Exquisite Corpse: Writing on Buildings'Exquisite Corpse' was a game played by the surrealists in which someone drew on a piece of paper, folded it and passed it to the next person to draw on until, finally, the sheet was opened to reveal a calculated yet random composition. In this entertaining and provocative book, Michael Sorkin suggests that cities are similarly assembled by many players acting with varying autonomy in a complicit framework. An unfolding terrain of invention, the city is also a means of accommodating disparity, of contextualizing sometimes startling juxtapositions. Sorkin's aim is to widen the debate about the creation of buildings beyond the immediate issues of technology and design. He discusses the politics and culture of architecture with daring, often devastating, observations about the institutions and personalities who have dominated the profession over the past decade. Their preoccupation with the empty style of 'beach houses and Disneyland' has consistently trivialized the full constructive scope of contemporary architecture's possibilities. Sorkin's interventions range from the development scandals of New York where 'skyscrapers stand at the intersection between grid and greed', through the deconstructivist architectural culture of Los Angeles, to the work and ideas of architects, developers and critics such as Alvar Aalto, Norman Foster, Paul Goldberger, Michael Graves, Coop Himmelblau, Philip Johnson, Leon Krier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Rogers, Carlo Scarpa, James Stirling, Donald Trump, Tom Wolfe and Lebbeus Woods. Throughout Sorkin combines stinging polemic with a powerful call for a rebirth of architecture that is visionary and experimental--a recuperated 'dreamy science' |
Contents
Machine Dreams | 301 |
Silicon Implants | 307 |
Zaha Hadid | 327 |
Corb in New York | 351 |
Canon Fodder | 357 |
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Common terms and phrases
Aalto Alan Ambasz American Angeles Angelist archi architect artistic Battery Park City beautiful become building building's built central century classical clearly Columbus Circle construction Coop Himmelblau Corb course culture decorative drawings Drexler Eisenman elevator façade gallery genius glass Goldberger grid Guggenheim Hadid Hejduk Himmelblau I.M. Pei idea invention irony John Hejduk kind Krier landscape Le Corbusier Lebbeus Woods literal look machine Manhattan means mechanical modern architecture modernism's modernist MOMA monument Museum nature never mind Pesce Pesce's Peter Eisenman Philip Johnson photographs polemic problem production proposal question Ranalli Ranalli's rational Raymond Hood recent roof Rudolph scheme seems simply skyscraper social space Square strategy street structure style sure symbol tecture there's things tower tradition transformation ture urban Village Voice virtually vision wall Wigley Wright York Zaha Hadid