Traces the significance of the human body in architecture from its early place as the divine organizing principle to its present near elimination

An international study of cultural relationships with built environments.

Architecture and environmental design are among the last professional fields to develop a sustained and nuanced discussion concerning ethics. Hemmed in by politics and powerful clients on one side and the often unscrupulous practices of the construction industry on the other, environmental designers have been traditionally reluctant to address ethical issues head on. And yet the rapid urbanization of the world's population continues to swell into new megacities, each less healthy, welcoming, secure, or environmentally sustainable than the next. Green, carbon-reduced, and sustainable building practices are important ways architects have recently responded to the symptoms of the crisis, but are these efforts really addressing the core issues? Taking the Dine (Navajo) "Hogan Song"--a song used to protect and nourish the personhood of newly constructed dwellings--as their inspiration, the architects, philosophers, poets, and other contemporary scholars contributing to this volume demonstrate that a deeper, more radical change in our relationship to the built world needs to occur. While offering a careful critique of modernist, corporate, or techno-enthralled design practices, these essays investigate an alternative "relational ecology" whose wisdom draws from ancient and often-marginalized voices, if not the whisperings of the earth itself. Contributors include: Richard Kearney, Alberto Perez-Gomez, Juhani Pallasmaa, Karsten Harries, Edward Casey, Susan Stewart, David Abram, Stacy Alaimo, Jace and Laura Weaver, Philip Sheldrake, and Sebnem Yucel Young.

A decimated Shiite shrine in Iraq. The smoking World Trade Center site. The scorched cityscape of 1945 Dresden. Among the most indelible scars left by war is the destroyed landscapes, and such architectural devastation damages far more than mere buildings. Robert Bevan argues herethat shattered buildings are not merely “collateral damage,” but rather calculated acts of cultural annihilation. From Hitler’s Kristallnacht to the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in the Iraq War, Bevan deftly sifts through military campaigns and their tactics throughout history, and analyzes the cultural impact and catastrophic consequences of architectural destruction. For Bevan, these actions are nothing less than cultural genocide. Ultimately, Bevan forcefully argues for the prosecution of nations that purposely flout established international treaties against destroyed architecture. A passionate and thought-provoking cri de coeur, The Destruction of Memory raises questions about the costs of war that run deeper than blood and money. “The idea of a global inheritance seems to have fallen by the wayside and lessons that should have long ago been learned are still being recklessly disregarded. This is what makes Bevan’s book relevant, even urgent: much of the destruction of which it speaks is still under way.”—Financial Times Magazine “The message of Robert Bevan’s devastating book is that war is about killing cultures, identities and memories as much as it is about killing people and occupying territory.”—Sunday Times “As Bevan’s fascinating, melancholy book shows, symbolic buildings have long been targeted in and out of war as a particular kind of mnemonic violence against those to whom they are special.”—The Guardian

Healing Spaces, Modern Architecture, and the Body brings together cutting-edge scholarship examining the myriad ways that architects, urban planners, medical practitioners, and everyday people have applied modern ideas about health and the body to the spaces in which they live, work, and heal. The book’s contributors explore North American and European understandings of the relationship between physical movement, bodily health, technological innovation, medical concepts, natural environments, and architectural settings from the nineteenth century through the heyday of modernist architectural experimentation in the 1920s and 1930s and onward into the 1970s. Not only does the book focus on how professionals have engaged with the architecture of healing and the body, it also explores how urban dwellers have strategized and modified their living environments themselves to create a kind of vernacular modernist architecture of health in their homes, gardens, and backyards. This new work builds upon a growing interdisciplinary field incorporating the urban humanities, geography, architectural history, the history of medicine, and critical visual studies that reflects our current preoccupation with the body and its corresponding therapeutic culture.

This book prompts architects and anthropologists to think and act together. In order to fully grasp the relationship between human beings and their built environments and design more livable and sustainable buildings and cities in the future, we need new cross-disciplinary approaches combining anthropology and architecture. This is neither anthropology of architecture, nor ethnography for architects, but a new approach beyond these positions: Architectural Anthropology. The anthology gathers contributions from leading researchers from various Nordic universities, architectural schools, and architectural firms as well as prominent international scholars like Tim Ingold, Albena Yaneva, and Sarah Pink – all exploring, developing, and innovating the cross-disciplinary field between anthropology and architecture. Several contributions are co-written by architects and anthropologists, merging approaches from the two disciplines in order to fully explore the dynamics of lived space. Through a broad range of empirical examples, methodological approaches, and theoretical reflections, the anthology provides inspiration and tools for scholars, students, and practitioners working with lived space. The first part focusses on homes, walls, and boundaries, the second on urban space and public life, and the third on processes of creativity, participation, and design.