This book marks a turning point in architectural theory by using philosophy to examine the field anew.Breaking from the traditional dualism within architecture - which presents the body as subject and space as object - it examines how such rigid boundaries can be softened. Zuzana Kovar thus engages with complementary and complex ideas from architecture, philosophy, feminist theory and other subjects, demonstrating how both bodies and bodily functions relate deeply to architecture. Extending philosopher Julia Kristeva's notion of abjection - the confrontation of one's own corporeality as something is excreted - Kovar finds parallels in the concept of the 'scaffold.' Much like living bodies and their products can impact on the buildings that house them - old skin cells create dust, menstrual blood stains, our breath heats and cools surfaces - scaffolding is similarly ephemeral and yet not entirely separable from the architecture it supports. Kovar shifts the conversation about abjection towards a more nuanced idea of architecture - where living organisms, building matter, space, decay and waste are all considered as part of a continual process - drawing on the key informing works of thinkers like Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari to do this. Including a number of experimental projects conducted in the spaces inhabited by the author herself to illuminate the theory at its core, the book forms a distinguished and pioneering study designed for practitioners and scholars of architecture, philosophy and visual culture alike.

The thesis revolves around the concept of abjection, famously developed in the 1980s by philosopher Julia Kristeva. It is interested in abject(ion)'s ability to contribute to the way the architectural discipline thinks about bodies, spaces, and the relations within and between these. The interest in abject(ion) stems from the observation that when architecture deals with bodies and spaces, it still does so to a large degree from within a dualistic framework, where bodies and spaces are seen as opposites, as discrete entities, and further that when speaking about the relations between the two, a reliance on the phenomenological conception of the body as subject and space as object becomes evident. That is, the relations are described from the perspective of the subject, from the subject's experience, and so they are understood subjectively rather than objectively. Whilst this thinking is of course useful to a certain degree, it is simultaneously restrictive, and has a clear limit point, as it does not allow one to consider the in-between and further to unravel the potential of the in-between. What the thesis attempts to do then through working with abject(ion), is map out a more volatile and open mode of thinking about bodies, spaces, and their relations. And for this, abject(ion) proves as the ideal candidate, given its ability to disrupt boundaries not only between inside and outside, but also between body and space, resulting in a moment of indiscernibility. Prior to being able to employ abject(ion) however, one has to extend Kristeva's definition, as Kristeva uses abject(ion) only in the context of the body and also importantly, given her psychoanalytic background, she often slips into a dualism which ends up curtailing the full effect of abject(ion). On account of Kristeva's slippage to a dualistic mode of thought, abject(ion) is in need of address in its own right: there is the necessity for a productive mobilisation. From this perspective the thesis draws on further philosophical work, predominantly that of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, whose mode of thinking flows through the length of the thesis and who move us away from individually expelling human and spatial bodies to assemblages. More immediately within architecture the thesis looks to the theoretical work of Bernard Tschumi, who through his discussion of events, and of an architecture constituted by spaces and events, provides the initial possibility for exploring the process nature of abject(ion). Through these writings, we develop an understanding of abject(ion) as an event that constitutes architecture, and it is at this point that abject(ion) manifests a series of potentialities, that it climaxes in excess and leads to affect.

One of the fundamental tenets of modernism was its image of hygiene, its ideal of bringing cleanliness and order to the great unwashed, as evident in Adolf Loos's 1898 article, Plumbers. Using Loos as a point of departure, the essays in this collection examine architecture through the multiple meanings inherent in plumbing - from the pipes of modern hygiene, to the plumb line of the right angle, to Marcel Duchamp's Ready-made urinal.

Eight essays challenge the tendency of previous studies of non-western architecture to pursue singular identities and to glorify pasts.

A highly original collection of essays that explore the relationship between food and architecture—the preparation of meals and the production of space. The contributors to this highly original collection of essays explore the relationship between food and architecture, asking what can be learned by examining the (often metaphorical) intersection of the preparation of meals and the production of space. In a culture that includes the Food Channel and the knife-juggling chefs of Benihana, food has become not only an obsession but an alternative art form. The nineteen essays and "Gallery of Recipes" in Eating Architecture seize this moment to investigate how art and architecture engage issues of identity, ideology, conviviality, memory, and loss that cookery evokes. This is a book for all those who opt for the "combination platter" of cultural inquiry as well as for the readers of M. F. K. Fisher and Ruth Reichl. The essays are organized into four sections that lead the reader from the landscape to the kitchen, the table, and finally the mouth. The essays in "Place Settings" examine the relationships between food and location that arise in culinary colonialism and the global economy of tourism. "Philosophy in the Kitchen" traces the routines that create a site for aesthetic experimentation, including an examination of gingerbread houses as art, food, and architectural space. The essays in "Table Rules" consider the spatial and performative aspects of eating and the ways in which shared meals are among the most perishable and preserved cultural artifacts. Finally, "Embodied Taste" considers the sensual apprehension of food and what it means to consume a work of art. The "Gallery of Recipes" contains images by contemporary architects on the subject of eating architecture.

Between the slum clearances of the early twentieth century and debates about the post-Olympic city, the drive to 'regenerate' London has intensified. Yet today, with a focus on increasing land values, regeneration schemes purporting to foster diverse and creative new neighbourhoods typically displace precisely the qualities, activities and communities they claim to support. In Remaking London Ben Campkin provides a lucid and stimulating historical account of urban regeneration, exploring how decline and renewal have been imagined and realised at different scales. Focussing on present-day regeneration areas that have been key to the capital's modern identity, Campkin explores how these places have been stigmatised through identification with material degradation, and spatial and social disorder. Drawing on diverse sources - including journalism, photography, cinema, theatre, architectural design, advertising and television - he illuminates how ideas of decline drive urban change. Richly illustrated and engagingly written, Remaking London is both a compelling account of contested sites from the capital's recent history and a powerful critique of the contradictions of contemporary regeneration.

Dirt - and our rituals to eradicate it - is as much a part of our everyday lives as eating, breathing and sleeping. Yet this very fact means that we seldom stop to question what we mean by dirt. What do our attitudes to dirt and cleanliness tell us about ourselves and the societies we live in? Exploring a wide variety of settings - domestic, urban, suburban and rural - the contributors expose how our ideas about dirt are intimately bound up with issues of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality and the body. The result is a a rich and challenging work that extends our understanding of historical and contemporary cultural manifestations of dirt and cleanliness.