Materials and Meaning in Architecture: Essays on the Bodily Experience of Buildings
Interweaving architecture, philosophy and cultural history, Materials and Meaning in Architecture develops a rich and multi-dimensional exploration of materials and materiality, in an age when architectural practice seems otherwise preoccupied with image and visual representation.

Arguing that architecture is primarily experienced by the whole body, rather than chiefly with the eyes, this broad-ranging study shows how the most engaging built works are as tactile as they are sensuous, communicating directly with the bodily senses, especially touch. It explores the theme of 'material imagination' and the power of establishing 'place identity' in an architect's work, to consider the enduring expressive possibilities of material use in architecture.

The book's chapters can be dipped into, each individual chapter providing close readings of built works by selected modern masters (Scarpa, Zumthor, Williams and Tsien), insights into key texts and theories (Ruskin, Loos, Bachelard), or short cultural histories of materials (wood, brick, concrete, steel, and glass). And yet, taken together, the chapters build to a powerful book-length argument about how meaning accrues to materials through time, and about the need to reinsert the bodily experience of materiality into architectural design. It is thus also, in part, a manifesto: arguing for architecture to act as a bulwark against the tide of an increasingly depersonalised built environment.

With insights for a wide range of readers, ranging from students through to researchers and professional designers, Materials and Meaning in Architecture will cause theorists to rethink their assumptions and designers to see new potential for their projects.

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Materials and Meaning in Architecture: Essays on the Bodily Experience of Buildings
Interweaving architecture, philosophy and cultural history, Materials and Meaning in Architecture develops a rich and multi-dimensional exploration of materials and materiality, in an age when architectural practice seems otherwise preoccupied with image and visual representation.

Arguing that architecture is primarily experienced by the whole body, rather than chiefly with the eyes, this broad-ranging study shows how the most engaging built works are as tactile as they are sensuous, communicating directly with the bodily senses, especially touch. It explores the theme of 'material imagination' and the power of establishing 'place identity' in an architect's work, to consider the enduring expressive possibilities of material use in architecture.

The book's chapters can be dipped into, each individual chapter providing close readings of built works by selected modern masters (Scarpa, Zumthor, Williams and Tsien), insights into key texts and theories (Ruskin, Loos, Bachelard), or short cultural histories of materials (wood, brick, concrete, steel, and glass). And yet, taken together, the chapters build to a powerful book-length argument about how meaning accrues to materials through time, and about the need to reinsert the bodily experience of materiality into architectural design. It is thus also, in part, a manifesto: arguing for architecture to act as a bulwark against the tide of an increasingly depersonalised built environment.

With insights for a wide range of readers, ranging from students through to researchers and professional designers, Materials and Meaning in Architecture will cause theorists to rethink their assumptions and designers to see new potential for their projects.

40.95 In Stock
Materials and Meaning in Architecture: Essays on the Bodily Experience of Buildings

Materials and Meaning in Architecture: Essays on the Bodily Experience of Buildings

by Nathaniel Coleman
Materials and Meaning in Architecture: Essays on the Bodily Experience of Buildings

Materials and Meaning in Architecture: Essays on the Bodily Experience of Buildings

by Nathaniel Coleman

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$40.95 
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Overview

Interweaving architecture, philosophy and cultural history, Materials and Meaning in Architecture develops a rich and multi-dimensional exploration of materials and materiality, in an age when architectural practice seems otherwise preoccupied with image and visual representation.

Arguing that architecture is primarily experienced by the whole body, rather than chiefly with the eyes, this broad-ranging study shows how the most engaging built works are as tactile as they are sensuous, communicating directly with the bodily senses, especially touch. It explores the theme of 'material imagination' and the power of establishing 'place identity' in an architect's work, to consider the enduring expressive possibilities of material use in architecture.

The book's chapters can be dipped into, each individual chapter providing close readings of built works by selected modern masters (Scarpa, Zumthor, Williams and Tsien), insights into key texts and theories (Ruskin, Loos, Bachelard), or short cultural histories of materials (wood, brick, concrete, steel, and glass). And yet, taken together, the chapters build to a powerful book-length argument about how meaning accrues to materials through time, and about the need to reinsert the bodily experience of materiality into architectural design. It is thus also, in part, a manifesto: arguing for architecture to act as a bulwark against the tide of an increasingly depersonalised built environment.

With insights for a wide range of readers, ranging from students through to researchers and professional designers, Materials and Meaning in Architecture will cause theorists to rethink their assumptions and designers to see new potential for their projects.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781474287753
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date: 02/20/2020
Pages: 336
Product dimensions: 6.40(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.59(d)

About the Author

Nathaniel Coleman is a reader in History and Theory of Architecture at Newcastle University, UK. He previously taught in the US, and practiced architecture in New York City and Rome. He is the author of Lefebvre for Architects (2015), Utopias and Architecture (2005), and editor of Imagining and Making the World: Reconsidering Architecture and Utopia (2011).

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Material as Reality Preserve: History, Theory, Design

PART I: Material Theories and Practices
2. John Ruskin (1819-1900): Stones of Architecture
3. Loos (1870-1933): Not the Material but What is Done With It
4. Time Silted Up: Scarpa at the Castelvecchio Museum (1958-64) and Brion Cemetery (1969-1977)
5. Pool and Cave: Zumthor's Thermal Baths at Vals (1996)
6. Terminal Jewel: Williams & Tsien's Folk Art Museum (2001)
7. Tectonic Shifts: Miralles' Arts & Crafts Ecstasy at the Scottish Parliament (2004)

PART II: Narrating Materials and Meaning
8. Words of Desire: Envisaging Architecture
9. Human Touch: The Enduring Warmth of Wood
10. Fire and Wind: The Appeal of Baking Bricks
11. Wild at Heart: Concrete as Liquid Stone
12. Imaging Rationality: The Resolute Modernity of Steel
13. Transparency: A Darker Shade of Glass

PART III: Place and Discipline
14. Form is Content: Against Interpretation
15. Paradoxes of Place and Discipline: Tradition as the Ground of Radical Invention

Bibliography
Index

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