The New Architectural Pragmatism: A Harvard Design Magazine Reader

by William S. Saunders

Overview

In response to the contentious process surrounding the selection of a design for the World Trade Center site, the use of spectacular buildings to brand cities and institutions, and the dizzying transformations of the skylines of Shanghai and Dubai, public awareness of architecture and design has perhaps never been higher. At the same time, architecture itself is undergoing an identity crisis as it confronts fundamental issues: the effect of digital technology on design, the pervasive impact of global capitalism, and whether to embrace or resist popular media and taste.

The New Architectural Pragmatism collects the most provocative, penetrating, and influential attempts by leading theorists and practitioners in the field to define what architectural practice should be at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Written in the aftermath of modernism’s utopian impulse and postmodernism’s detached playfulness, the essays gathered here express and critique a new spirit of cultural and political engagement with contemporary society.

Interrogating the architect’s social responsibility, the contributors deliberate about how much we should ask of architecture and suggest that in the coming century, architecture must be at once flexible and robust, responsive and self-directed.

Contributors: Stan Allen; George Baird; Lucy Bullivant; James Corner; Hal Foster; Kenneth Frampton; K. Michael Hays; Dave Hickey; Robert Levit; Evonne Levy; Reinhold Martin; Jorge Silvetti; Robert Somol; Philippe Starck; Roemer van Toorn; Sarah Whiting; Alejandro Zaera-Polo.

                                                                                                                     

William S. Saunders is editor of Harvard Design Magazine and assistant dean for external relations at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. He is the editor of four previous Harvard Design Magazine Readers, published by Minnesota.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780816652648
Publisher:	University of Minnesota Press
Publication date:	11/23/2007
Series:	Harvard Design Magazine , #5
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.88(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction: Accept, Resist, or Inflect? Architecture and Contemporary Capitalism   William S. Saunders     vii
A Scientific Autobiography, 1982-2004: Madrid, Harvard, OMA, the AA, Yokohama, the Globe   Alejandro Zaera-Polo     1
Notes around the Doppler Effect and Other Moods of Modernism   Robert Somol   Sarah Whiting     22
Starck Speaks: Politics, Pleasure, and Play   Philippe Starck     34
P.S./P.C.: On "Starck Speaks"   K. Michael Hays     49
No More Dreams? The Passion for Reality in Recent Dutch Architecture... and Its Limitations   Roemer van Toorn     54
No More Tabula Rasa: Progressive Architectural Practices in England   Lucy Bullivant     75
Not Unlike Life Itself: Landscape Strategy Now   James Corner     89
On Not Being Governed   Dave Hickey     94
Stocktaking 2004: Questions about the Present and Future of Design   Stan Allen   Hal Foster   Kenneth Frampton     101
"Criticality" and Its Discontents   George Baird     136
Critical of What? Toward a Utopian Realism   Reinhold Martin     150
Design Will Save the World! On Bruce Mau's Massive Change and the Mediatization of Culture   Robert Levit   Evonne Levy     162
The Muses Are Not Amused: Pandemonium in the House of Architecture   Jorge Silvetti     176
Contributors     199