From Chicago to Toronto to Shanghai, cities around the world have sprouted “iconic” buildings by celebrity architects like Frank Gehry and Daniel Libeskind that compete for attention both on the skyline and in the media. But in recent years, criticism of these extreme “gestural” structures, known for their often-exaggerated forms, has been growing. Miles Glendinning’s impassioned polemic, Architecture’s Evil Empire, looks at how today’s trademark architectural individualism stretches beyond the well-known works and ultimately extends to the entire built environment. Glendinning examines how the global empire of the current modernism emerged—particularly in relation to the excesses of global capitalism—and explains its key organizational and architectural features, placing its most influential theorists and designers in a broader context of history and artistic movements. Arguing against the excesses of iconic architecture, Glendinning advocates a vision of modern renewal that seeks to remedy the shattered and alienated look he sees in contemporary architecture. Mingling scholarship with wry humor and a genuine concern for the state of architecture, Architecture’s Evil Empire will raise many heated debates and appeal to a wide range of readers, from architects to historians, interested in the built environment.

This is a graphic novel about the contemporary architectural profession, in which it acts as the protagonist in the form of an imaginary city called Practiceopolis. The novel narrates quasi-realistic stories that exaggerate the architectural everyday and the tacit, in order to make them prominent and tangible. They depict and dramatise the value conflicts between the different cultures of practising architecture and between the architectural profession and other members of the building industry as political conflicts around the future of Practiceopolis. The book uses the metaphorical world of Practiceopolis to provoke big questions about everyday routines in the profession that practitioners may take for granted and to examine different ideologies at work among architects and other members of the construction industry. The novel ends in the tradition of dystopian worlds common in a certain strand of graphic novels. By vividly illustrating and narrating the critical issues he interrogates, the author has created a world which any architect, student or professional, will both instantly recognise and simultaneously reject, provoking the reader to challenge themselves and the profession at large.

This interdisciplinary study takes a real-life look at evil deeds and evil nature, from the Global Financial Crisis to the Rwanda Genocide and beyond. The authors share their personal and poignant views on evil.

Recent decades have witnessed an explosion of museum building around the world and the subsequent publication of multiple texts dedicated to the subject. Museum Architecture: A new biography focuses on the stories we tell of museum buildings in order to explore the nature of museum architecture and the problems of architectural history when applied to the museum and gallery. Starting from a discussion of the key issues in contemporary museum design, the book explores the role of architectural history in the prioritisation of specific stories of museum building and museum architects and the exclusion of other actors from the history of museum making. These omissions have contemporary relevance and impact directly on the ways in which the physical structures of museums are shaped. Theoretically, the book places a particular emphasis on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Henri Lefebvre in order to establish an understanding of buildings as social relations; the outcome of complex human interactions and relationships. The book utilises a micro history, an in-depth case study of the ‘National Gallery of the North’, the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, to expose the myriad ways in which museum architecture is made. Coupled with this detailed exploration is an emphasis on contemporary museum design which utilises the understanding of the social realities of museum making to explore ideas for a socially sustainable museum architecture fit for the twenty-first century.

Well-designed infrastructure brings social value that far exceeds its initial construction expenditure, but competition for scarce government funds and a general public perception of infrastructure as mere efficiency, has often left design ill-considered. This book provides designers with the tools needed to argue for the value of design: the ‘design capital’ as the authors term it. In naming and defining design capital, design can once again become part of the discussion and realization of every infrastructure project. Design Capital offers strategies and tools for justifying public spending on design considerations in infrastructure projects. Design has the ability to make infrastructure resonate with cultural or social value, as seen in the case studies, which bestows infrastructure with the potential to accrue design capital. Support for this proposition is drawn from various methodologies of economic valuation and Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital, explanation of design methodology and education and a series of historical and contemporary case studies. The book also addresses some of the more controversial outcomes associated with contemporary infrastructure: gentrification, globalization and consumer tourism. With this book, designers can make a stronger case for the value of design in public infrastructure.

The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Architectural History offers a comprehensive and up-to-date knowledge report on recent developments in architectural production and research. Divided into three parts – Practices, Interrogations, and Innovations – this book charts diversity, criticality, and creativity in architectural interventions to meet challenges and enact changes in different parts of the world through featured exemplars and fresh theoretical orientations. The collection features 29 chapters written by leading architectural scholars and highlights the reciprocity between the historical and the contemporary, research and practice, and disciplinary and professional knowledge. Providing an essential map for navigating the complex currents of contemporary architecture, the Companion will interest students, academics, and practitioners who wish to bolster their understanding of built environments.

China’s rise as an economic superpower has been inescapable. Statistical hyperbole has been accompanied by a plethora of highly publicized architectural forms that brand the regeneration of its increasingly globalized urban centres. Despite the sizeable body of literature that has accompanied China’s modernization, the essence and trajectory of its contemporary cityscape remains difficult to grasp. This volume addresses a less explored aspect of China’s urban rejuvenation - the prominence of the shopping mall as a keystone of its public spaces. Here, the presence of the built form most representative of Western capitalism’s excess is one that makes explicit the tensions between China’s Communist state and its ascent within the ’free’ market. This book examines how these interrelationships are manifested in the culturally hybrid built form of the shopping mall and its role in contesting the ’public’ space of the modern Chinese city. By viewing these interrelationships as collisions of global and local narratives, a more nuanced understanding of the shopping mall typology is explored. Much architectural criticism has failed to address the levels of meaning implicit within the shopping mall, yet it is a building type whose public popularity has guaranteed its endurance. Consequently, if architecture is to remain a relevant social art, a more holistic understanding of this phenomenon will be indispensable to the process of adapting to globalizing forces. This examination of Chinese shopping malls offers a timely and relevant case study of what is happening in all our cities today.