Paradise lost
By: Mark Campbell
Publisher: Architectural Association
Published: 2015
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 127
ISBN-13: 9781907896699
Subjects: Abandoned buildings; Economic conditions
Description: This book explores the notion of architectural obsolescence through a study of the contemporary United States. While the US was the world's greatest economic, scientific and cultural force during the twentieth century, it now appears to be obsessed with its own decline. In this obsession the changing patterns of consumption and demand often result in an architectural redundancy where buildings exist as a form of by-product or residue. While our stereotypical image of the US reflects the heroic potential of production, this book examines the opposite of that which isn't work. Or, more pointedly, those abandoned pleasures and lost paradises that remain when then no longer any work left to define them.