmaa
The Glass Architecture of Fra Luca Pacioli	245	(42)
Alberto Perez-Gomez
Simplex Sigillum Veri: The Exemplary Life of an Architect	287	(26)
David Theodore
Ranelagh Gardens and the Recombinatory Utopia of Masquerade	313	(26)
Dorian Yurchuk
About the Authors	339