Anthony Vidler
Anthony Vidler, an internationally recognized scholar, theorist, and critic of modern and contemporary architecture, is widely known for his essays on the most pressing issues and debates in the field. This volume brings together a collection of such writingsâ€”including the iconic, long unavailable â€œScenes of the Streetâ€â€”into one volume. ,Scenes of the Street and Other Essays ,showcases Vidlerâ€™s engaging and accessible expertise on both contemporary and historic subjects that are relevant to today's concerns. ,â€œScenes of the Street,â€ a multi-faceted analysis of city planning is one such example; other essays in this volume include â€œUnknown Lands: Guy Debord and the Cartographies of a Landscape to be Invented,â€ â€œTransparency and Utopia: Constructing the Void from Pascal to Foucault,â€ and â€œThe Modern Acropolis: Tony Garnier from La CitÃ© Antique to the CitÃ© Industrielle.â€,Vidler writes in his introduction:,In the following essays, I have interrogated the struggle for an urban architecture in the modern period, its critiques and aspirations, in the belief that understanding the historical dimensions of the debate will lead to a renewal of interest in an architecture calculated to redeem, if only partially, our â€œplanet of slumsâ€ and its deteriorating environment; an interest that will not simply reject â€œutopiaâ€ out of hand or fall back into the complacencies of nostalgia. Written during a period in which the debates themselves were actively engaged by critics and supporters of modernism, they reflect contemporary issues as they search for their prehistory. As historical inquiries, they inevitably also engage the transformations in history writing itself since 1970, intellectual responses to the social and political conditions of postwar modernity.,This fascinating series of essays on issues and figures is an invaluable resource for architects and art historians and enthusiasts of structure and substance alike.
Architecture,Philosophy,Theory
The Scenes of the Street and Other Essays