Kafka's Architectures: Doors, Rooms, Stairs and Windows of an Intricate Literary Edifice

by Ayad B. Rahmani

Overview

Adopting Kafka as a lens to examine modern concepts in architecture, this book pries open new interpretations in Kafka scholarship. Each of eight chapters takes up an architectural element with which to explore meanings central to both literature and architecture.

Stairs function as vertical access but in Kafka's hands become an instrument of science, testing the merit of natural selection. Kafka's doors open and close less to allow passage than to reconcile one psychological interior with the next. Notions of plumbing and hygiene begin to acquire new meaning.

The architecture of Mies van der Rohe begins to make more sense, especially his tabula rasa approach to design, signifying less a harsh disdain for site and more a response to a reality in which the ceremony of the stairs had died and was replaced by the pervasive flatness of the modern floor.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476617787
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers
Publication date:	12/17/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	244
File size:	7 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Ayad B. Rahmani is a professor of architecture at Washington State University. He has written widely on the subjects of art, architecture and urban design. He lives in Pullman, Washington.
Ayad B. Rahmani is a professor of architecture at Washington State University. He has written widely on the subjects of art, architecture and urban design. He lives in Pullman, Washington.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction
1. Windows
2. Restless Doors
3. Up and Down Stairs
4. Rooms and the Question of Return
5. The Home as an Agent of Shock
6. In the Belly of the Ship: A Demonstration of Machine Power and Labor Relations
7. The Radicalization of Perspective: “In the Penal Colony”
8. By Way of a Conclusion
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
Index