For almost 20 years, Detlef Mertins has been a critical voice in renewing our understanding of architectural modernity. In these essays he elaborates on key topics such as transparency, glass architecture, organicism, life and event, sameness and difference.

This intriguing work offers a new perspective on Islamic Peripatetic philosophy, critiquing modern receptions of such thought and highlighting the contribution it can make to contemporary Western philosophy. Mohammad Azadpur focuses on the thought of Alfarabi and Avicenna, who, like ancient Greek philosophers and some of their successors, viewed philosophy as a series of spiritual exercises. However, Muslim Peripatetics differed from their Greek counterparts in assigning importance to prophecy. The Islamic philosophical account of the cultivation of the soul to the point of prophecy unfolds new vistas of intellectual and imaginative experience and accords the philosopher an exceptional dignity and freedom. With reference to both Islamic and Western philosophers, Azadpur discusses how Islamic Peripatetic thought can provide an antidote to some of modernity's philosophical problems. A discussion of the development of later Islamic Peripatetic thought is also included.

From Barnet to Richmond, explore the history of London's Metro-Land A Guide to Modernism in Metro-Land is your essential pocket guide to the modernist architecture of London's suburbs. Inspired by John Betjeman's 1973 documentary Metro-Land and the writing of Ian Nairn, it examines the growth of the city's suburbs from the 1920s up to the present day – a story that is closely interwoven with the development of innovative architecture in Britain – through its most remarkable modernist buildings. Featuring work by architects such as Charles Holden, Erno Goldfinger and Norman Foster, the book covers nine London boroughs and two counties: Barnet, Brent, Ealing, Enfield, Haringey, Harrow, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Richmond, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire. It is designed to help you explore Metro-Land's modernist heritage, featuring short descriptions of each building alongside maps of the areas covered, and more than 100 colour photographs.

This book proposes alternative interpretations of broadly-debated concepts within architectural modernity. Bringing into view the work of lesser-known architects from across the globe, alongside previously unexplored aspects of mainstream masters of the Modern, Rethinking Modernity puts forward a compelling case for the range and diversity of architectural projects encompassed by this term. Exploring themes such as the use of colour, materials, ornament, local traditions and identities, Rethinking Modernity challenges readers to build a better understanding of a crucial moment in architectural history, and of design trends shaping the present-day production of the built environment. Complementing the RIBA Publishing titles Redefining Brutalism and Revisiting Postmodernism, this book sits within a series of books aiming to explore new interpretations of well-loved architectural movements, richly illustrated with rarely-seen archive photography and lesser-known projects.

The 'Illuminating Modernity' series examines the great but lesser known thinkers in the 'Romantic Thomist' tradition such as Erich Przywara and Fernand Ulrich and shows how outstanding 20th century theologians like Ratzinger and von Balthasar have depended on classical Thomist thought, and how they radically reinterpreted this thought. The chapters in this volume are dedicated to the encounter between the presuppositions and claims of modern intellectual culture and the Christian confession that the crucified and resurrected Jesus is the power and wisdom of God and is the lord of history and of his church. The scholars contributing to this discussion do not assume that Christianity and modernity are two discrete entities which can be readily defined, nor do they presume that Christian wisdom and modernity meet each other only in conflict or by coincidence. They engage with a variety of great figures – Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Rahner, Przywara, Guardini, Karl Barth, and Karol Wojtyla – to illustrate the connection between modernism and Christian wisdom. The volume concludes with a programmatic statement for the renewal of Christian philosophy that has been able to retain the cosmo-theological vision as outlined by Mezei in the final chapter.

This book places transcultural memory in the South Asian cultural and literary context. Divided into two parts, the book first defines transcultural memory in the age of globalised modernity both as a theory and social practice. Then it examines contemporary Indo-English novels from India and Pakistan with the theoretical and methodological tool of transcultural memory to shed new light on the connection between memory and modernity, and memory and South Asian cultures in the wake of new social and political transformations on the Indian subcontinent. A special focus on commemorative tropes in the novels not only show the possibility of a dialogue with different versions of the past, but also how such a dialogue shapes processes of remembrance between and beyond borders. Hence, the books comes up with alternative ways of reading the Indo-English novels, divesting the concept of (trans)cultural memory from its Euro- centrism and claiming it as equally significant in comprehending the new configurations of memory and modernity in non-Western locations.

In the wake of the Great Recession, housing and its financing suddenly re-emerged as questions of significant public concern. Yet both public and academic debates about housing have remained constricted, tending not to explore how the evolution of housing simultaneously entails basic forms of socio-spatial reproduction and underlying tensions in the political order. Drawing on cutting edge perspectives from urban studies, this book grants renewed, interdisciplinary energy to the housing question. It explores how housing raises a series of vexing issues surrounding rights, identity, and justice in the modern city. Through finely detailed studies that illuminate national and regional particularities- ranging from analyses of urban planning in the Soviet Union, the post-Katrina reconstruction of New Orleans, to squatting in contemporary Lima - the volume underscores how housing questions matter in a wide range of contexts. It draws attention to ruptures and continuities between high modernist and neoliberal forms of urbanism, demonstrating how housing and the dilemmas surrounding it are central to governance and the production of space in a rapidly urbanizing world.