Use Matters: An Alternative History of Architecture
From participatory architecture to interaction design, the question of how design accommodates use is driving inquiry in many creative fields. Expanding utility to embrace people’s everyday experience brings new promises for the social role of design. But this is nothing new. As the essays assembled in this collection show, interest in the elusive realm of the user was an essential part of architecture and design throughout the twentieth century. Use Matters is the first to assemble this alternative history, from the bathroom to the city, from ergonomics to cybernetics, and from Algeria to East Germany. It argues that the user is not a universal but a historically constructed category of twentieth-century modernity that continues to inform architectural practice and thinking in often unacknowledged ways.

1115398543
Use Matters: An Alternative History of Architecture
From participatory architecture to interaction design, the question of how design accommodates use is driving inquiry in many creative fields. Expanding utility to embrace people’s everyday experience brings new promises for the social role of design. But this is nothing new. As the essays assembled in this collection show, interest in the elusive realm of the user was an essential part of architecture and design throughout the twentieth century. Use Matters is the first to assemble this alternative history, from the bathroom to the city, from ergonomics to cybernetics, and from Algeria to East Germany. It argues that the user is not a universal but a historically constructed category of twentieth-century modernity that continues to inform architectural practice and thinking in often unacknowledged ways.

210.0 In Stock
Use Matters: An Alternative History of Architecture

Use Matters: An Alternative History of Architecture

Use Matters: An Alternative History of Architecture
Add to Wishlist
Use Matters: An Alternative History of Architecture

Use Matters: An Alternative History of Architecture

Overview

From participatory architecture to interaction design, the question of how design accommodates use is driving inquiry in many creative fields. Expanding utility to embrace people’s everyday experience brings new promises for the social role of design. But this is nothing new. As the essays assembled in this collection show, interest in the elusive realm of the user was an essential part of architecture and design throughout the twentieth century. Use Matters is the first to assemble this alternative history, from the bathroom to the city, from ergonomics to cybernetics, and from Algeria to East Germany. It argues that the user is not a universal but a historically constructed category of twentieth-century modernity that continues to inform architectural practice and thinking in often unacknowledged ways.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780415637329
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Publication date: 09/18/2013
Pages: 288
Product dimensions: 6.88(w) x 9.69(h) x (d)

About the Author

Kenny Cupers is Assistant Professor of Architectural History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Table of Contents

Introduction Part 1: Subjectivity and Knowledge 1. Isotype and Modern Architecture in Red Vienna 2. Architectural Handbooks and the User Experience 3. Laboratory Modules and the Subjectivity of the Knowledge Worker 4. Architects, Users, and the Social Sciences in Postwar America 5. Spatial Experience and the Instruments of Architectural Theory Part 2: Collectivity, Welfare, Consumption 6. The Shantytown of Algiers and the Colonization of Everyday Life 7. New Swedes in the New Town 8. Henri Lefebvre, For and Against the “User” 9. Designed-in Safety: Ergonomics in the Bathroom 10. Intelligentsia Design and the Postmodern Plattenbau 11. WiMBY!’s New Collectives Part 3: Participation 12. Landscape and Participation in 1960s New York 13. Ergonomics of Democracy 14. Counter-projects and the Postmodern User 15. The paradox of Social Architectures

From the B&N Reads Blog
Page 1 of

Related Subjects

Art, Architecture & Photography
Architecture
General & Miscellaneous Architecture
Art, Architecture & Photography
Architecture
General & Miscellaneous Architecture

Customer Reviews