Form Follows Libido

2004 Architects

Author : Sylvia Lavin
Release : 2004
Genre : Architects
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 685/5 ( reviews)

Book Synopsis Form Follows Libido by : Sylvia Lavin

Download or read book Form Follows Libido written by Sylvia Lavin. This book was released on 2004. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Eight million Americans a year cool their heels in psychiatric waiting rooms. Design can help lower this nervous overhead." —Richard Neutra, 1954 Sylvia Lavin's Form Follows Libidoargues that by the 1950s, some architects felt an urge to steer the cool abstraction of high modernism away from a neutral formalism toward the production of more erotic, affective environments. Lavin turns to the architecture of Richard Neutra (1892-1970) to explore the genesis of these new mood-inducing environments. In a series of engaging essays weaving through the designs and writings of this Vienna-born, California-based architect, Lavin discovers in Neutra a sustained and poignant psychoanalytic reflection set in the context of a burgeoning psychoanalytic culture in America. Lavin shows that Neutra's redirection of modernism constituted not a lyrical regression to sentimentality but a deliberate advance of architectural theory and technique to engage the unconscious mind, fueled by the ideas of psychoanalysis that were being rapidly disseminated at the time. In Neutra's responses to a vivid range of issues, from psychoanalysis proper to the popular psychology of tele-evangelical prayer, Lavin uncovers a radical reconstitution of the architectural discipline. Arguing persuasively that the received historical views of both psychoanalysis and architecture have led to a suppression of their compelling coincidences and unorthodoxies, Lavin sets out to unleash midcentury architecture's hidden libido. Neither Neutra nor psychoanalysis emerges unscathed from her investigation of how architecture came to be saturated by the intrigues of affect, often against its will. If Reyner Banham sought to put architecture "on the couch," then Lavin, through Neutra, leaps beyond Banham's ameliorative aim to lure contemporary architecture into the lush and dangerous liaisons of environmental design.

Form Follows Libido

2007-09-28 Architecture

Author : Sylvia Lavin
Release : 2007-09-28
Genre : Architecture
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 130/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Form Follows Libido by : Sylvia Lavin

Download or read book Form Follows Libido written by Sylvia Lavin. This book was released on 2007-09-28. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How modern architecture came to embrace the urges and fears of the affective unconscious. "Eight million Americans a year cool their heels in psychiatric waiting rooms. Design can help lower this nervous overhead."—Richard Neutra, 1954 Sylvia Lavin's Form Follows Libido argues that by the 1950s, some architects felt an urge to steer the cool abstraction of high modernism away from a neutral formalism toward the production of more erotic, affective environments. Lavin turns to the architecture of Richard Neutra (1892-1970) to explore the genesis of these new mood-inducing environments. In a series of engaging essays weaving through the designs and writings of this Vienna-born, California-based architect, Lavin discovers in Neutra a sustained and poignant psychoanalytic reflection set in the context of a burgeoning psychoanalytic culture in America. Lavin shows that Neutra's redirection of modernism constituted not a lyrical regression to sentimentality but a deliberate advance of architectural theory and technique to engage the unconscious mind, fueled by the ideas of psychoanalysis that were being rapidly disseminated at the time. In Neutra's responses to a vivid range of issues, from psychoanalysis proper to the popular psychology of tele-evangelical prayer, Lavin uncovers a radical reconstitution of the architectural discipline. Arguing persuasively that the received historical views of both psychoanalysis and architecture have led to a suppression of their compelling coincidences and unorthodoxies, Lavin sets out to unleash midcentury architecture's hidden libido. Neither Neutra nor psychoanalysis emerges unscathed from her investigation of how architecture came to be saturated by the intrigues of affect, often against its will. If Reyner Banham sought to put architecture "on the couch," then Lavin, through Neutra, leaps beyond Banham's ameliorative aim to lure contemporary architecture into the lush and dangerous liaisons of environmental design.

Architecture Xenoculture

2014-01-01 Architecture

Author : Juan Azulay
Release : 2014-01-01
Genre : Architecture
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 122/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Architecture Xenoculture by : Juan Azulay

Download or read book Architecture Xenoculture written by Juan Azulay. This book was released on 2014-01-01. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Xenoculture is a term coined by Iranian writer and philosopher Reza Negarestani that describes the need for embracing and exploring the unexpected, the alien. In this issue we borrow the idea and explore the realm of Architecture Xenoculture — the work of architects and designers who detach from everything that architecture is supposed to be and look like, including preconceived forms and aesthetics, to look into new architectural and design possibilities. An architectural form that emerges from mathematical processes and new material explorations and proposes something never before seen — an aesthetic yet to be determined. Some of the work showcased has been produced by leading architecture practitioners and academics worldwide including: Hernan Diaz Alonso, Servo, Francois Roche, Marc Fornes, Kokkugia, Zaha Hadid, Volkan Alkanoglu, and Rafael Lozano among others. Architecture Xenoculture is the problematization of work produced by embracing the proliferation of this mist of fear. It argues for the harnessing of this aesthetic of fear towards a yet-to-be determined end – intensifying its practice towards new thresholds, those that unleash the potential of the alien in the world beyond the limited imaginary we have become anesthetized to, conjuring insecure material and behavioral manifestations of the xeno-gene and its ability to adapt, mutate, survive and fight.

Sex and Buildings

2013-07-15 Architecture

Author : Richard J. Williams
Release : 2013-07-15
Genre : Architecture
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 415/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Sex and Buildings by : Richard J. Williams

Download or read book Sex and Buildings written by Richard J. Williams. This book was released on 2013-07-15. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Massive modern skyscrapers, obelisks, towers—all are structures that, thanks to their phallic shape, are often associated with sex. But other buildings are more subtly connected, as they provide the frameworks for our sexual lives and act as reminders of our sexual memories. This relationship between sex and buildings mattered more than ever in the United States and Europe during the turbulent twentieth century, when a culture of unprecedented sexual frankness and tolerance emerged and came to dominate many aspects of public life. Part architectural history, part cultural history, and part travelogue, Sex and Buildings explores how progressive sexual attitudes manifest themselves in architecture, asking what progressive sexuality might look like architecturally and exploring the successes and failures of buildings' attempts to reflect it. In search of structures that reflect the sexual mores of their inhabitants, Richard J. Williams visits modernist buildings in Southern California, the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, the Playboy Mansion in Chicago, the Seagram in New York, communes from the 1960s, and more. A fascinating and often funny look at a period of extraordinary social change coupled with aesthetic invention, Sex and Buildings will change the way we look at the buildings around us.

The Glass Church

2020-04-17 Biography & Autobiography

Author : Mark T. Mulder
Release : 2020-04-17
Genre : Biography & Autobiography
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 053/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Glass Church by : Mark T. Mulder

Download or read book The Glass Church written by Mark T. Mulder. This book was released on 2020-04-17. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For most of his life, the megachurch ministry of Robert H. Schuller in Orange County, California, displayed an apparent strength that betrayed none of the fractures that lay below the success-oriented surface. Yet, when tested and stressed in the late 2000s, the ecclesial structure's accumulated fragility proved to be catastrophic. Drawing on extensive data gathered from archives, interviews, and ethnographic observation, The Glass Church examines the spectacular collapse of The Crystal Cathedral to better understand both the strength and fragility of Schuller's ministry. The apparent success of the ministry obscured the many tensions that often threatened its future. Certainly, all churches depend on a mix of constituents, charisma, and capital, yet the size and ambition of large churches like Schuller's Crystal Cathedral exert enormous organizational pressures to continue the flow of people committed to the congregation, to reinforce the spark of charismatic excitement generated by high-profile pastors, and to develop fresh flows of capital funding for maintenance of old projects and launching new initiatives. The constant attention to expand constituencies, boost charisma, and stimulate capital among megachurches produces an especially burdensome strain on their leaders. By orienting an approach to the collapse of the Crystal Cathedral on these three core elements--constituency, charisma, and capital--The Glass Church demonstrates how congregational fragility is greatly accentuated in larger churches, a notion we label megachurch strain, such that the threat of implosion is significantly accentuated by any failures to properly calibrate the inter-relationship among these elements.

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