Blind Faith Series Box Set

"Brilliant.... Anthony Vidler is a conceptual conjurer of formidable skill." -- J. Mordaunt Crook, "New York Times Book Review" The Architectural Uncanny presents an engaging and original series of meditations on issues and figures that are at the heart of the most pressing debates surrounding architecture today. Anthony Vidler interprets contemporary buildings and projects in light of the resurgent interest in the uncanny as a metaphor for a fundamentally "unhomely" modern condition. The essays are at once historical and theoretical, opening up the complex and difficult relationships between politics, social thought, and architectural design in an era when the reality of homelessness and the idealism of the neo-avant-garde have never seemed so far apart. "The Architectural Uncanny presents an engaging and original series of meditations on issues and figures that are at the heart of the most pressing debates surrounding architecture today. Anthony Vidler interprets contemporary buildings and projects in light of the resurgent interest in the uncanny as a metaphor for a fundamentally "unhomely" modern condition. The essays are at once historical - serving to situate contemporary discourse in its own intellectual tradition and theoretical - opening up the complex and difficult relationships between politics, social thought, and architectural design in an era when the reality of homelessness and the idealism of the neo-avant-garde have never seemed so far apart. Vidler, one of the deftest and surest critics of the contemporary scene, explores aspects of architecture through notions of the uncanny as they have been developed in literature, philosophy, and psychology from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present. He interprets the unsettling qualities of today's architecture - its fragmented neo-constructivist forms reminiscent of dismembered bodies, its "seeing walls" replicating the passive gaze of domestic cyborgs, its historical monuments indistinguishable from glossy reproductions - in the light of modern reflection on questions of social and individual estrangement, alienation, exile, and homelessness. Focusing on the work of architects such as Bernard Tschumi, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Eisenman, Coop Himmelblau, John Hejduk, Elizabeth Diller, and Ricardo Scofidio, as well as theorists of the urban condition, Vidler delineates the problems and paradoxes associated with the subject of domesticity. Anthony Vidler is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Architecture at Princeton University. His most recent book is Claude-Nicolas Ledoux: Architecture and Social Reform at the End of the Ancien Regime." -- Anthony Vidler interprets contemporary buildings and projects in light of the resurgent interest in the uncanny as a metaphor for a fundamentally "unhomely" modern condition. The Architectural Uncanny presents an engaging and original series of meditations on issues and figures that are at the heart of the most pressing debates surrounding architecture today. Anthony Vidler interprets contemporary buildings and projects in light of the resurgent interest in the uncanny as a metaphor for a fundamentally "unhomely" modern condition. The essays are at once historicalserving to situate contemporary discourse in its own intellectual tradition and theoreticalopening up the complex and difficult relationships between politics, social thought, and architectural design in an era when the reality of homelessness and the idealism of the neo-avant-garde have never seemed so far apart. Vidler, one of the deftest and surest critics of the contemporary scene, explores aspects of architecture through notions of the uncanny as they have been developed in literature, philosophy, and psychology from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present. He interprets the unsettling qualities of today's architectureits fragmented neo-constructivist forms reminiscent of dismembered bodies, its "seeing walls" replicating the passive gaze of domestic cyborgs, its historical monuments indistinguishable from glossy reproductions - in the light of modern reflection on questions of social and individual estrangement, alienation, exile, and homelessness. Focusing on the work of architects such as Bernard Tschumi, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Eisenman, Coop Himmelblau, John Hejduk, Elizabeth Diller, and Ricardo Scofidio, as well as theorists of the urban condition, Vidler delineates the problems and paradoxes associated with the subject of domesticity. The Architectural Uncanny 1 Preface 5 Introduction 13 Unhomely Houses 27 Buried Alive 55 Homesickness 67 Nostalgia 73 Architecture Dismembered 79 ) 80 Losing Face 94 Trick/Track 110 Shifting Ground 126 Homes for Cyborgs 156 151 160 in 174 Dark Space 176 Posturbanism 186 Psychometropolis 198 Oneirism 208 Vagabond Architecture 216 Transparency 226 Notes 236 Introduction 236 Unhomely Houses 238 Buried Alive 242 Homesickness 243 Nostalgia 244 Architecture Dismembered 244 Losing Face 245 Trick/Track 246 Shifting Ground 247 Homes for Cyborgs 249 Dark Space 252 Posturbanism 253 Psychometropolis 253 Oneirism 254 Vagabond Architecture 254 Transparency 255 Acknowledgments 258 Illustrations 258 Publication Information 258 Index 260