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Overview
Within a context of social and political issues since the late 1960s, when the Modern Movement began to be challenged, Diane Ghirardo examines a broad range of "megaprojects" as paradigms of both public and private space. Ranging widely, the author covers everything from the internationally expansive Disney empire to the IBA in Berlin, with projects ranging from new structures to rehabilitation and residents' self-build. She moves beyond the strict, formal analysis of architecture, offering a much welcomed critique of her subject that is unusually serious and thoughtful. 166 illus., 40 in color.
"A wonderful worldwide survey of the architecture of the past 30 years." --Choice
Synopsis
An examination of the architectural world and its theories since the late 1960s in the context of social and political issues. It looks at a broad survey of buildings, but focuses on specific "megaprojects" as examples for discussion: the Disney empire and its amusement parks in the context of public space and the IBA in Berlin in the context of domestic space.
Library Journal
Though students of architectural design are often most engaged by current work, critical histories of recent architecture are not plentiful. For that reason, Ghirardo's (Out of Site: A Social Criticism of Architecture, LJ 4/1/91) book makes a significant contribution to information resources on the architecture of the past 25 years. In particular, the postmodern and deconstructivist work of the last ten years is emphasized in her clear, if not especially elegant, prose. In the introduction, the author constructs a historiography of architectural thought and criticism since the reign of modernism; she then divides the chapters not chronologically but thematically, discussing public space, domestic space, and "the urban sphere," this last section being untypically meandering at times. The strength of the book lies in its broad and international selection of examples, although, regrettably, many of them are discussed without illustration. The biggest disappointment is the relatively small number of photographs in color; by contrast, those in black and white are noticeably less descriptive. Recommended for all architecture collections.-Paul Glassman, Pratt Inst. Lib., Brooklyn