The Architecture of Failure

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Against those who considerarchitecture to be a wholly optimistic activity, this book shows how the history of modern architecture is inextricably tied to ideas of failure and ruin. By means of an original reading of the earliest origins of modernism, the Architecture of Failure exposes the ways in which failure has been suppressed, ignored and denied in the way we design our cities. It examines the 19th century fantasy architecture of the iron and glass exhibition palaces, strange, unprecedented, dream-like structures, almost all now lost, existing only as melancholy archive fragments; it traces the cultural legacy of these buildings through the heroics of the early 20th century, post-war radicals and recent developments, discussing related themes in art, literature, politics and philosophy. Critiquing the capitalist symbolism of the self-styled contemporary avant-garde, the book outlines a new history of contemporary architecture, and attempts to recover a radical approach to understanding what we build. Douglas Murphy blogs at http://www.youyouidiot.blogspot.com/

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Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Part I Introduction (p. 1)
• Iron & Glass (p. 4)
• technology & patronage
• engineer geniuses
• origins of iron & glass
• forms of iron & glass
• types of iron & glass
• exhibition palaces
• The Crystal Palace at Hyde Park (p. 12)
• the meanings of the Great Exhibition
• expositions
• the birth of the Crystal Palace
• the palace as architecture
• spectrality
• the vanishing palace
• exhibiting pride & doubt
• The Crystal Palace at Sydenham (p. 24)
• what is to be done with the Crystal Palace?
• comparing the palaces
• a palace for the people
• education and edification
• spatial strangeness
• the court system
• technological romanticism
• allegory & ruin
• music at the palace
• wax cylinders and memory
• decline
• a sad and sorry sight
• a massive absence
• The Albert Palace (p. 44)
• iron & glass fever
• the birth of the Albert Palace
• a multimedia entertainment centre
• very depressing circumstances
• decline
• Albert Palace for the People
• a melancholy scene
• ravens to the carcase
• a non-conductor of coin & prosperity
• a tangible sense of inadequacy
• the haunted archive
• Part II Modernity and the Engineer Genius (p. 61)
• eclecticism
• steel & concrete
• descendents
• Utopias in iron & glass
• weakness
• international style
• the constructor
• 1889 syndrome
• iron, glass and revolution
• Solutionism (p. 77)
• introducing the solutionist
• Bucky Fuller
• Festival of Britain
• Archigram
• fascination over engagement
• Centre Pompidou
• revivalist reaction
• British high tech
• the Millenium Dome
• what happened to the prefab future?
• big sheds
• Cedric Price
• Iconism (p. 99)
• the postmodern age
• critiques of modernism
• the rise of theory
• Peter Eisemnan
• 20th century mannerism
• mimicked theory
• Eisenman & Derrida
• critique without criticism
• Deconstructivist Architecture
• the sight-bite
• the museum of nothing
• Virtualism (p. 119)
• the computer
• intuition and theory
• the Deleuzian moment
• folds, diagrammes and virtuality
• curators of form
• Deleuzian yuppies
• biomimicry
• geometry
• parametricism
• eclecticism
• Conclusion (p. 138)
• Notes (p. 143)