Theory of architecture Books

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Book Synopsis Take an expansive and provocative tour of architectural theory and practice, exploring everything from basic concepts to speculative design and subversive interventions.Universal Principles of Architecture illustrates in 100 concepts the importance, possibilities, challenges, and roles that architecture plays in shaping the world. This radical and perhaps surprising survey is divided into five sections: Archetypes, Methods, Conditions, Relationships, and Imaginaries. And, each of the five sections in the book introduces in 20 principles architecture at different scales and stages of the design process. Through an inclusive and holistic approach, the book refers to initial design ideas, creative design approaches, reflections on the effects of the built and destroyed environments, and architectural desires and aspirations to transform the world and engage with the cosmos.Because architecture is theTrade Review"Beautifully illustrated...especially and unreservedly recommended." * Midwest Book Review *Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION How to read Universal Principles of Architecture ARCHETYPES METHODS CONDITIONS RELATIONSHIPS IMAGINARIES GLOSSARY ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ABOUT THE AUTHORS INDEX

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Book SynopsisExamination of the material culture of Grecian-style buildings in antebellum America.Table of ContentsIntroduction Myths of the Land Names on the Land Grecian-Style Buildings on the Land Views of the Land Temples for Governing Temples for Learning Temples for Dwelling Temples for Worship Temples for Commerce Conclusion

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewWhat if architectural creativity is not only grounded in knowledge and skill but equally in a state of mind, a mood? Improbable though the suggestion may be, this original and marvelously well-studied book shows that from the 19th century onward boredom became a force that focused concentration and compelled experimentation. * David Leatherbarrow, University of Pennsylvania, USA *A fascinating exploration of boredom that builds on 19th-century literary narratives to understand its contemporary spatial manifestations. Parreno meanders through a multitude of boredoms, from the domestic to the monumentally bureaucratic, and from the modern generic to endlessly varied imagery—revealing unexpectedly reassuring aspects of boredom in the process. * Lara Schrijver, University of Antwerp, Belgium *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface Foreword by Iain Borden Acknowledgements Introduction: Boredom as Architecture 1. A Component of Modernity Differential Distances 2. Fascination and Aversion 3. Søren Kierkegaard’s Babylonian Tower 4. Catherine Gore and Charles Dickens: Idle Restlessness/Restless Idleness 5. Blunting and Jading 6. Coney Island, Misleading Structures Circular Trajectories 7. A Unity of Disarray 8. Martin Heidegger’s Urge to Be at Home 9. Oran, the Capital of Boredom 10. International Style Confusions: Sigfried Giedion 11. Los Angeles, Flat Enough Extended Thresholds 12. Potential Architectures 13. Andrew Benjamin’s Antithesis to Boredom 14. Boredom in Domus 15. Servitude and Liberalism: Russell Kirk 16. Charles Jencks, Rem Koolhaas, and the Generic 17. Jorge Silvetti and Sylvia Lavin: Unamused Muses and Lying Fallow Epilogue: Architectures of Boredom Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisRajesh Heynickx is a Professor in Architectural Theory and Intellectual History at the Faculty of Architecture, KU Leuven, Belgium.Ricardo Costa Agarez is Assistant Professor of Architectural Theory and History at the University of Évora, Portugal.Elke Couchez is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Hasselt, Belgium.Trade ReviewBuildings stay still, but theory is always on the move. This simple fact, often noticed but little acted upon, is one of the two catalysts for this engaging collection of essays on architecture’s recent past. The other - the chronic uncertainty as to whether architecture is at heart a practical, or a theoretical, discipline - is exploited to good effect through a series of lively and provocative discussions. * Adrian Forty, Professor Emeritus of Architectural History, UCL, UK *In Architecture Thinking Across Boundaries, the figure of the architect, the historian, the theorist is refreshingly reconfigured as one of the many players in a nexus of relationships between ideas, texts, exhibitions, lectures, dialogical practices and people. * Sophia Psarra, Professor of Architecture and Spatial Design, UCL, UK *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations List of Contributors Introduction Part One: Translations and Appropriations 1. Deconstruction and Architecture: translation as a matter of speculative theory 2. Gehry’s Lou Ruvo Center in Las Vegas as a Housing Critique 3. “Boomerang Effect”: The Repercussions of Critical Regionalism in 1980s Greece 4.The Autonomy of Theory: Tendenzen – Neuere Architektur im Tessin, ETH Zurich, 1975 SECTION 2: Imprints and Undercurrents 5. Royston Landau and the Research Programmes of Architecture 6. Theoretical a/gnosticisms: Paul Tillich, Colin Rowe, and the theology of architecture SECTION 3: Vehicles 7. Cedric Price's Chats: Orality and the Production of Architectural Theory 8. Alternative Facts: Towards a Theorisation of Oral History in Architecture 9. Abandoning the Plan 10. Deltiology as History. Informal Communication as Praxis. 11. Theorizing from the South. The Seminar of Latin American Architecture (SAL) Index

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Book SynopsisStijn Bussels studies the impact of art and architecture and published widely, in Art History, Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art, Comparative Drama, and more. He has written two monographs: The Antwerp Entry of Prince Philip in 1549 (2012) and The Animated Image (2013).Caroline van Eck's main research interests are art and architectural history and theory of the early modern period and the relation between rhetoric and the arts and architecture. Publications include Classical Rhetoric and the Arts and Art, Agency and Living Presence (2014). In 2016 she was elected to the first established Chair in Art History at Cambridge University, UK.Bram Van Oostveldt has published widely on the relation between the theatre, the arts and architecture in the early modern Low Countries. He published a monograph on the influence of Diderot in Brussels theatre and on the performing arts in the Austrian Netherlands and now workTable of ContentsList of Illustrations List of Contributors Acknowledgements 1. Introduction - Stijn Bussels, Caroline van Eck and Bram Van Oostveldt 2. The Palace of the Republic: Idea and Construction - Pieter Vlaardingerbroek 3. The Amsterdam Town Hall: The Triumphant Statement of a Successor State - Caroline van Eck 4. ‘Far More to Wonder, than to Fathom Completely’: One Hundred Poems Devoted to the Town Hall - Stijn Bussels, Caroline van Eck and Laura Plezier 5. The Portrait of a Building - Stijn Bussels 6. The Exercise of Power: The Caryatids of the Town Hall’s Tribunal - Frederik Knegtel 7. Jacob’s Trowels : The Construction of the Amsterdam Town Hall and Its Ceremonial Objects (1648–present) - Minou Schraven 8. Under Discussion: Eighteenth-Century Reactions to the Town Hall - Freek Schmidt Index

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Book SynopsisCharlotte Ashby is an art and design historian based at Birkbeck, University of London. She is the author of Modernism in Scandinavia (Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2017) and co-editor of Imagined Cosmopolis: Internationalism and Cultural Exchange, 1870s-1920s (2019).Mark Crinson is Professor of Architectural History at Birkbeck, University of London. Among his books are Modern Architecture and the End of Empire (2003) and Rebuilding Babel: Modern Architecture and Internationalism (I.B. Tauris, 2017).Table of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Contributors Foreword, Adrian Forty (University College London, UK) Introduction, Mark Crinson and Charlotte Ashby (Birkbeck, University of London, UK) Part 1: Grey Zones 1. A Good Shelf: The Material Culture of Reading in Colonial India, Swati Chattopadhyay (University of California-Santa Barbara, USA) 2. Power of Television in Modern Turkish Homes, Meltem Ö. Gürel (Yasar University, Turkey) 3. Bin, Bag, Box: The Architecture of Convenience, Louisa Iarocci (University of Washington, USA) 4. Atmospheric Exchanges: Air-conditioning, Thermal Material Culture, and Public Housing in Singapore, Jiat-Hwee Chang (National University of Singapore) 5. Beyond Buildings and Objects: Reyner Banham’s Freeway Ecology, Richard J. Williams (University of Edinburgh, UK) Part 2: Dissolved Distinctions 6. Designing for a Nocturnal Banquet, Versailles 1674, Panagiotis Doudesis (University of Cambridge, UK) 7. Printed Objects and Ready-Mades in the Architectural Magazine (1834-38), Anne Hultzsch (ETH Zurich, Switzerland) 8. Entangled Histories of Buildings and Furniture: Knoll International and the Production and Mediation of Modern Architecture in Post-war Belgium, Fredie Floré (KU Leuven, Belgium) 9. Disaster Relief and ‘Universal Shelters’: Humanitarian Imaginaries and Design Interventions at Oxfam, 1971-1976, Tania Messell (University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern, Switzerland) and Lilian Sanchez-Moreno (University for the Creative Arts, UK) Part 3: Uneasy Difference 10. Regulation by Design: Reification and Building Regulations, Alistair Cartwright (Independent Scholar, UK) 11. The Relational Object: Haus-Rucker-Co.’s Designs for Re-Shaping the Environment, Ross K. Elfline (Carleton College, USA) 12. The Stylistic End-games of Modernism: High Tech Design in Criticism and History, Jane Pavitt (Kingston University, UK) 13. Shared and not Contested: Modern Erasures in Design and Architecture: History, Practice and Education in Brazil, Livia Rezende (University of New South Wales, Australia) and Tatiana Pinto (Independent Scholar, Sweden) Afterword, Ben Highmore (University of Sussex, UK) Index

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Book SynopsisAnna Ulrikke Andersen, Post-Doctoral Researcher at the University of Oxford, UK, is a Norwegian architectural historian and filmmaker.Trade ReviewAnna has demonstrated that to follow a fellow Norwegian architect of another generation, is to find similarities, to seek coincidences, to shadow, to re-enact, to track, to go along (often in faith), to act under the influence of, to act under the shadow of, to carry the weight of this person, and in so doing, to put her own writing self at risk. To follow is also to admire, to support, to understand. The book ... has qualities of a detective novel where clues are allowed to travel their distance, to expend their conclusions, and to spin more questions about the missing protagonist. * Site-Reading Writing Quarterly *Andersen’s approach is unconventional, but also compelling and timely. On the one hand, it draws on recent attempts at developing critical spatial practice in postgraduate practice-based research programs, where the designer’s skillsets and creative output are utilized as research method. Simultaneously, her book is published amidst a wide-ranging questioning of the assumptions underpinning the field of architectural phenomenology. Yet Andersen manages to practice phenomenology in an open and self-reflective way, able to critically re-engage the difficulties and failings in Norberg-Schulz’s approach while displaying a poetic sensibility that allows for a more refined appreciation of his position. * Montreal Architectural Review *Anna Ulrikke Andersen’s wondrous book is many things at once: a window onto the work of the Norwegian architectural theorist, an artist’s probing journey of discovery and persistent self-examination, a portal to imaginative interventions that frame and reframe Norberg-Schulz’s legacy from ever different angles. A true tour de force, as insightful and critically demanding as creative and aesthetically playful! * Lutz Koepnick, Vanderbilt University, USA *A truly original piece of work with an innovative methodology that combines archival historical research with artistic and documentary film practice. Andersen provides a situated critical evaluation of the work and ideas of an influential, yet misunderstood, figure in the history, theory and practice of 20th century architecture, approaching the subject matter with intelligence and care. * Penelope Haralambidou, University College London, UK *Table of ContentsList of illustrations Framework Christian Norberg-Schulz (1926-2000) The Essay form in Film and Writing Itinerary Acknowledgements Maps Window 1 | Trondheim Place Practice Essay: The Sound of a Windowpane Shattering Window 2 | Oslo Place Practice Essay: By the Window Window 3 | Journey Place Practice Essay: At the Window of a Train Window 4 | Hamburg – Basel Place Practice Essay: Three Windows on Europe 1945 Window 5 | Rome Place Practice Essay: Fill in that window! Move into that Frame! Window 6 | Piazza Navona Place Practice Essay: A Campari-Moment by the Water Fountain Window 7 | Calcata Place Practice Essay: Are we not here to Say…Window Window 8 | Sierre Place Practice Essay: Les Fenêtres – en norvégien Window 9 | Oslo Place Practice Essay: Returned, X-rayed and Exposed Window 10 | Trondheim Place Practice Essay: Beyond the Network – ‘Upon’ Return Coda Appendix Christian Norberg-Schulz’s CV Books by or about Rainer Maria Rilke in Christian Norberg-Schulz’s Library References to Rainer Maria Rilke in Christian Norberg-Schulz’s Authorship Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisDenise Costanzo is Assistant Professor of Architecture and Art History at the Pennsylvania State University, USA.Andrew Leach is Professor of Architecture and Associate Dean (Research) of the School of Architecture, Design and Planning, at the University of Sydney, Australia.Trade ReviewThis elegant collection challenges familiar ideas of how Italian sites and histories shaped 20th-century design theory worldwide. Inaugurating a set of provocative new questions, it stands to generate innovative architectural and scholarly debates for years to come. * Mia Fuller, University of California Berkeley, USA *At once origin of the Western conceptualization of architecture as a discipline and institution, home to buildings that have become hypercanonized, and arena of historiographical debates, Italy is an undeniable presence in architectural consciousness, whether it is embraced or rejected. From a variety of perspectives the essays in this volume enrich and complicate our understanding of Italy’s position in global architectural culture. Together they amount to a critical examination of ‘architecture’s vision of itself’ over the long 20th century. * Maarten Delbeke, ETH Zürich, Switzerland *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations List of Contributors Acknowledgements 1. INTRODUCTION: IMPRINTS AND TRACKS, Denise R. Costanzo & Andrew Leach (Penn State University, USA) and Andrew Leach (University of Sydney, Australia) 2. THE ARCHITECT AS INTELLECTUAL, Jean-Louis Cohen (New York University, USA) 3. ITALIAN AFTERTHOUGHTS: TRANSCODING VENICENESS FROM WITHOUT, Giorgia Aquilar (University Institute of Architecture, Venice, Italy) 4. ITALY AS A METHODOLOGICAL TESTING GROUND FOR ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY, Raul Martinez (Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Spain) 5. FUNCTIONALISM AND ITS ITALIAN ENTANGLEMENTS, Ute Poerschke (Penn State University, USA) 6. THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE AS REBIRTH AND RETURN, Caspar Pearson (University of Essex, UK) 7. FROM RENAISSANCE PRECISION TO COMPUTATIONAL UNCERTAINTY, Frank Bauer (Berlin University of the Arts, Germany) 8. THE HUMAN BODY AS A SPACE OF DIPLOMACY: STUDI SULLE PROPORZIONI AT THE IX MILAN TRIENNALE IN 1951, Federica Vannucchi (Pratt Institute, USA) 9. MODELS AND METHODS OF ARCHITECTURE AND CLIMATE, Daniel A. Barber (University of Pennsylvania, USA) 10. “SLOW DOWN YOUR KUNSTWOLLEN, YOUNG MAN” OR, WHAT A PRACTICE IN BUILDING DECONSTRUCTION LEARNED FROM TUSCAN ARISTOTELIANISM, Lionel Devlieger (University of Ghent, Belgium) 11. ROBERT VENTURI AND NAPLES: THE COMPLEXITY OF THE SOUTH, Rosa Sessa (University of Naples Federico II, Italy) 12. GIO PONTI’S CLOUD OF AFFINITIES, Maristella Casciato (Getty Research Institute, USA) 13. MARKING, FRAMING, AND MEASURING IN VITTORIO GREGOTTI’S IL TERRITORIO DELL’ARCHITETTURA, Chris French (University of Edinburgh, UK) 14. ALDO ROSSI, GIORGIO DE CHIRICO, AND THE ENIGMA OF TRADITION, Diane Ghirardo (University of Southern California, USA) 15. FURNISHING FASCIST ITALY, Ignacio G. Galán (Barnard College, USA) 16. THE INTERNATIONAL CALL: ITALIAN DESIGN, CULTURE, POLITICS, AND ECONOMICS AT THE 1972 MoMA EXHIBITION AND BEYOND, Silvia Micheli (University of Queensland, Australia) and Lorenzo Ciccarelli (University of Florence, Italy) 17. APPROPRIATING ALDO ROSSI: THE DISPLACED AFTERLIFE OF L’ARCHITETTURA DELLA CITTÀ IN CHINA, Dijia Chen (University of Virginia, USA) 18. FROM THE UNIVERSAL TO THE PARTICULAR: ROBIN BOYD AND THE POSITIONING OF ITALY IN POST-WAR ARCHITECTURAL CRITICISM, Philip Goad (University of Melbourne, Australia) 19. UNEXPECTED PEDAGOGIES: HENRY HORNBOSTEL IN ITALY, 1893, Francesca Torello (Carnegie Mellon University, USA) 20. ITALIAN ROOTS IN LATIN AMERICAN ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY, Daniela Ortiz dos Santos (Goethe University, Germany) Index

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewWe are in a renaissance of queer methods, surveying mis/alignments between slippery queerness and orderly methods. From physical places to digital spaces, the contributors of this multivalent, delightfully unruly volume amplify the unique voices of architectural disciplines. * Amin Ghaziani, Professor of Sociology and Canada Research Chair in Urban Sexualities, University of British Columbia, Canada *This collection of essays makes a significant contribution to the evolving discourse/methodology relating to queer space and queer architectural practice. It focuses on new critical and theoretical approaches, and brings to light a range of little known sites, interventions, and publications. I found the proposal very rich and challenging. . . . Both the editors and the contributors are leading voices in the fields of criticism, pedagogy, and design practice with demonstrated track records in this area. . . . moves the conversation about queer space/architecture forward while building on previous work. * Alice T. Friedman, Grace Slack McNeil Professor of American Art; Professor of Art, Wellesley College, USA *I am impressed by the range of approaches and case studies found here and I would have thought it would provide a thought-provoking stimulus to a wide range of academic and critical practice . . . It be might expected to quickly establish a position of some importance within this developing field. . . . It does appear to be a key volume in relation to methods and methodologies. . . . This is a lively and interesting range of approaches to the methodology of queer architecture. * Professor Dominic Janes, School of Humanities, Keele University, UK *This book will certainly contribute to research in the overlapping fields of queer theory and architecture. This is definitely an under-researched area and could easily benefit from such a collection. * Jack Halberstam, Director of the Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality; Professor of English and Gender Studies, Columbia University, USA *Table of ContentsFigures Contributors Introduction - Marko Jobst and Naomi Stead I: Methods 1. On the Uses of Queer Space Thinking - Olivier Vallerand 2. Queer Encounters in the Archive: Misplaced Love Letters and Autobiographical Homes - Dirk van den Heuvel and Martin van Wijk 3. Queering Architectural History: Anomalous histories and historiographies of the Baroque - Marko Jobst 4. Notes From Transient Spaces, Anachronic Times: An architectural exercise - Ece Canli II: Practices 5. El Site: Queer approximations on fragments and writing - Regner Ramos 6. After the party with the lights on: A case study of queering architecture - Timothy Moore and Adam Nathaniel Furman 7. Fabulous Façades - Ben Campkin and Lo Marshall 8. From STUD to Stalled!: Embodied identity through a queer lens 1996-2021 - Joel Sanders III: Spaces 9. Architectures of Darkness in Derek Jarman and Mark Bradford - Nicholas Gamso 10. Queer Space in a Peripheral Modernity - Sarah Nicholus 11. Music as a Site of Transing - Simona Castricum 12. Queer Spaces, Queer Readings, Queer Lodgings - Naomi Stead IV: Pedagogies 13. [Spatial] Pedagogic readings of Queer Theory: Experimental Realism and opportunities for teaching and learning - Gem Barton 14. Teacher/student: Queer practices to dismantle hierarchies in studio culture - A.L. Hu 15. Taking Architecture from Behind - Colin Ripley Index

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Book SynopsisAs society rapidly changes, so too does our relationship with design and the spaces of the designed world. Meanings of Designed Spaces is a collection of articles by—and interviews with—renowned design academics and professionals exploring how people make meaning using design today, and how "designed space" both shapes and is shaped by technology, business, ethics, culture, sustainability, and society. Questions posed include: How does designing our world provide meaning in our lives? How is this meaning constructed? What is design research within this framework? How do interiors influence our social, cultural, and psychological ways of being? How is the designer’s role evolving in relationship to other stakeholders? What are possible ways we can understand and respond to the social, political, ethical, and cultural issues we face? The book’s subject matter moves from the theoretical to the practical and includes, at times, contradictory viewpoints, providing a springboard for conversation and debate.Table of ContentsDesign Thinking, Knowledge and Critical Approaches The Spaces of Interiors Understanding Space Through Historic and Philosophical Perspectives Philosophies and Spaces - Alternative Viewpoints Design Philosophies, Aesthetic Theories and Lived Experiences Considerations of Time and Space: Shaping Changing Spaces of Exploration Design Thinking and Meaning in the Context of Business The Business of Design Social Norms, New Patterns and Meanings of Social Relevance Cultural Contexts and Lived

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Book SynopsisCOVID-19 exposed the pre-existing conditions of the current global crisis. Many Western states failed to protect their populations, while others were able to suppress the virus only with sweeping social restrictions. In contrast, many Asian countries were able to make much more precise interventions. Everywhere, lockdown transformed everyday life, introducing an epidemiological view of society based on sensing, modeling, and filtering. What lessons are to be learned? The Revenge of the Real envisions a new positive biopolitics that recognizes that governance is literally a matter of life and death. We are grappling with multiple interconnected dilemmas-climate change, pandemics, the tensions between the individual and society-all of which have to be addressed on a planetary scale. Even when separated, we are still enmeshed. Can the world govern itself differently? What models and philosophies are needed? Bratton argues that instead of thinking of biotechnologies as something imposed on society, we must see them as essential to a politics of infrastructure, knowledge, and direct intervention. In this way, we can build a society based on a new rationality of inclusion, care, and prevention.Trade ReviewBenjamin Bratton shows, with brilliant insight and imagination, what the world is coming to look like in an era of planetary-scale computing. He cuts through many received ideas about technology, globalization, and so forth and presents a fresh vision of the architecture of the world. -- McKenzie Wark, [on The Stack]Endlessly thought-provoking, this amazing book is both cognitive mapping and a projective geometry of the new dimensions of technological reality we live in -- Kim Stanley Robinson, [on The Stack]Imagines a design brief for the whole world while floating or falling through all the ever-efflorescent plasmas and atmospheres of digital information. -- Keller Easterling, [on The Stack]Breaks more new ground than a carpet bombing. The Stack itself may or may not exist, but it's left everything that came before it in a state of rubble. -- Bruce Sterling [on The Stack]A major achievement. It is more than just philosophy of technology, software studies, or design criticism; it analyzes and guides our thinking in a baffling Anthropocenic era when computation works at the planetary scale and constitutes governance -- Natalie Jeremijenko [on The Stack]If you've emerged from the past year disoriented, you may find it exactly the right time to read Bratton's book. From quarantine urbanism, to 5G conspiracy theorists and technological refusal, to incisive philosophical analysis of mask-rejecting Karens and the West's shambolic response to covid writ large, Bratton is a ruthless guide to what has unfolded. But this book is soundly concerned with the future, through and beyond post-pandemic politics. Its pressing questions - can the world govern itself differently? how do we direct emergent technological capacities towards competent planetary governance? - will continue to be more and more relevant as the ecological crises deepen. There will be manifold books on the "lessons" of the pandemic, but Bratton uniquely grasps what is at stake. -- Holly Jean Buck, author of After GeoengineeringBratton is one of our best global systems thinkers, adding to theory and philosophy a sophisticated understanding of infrastructures, design, AI, and governance: what this adds up to is a rare and valuable insight into civilization and its match, or mismatch, with Earth's biosphere. In the wake of the Covid pandemic he has given us a swift and propulsive reorientation to the situation we find ourselves in, a species in a single biosphere, ruled by an ad hoc nation-state system. What can we do now to help sort things out and dodge the mass extinction event we are initiating? Read on and learn. -- Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Ministry of the FutureA provocative skewering of dogmatic Western political culture, Bratton's book is a crucial contribution to thinking through what planetary governance could and should look like post-pandemic. -- Nick Srnicek, co-author of Inventing the FutureThe pandemic has laid bare the frailties, failures, and fissures of the contemporary world. The Revenge of the Real offers a clarion call for organising ourselves differently. It is forceful, engaging, and thought provoking, and I expect it to prove immediately influential. -- Helen Hester, author of XenofeminismWhen anti-lockdown stances such as the one espoused by the philosopher Giorgio Agamben, QAnon's conspiracies, anti-vaxxer propaganda, and a return to an innocent relation between the humans and the planet are a match made in hell, the rise of crypto-fascism variants is the least of our concerns. We are indeed witnessing a fundamental erosion of the contemporary left's capacity to respond to planetary-scale emergencies. This inability to systematically think about and act upon the plights brought upon this planet is what Benjamin Bratton calls the lack of planetary competency. Bratton's The Revenge of the Real is a sober yet enthusiastic analysis of how and why some strains of the left continue to be appropriated by individualistic libertarianism if not by crypto-fascism. Yet Bratton's work is more than that, it sets a way out for the left by mapping the scale of planetary events and what it means to think and intervene at that scale. -- Reza Negarestani, author of Intelligence and SpiritBratton's is an incisive intervention: at once polemic and productive. A counter to the self-imposed ineffectuality of certain strands of theory, The Revenge of the Real provides buoyant and zesty rebuttal to the suspicious mode in philosophizing, all whilst in search of more pragmatic alternatives. -- Thomas Moynihan, author of X-RiskSharp as a tungsten needle, Bratton reveals the paradoxes of the pandemic at atomic resolution and etches a positive outline of how planetary biopolitics could be otherwise. Vital reading. -- Kate Crawford, author of Atlas of AIEvery moment has a theorist native to its strangeness, a singular voice that can uniquely navigate its impossible truths and unfathomable realities. At the end of the end of the world it is Benjamin Bratton's running commentary that cuts swathes, like a megastructure through mountains. -- Liam Young, architect and filmmaker[Bratton's] call for a global shift in priorities is galvanizing. * Publishers Weekly *Fascinating. -- Pat Kane * The National *Enjoyable, nourishing ... [Bratton's] views are often far-sighted, which helps make sense of some of the bewildering side effects of this pandemic. -- Alex Mair * On Magazine *

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Book SynopsisThinkers revisit INTRA SPACE, an artistic research project that experiments with the substances, constructions, and manifestations of our bodies.INTRA! INTRA! calls a variety of thinkers to revisit INTRA SPACE, an artistic research project that experiments with the substances, constructions, and manifestations of our bodies in the unchartered architectural waters of the near future. INTRA SPACE is a spatial, biological, technical, and conceptual infrastructure for shared encounters with Carla, Dame (maybe Vivienne), Bob, Old Man and friends. INTRA SPACE is an experimental zone, set up to explore diaphanous relations between engineered virtual figures, humans, technical equipment, and machines. Lingering between cameras, eyes, screens, mirrors, and images of selves, this book is full of movement and flicker, of decreation, of dwelling at the periphery of someone else's vision, of resolutions beyond the eye/I. Strange encounters act as springboards to unforeseen turns and perspectives. INTRA SPACE is the subject of this book, opening an arena for the companions and guests who walked in and out of this space in conversation with us.

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