Architecture and Ugliness
Subtitle: Anti-Aesthetics and the Ugly in Postmodern Architecture
By: edited by Wouter Van Acker and Thomas Mical
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Published: 2020
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 305
ISBN-13: 9781350068247
Subjects: Postmodern Architecture; Architecture; Aesthetics; Architecture postmoderne; Esthétique; Postmodern; Theory of architecture
Description: "Whatever 'ugliness' is, it remains a problematic category in architectural aesthetics - alternately vilified and appropriated, either to shock or to invert conventions of architecture. This book presents eighteen new essays which rethink ugliness in architecture - from brutalism to eclectic postmodern architectural productions - and together offer a diverse reappraisal of the history and theory of postmodern architecture and design. The essays address both broad theoretical questions on ugliness and postmodern aesthetics, as well as more specific analyses of significant architectural examples dating from the last decades of the twentieth century, addressing the relation between the aesthetic register of ugliness and aesthetic concepts such as brutalism, kitsch, the formless, ad hoc-ism, the monstrous, or the grotesque. The aim of this volume is not simply to document the history of a postmodern anti-aesthetic through case studies. Instead, it aims to shed light on an aesthetic problem that has been largely overlooked in the agenda of architectural theory, the question if and how ugliness can be of interest to architecture; or if and how architecture can make good use of ugliness"--
Table of contents: title: List of Figures; title: List of Contributors; title: Retracing the Ugly and the Anti-aesthetic as a Productive Force in Postmodern Architecture; title: Wouter Van Acker, (Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium); title: 1. Ugliness, the anti-aesthetic and appropriation: with some remarks on the architecture of ARM; title: John Macarthur, (University of Queensland, Australia); title: 2. On Ugliness (in Architecture); title: Bart Verschaffel, (Ghent University, Belgium); title: PART 1: UGLY AND MONSTROUS; title: 3. Instrumentalizing Ugliness: Parallels between High Victorian and Brutalist Architecture; title: Timothy M. Rohan, (University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA); title: 4. Monstrous Becomings: A Minor Cartography; title: Heidi Sohn, (TU Delft, the Netherlands); title: 5. Faux Monumentality in Ricardo Bofill's Les espaces d'Abraxas; title: Thomas Mical, (Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand); title: 6. Post-communism and the Monstrous: Skopje 2014 and Other Political Tales; title: Mirjana Lozanovska, (Deakin University, Australia); title: 7. Here be Monsters; title: Andrew Leach, (The University of Sydney, Australia); title: 8. To Make Monsters; title: Caroline O'Donnell, (Cornell University, USA); title: PART 2: UGLY AND ORDINARY; title: 9. 'Ugly': The Architecture of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown; title: Deborah Fausch; title: 10. Camp Ugliness: The Case of Charles W. Moore; title: Patricia A. Morton, (University of California, Riverside, USA); title: 11. Architecture in El Alto: the Politics of Excess; title: Elisabetta Andreoli; title: 12. The Critical Kitsch of Alchimia and Memphis: Design by Media; title: AnnMarie Brennan, (University of Melbourne, Australia); title: 13. The Immediacy of Urban Reality in Postwar Italy: Between Neorealism's and Tendenza's Instrumentalization of Ugliness; title: Marianna Charitonidou, (National Technical University of Athens, Greece); title: 14. Ugliness as Aesthetic Friction: Renewing Architecture Against the Grain; title: Lara Schrijver, (University of Antwerp, Belgium); title: 15. Ugliness, or the Cathectic Moment of Modulation between Terror and the Comic in Postmodern Architecture; title: Wouter Van Acker, (Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium); title: Index.