Owen Hatherley est un écrivain et journaliste britannique dont le travail explore principalement l'architecture, la politique et la culture. Son écriture se penche sur l'interconnexion de ces domaines, offrant des aperçus percutants sur la manière dont ils façonnent notre monde. À travers ses essais et ses reportages, Hatherley examine de manière critique les tendances sociétales contemporaines et leurs fondements historiques. Ses observations pertinentes et son style distinctif font de son œuvre une lecture captivante pour quiconque s'intéresse aux complexités de la société moderne.
This illustrated guide offers a comprehensive exploration of contemporary British architecture, showcasing the work of renowned critics. It delves into the evolution of architectural styles, highlighting key buildings and their significance in modern design. The book combines insightful analysis with striking visuals, making it an essential resource for architecture enthusiasts and professionals alike.
'In the craven world of architectural criticism Hatherley is that rarest of things: a brave, incisive, elegant and erudite writer, whose books dissect the contemporary built environment to reveal the political fantasies and social realities it embodies' Will Self During the course of the twentieth century, communism took power in Eastern Europe and remade the city in its own image. Ransacking the urban planning of the grand imperial past, it set out to transform everyday life, its sweeping boulevards, epic high-rise and vast housing estates an emphatic declaration of a non-capitalist idea. Now, the regimes that built them are dead and long gone, but from Warsaw to Berlin, Moscow to post-Revolution Kiev, the buildings, their most obvious legacy, remain, populated by people whose lives were scattered and jeopardized by the collapse of communism and the introduction of capitalism. Landscapes of Communism is an intimate history of twentieth-century communist Europe told through its buildings; it is, too, a book about power, and what power does in cities. Most of all, Landscapes of Communism is a revelatory journey of discovery, plunging us into the maelstrom of socialist architecture. As we submerge into the metros, walk the massive, multi-lane magistrale and pause at milk bars in the microrayons, who knows what we might find?
Owen Hatherley takes us on a transcontinental tour of the cities of the former Soviet Union, discovering what they can teach us about changing our cities for the better.
Exploring various UK cities, the book presents a journey through both celebrated and overlooked locales, from Plymouth and Brighton to Belfast and Aberdeen. It delves into the haunting urban landscapes of the Welsh valleys and the often-criticized modernist architecture of Coventry. This narrative serves as a poignant critique of Britain's self-congratulatory atmosphere during events like the jubilee and Olympics, offering a fresh perspective on national identity and urban life.
"'A searching, timely account of the condition of contemporary Europe, told through the landscapes of its cities. Over the past twenty years European cities have become the envy of the world: a Kraftwerk Utopia of historic centres, supermodernist concert halls, imaginative public spaces and futuristic egalitarian housing estates which, interconnected by high-speed trains traversing open borders, have a combination of order and pleasure which is exceptionally unusual elsewhere. In Trans-Europe Express, Owen Hatherley sets out to explore the European city across the entire continent, to see what exactly makes it so different to the Anglo-Saxon norm - the unplanned, car-centred, developer-oriented spaces common to the US, Ireland, UK and Australia. Attempting to define the European city, Hatherley finds a continent divided both within the EU and outside it."--Provided by publisher
Darkly humorous architectural guide to the decrepit new Britain that neoliberalism built.
Should Britain form a new union with its old 'Dominions' in Canada, Australia andNew Zealand? Are they really our closest allies and relations? And is there any reasonwhy they should want to unite again with us?
Over the past twenty years European cities have become the envy of the world: a Kraftwerk Utopia of historic centres, supermodernist concert halls, imaginative public spaces and futuristic egalitarian housing estates which, interconnected by high-speed trains traversing open borders, have a combination of order and pleasure which is exceptionally unusual elsewhere. In Trans-Europe Express, Owen Hatherley sets out to explore the European city across the entire continent, to see what exactly makes it so different to the Anglo-Saxon norm - the unplanned, car-centred, developer-oriented spaces common to the US, Ireland, UK and Australia. Attempting to define the European city, Hatherley finds a continent divided both within the EU and outside it.
The history of Pulp via pop, class war and the erotic city.
How to make a fairer, more just city From the grandiose histories of monumental state building projects to the minutiae of street signs and corner cafés, from the rebuilding of capital cities to the provision of the humble public toilet, Clean Living under Difficult Circumstances argues for the city as a socialist project. This essay collection spans a period from immediately before the 2008 financial crash to the year of the pandemic. Against the business-as-usual responses to both crises, Owen Hatherley outlines a vision of the city as both a venue for political debate and dispute as well as a space of everyday experience, one that we shape as much as it shapes us. Incorporated here are the genres of memoir, history, music and film criticism, as well as portraits of figures who have inspired new ways of looking at cities, such as the architect Zaha Hadid, the activist and urbanist Jane Jacobs, and thinkers such as Mark Fisher and Adam Curtis. Throughout these pieces, Hatherley argues that the only way out of our difficult circumstances is to imagine and try to construct a better modernity.