Space Reader: Heterogeneous Space in Architecture: 2 (AD Reader) - Tapa blanda

The Space Reader provides a highly pertinent and contemporary understanding of space for a new generation of students and architects. It espouses a definition of space that is heterogeneous (an object or system consisting of a diverse range of different items). An example of heterogeneous space, for instance, is Manhattan where complex and multiple social and technological conditions are overlaid. (This is to be contrasted with highly centralised and ordered Modernist cities.) With the onset of globalisation and the Web, heterogeneneous space, with its emphasis on differentiation, is more relevant to the contemporary condition, which encourages the mixing of space, than a much more static conception of Modernist space. This book foregrounds spatial issues and the potential of heterogeneous space through a threefold strategy: 1) Its compilation of seminal essays on the discourse of heterogeneous space. These are to include previously published key texts by Reyner Banham, Andrew Benjamin, Robin Evans, Jeff Kipnis and Henri Lefebvre, as well as new texts by important contemporary commentators, such as Mark Cousins, Werner Durth and Anthony Vidler. 2) By commenting on these seminal texts and drawing links between them. 3) By distilling from the first two efforts a contemporary outlook on a discourse of heterogeneous space that is of future significance.

Edited by three leading figures in cutting-edge design, this reader brings space firmly back on to the agenda of contemporary architecture. Whereas space was one of the central tenets of 20th-century Modernism, in the last two decades the overriding preoccupation with digital technologies has shifted the focus to parametric geometries and complex surfaces. This emphasis on form and image has not been accompanied by similar advancements in the understandings of architectural space.

The Space Reader provides a highly pertinent and current understanding of space for a new generation of students and architects. It espouses an understanding of space that is heterogeneous, ordered through differential relationships between diverse systems leading to a multiplicity of atmospheres. As a generation of social geographers has argued, this type of complex space is characteristic of the metropolis, where multiple social and technological conditions are organically overlaid. The Space Reader attempts to lay the ground work for a similarly robust articulation of spatial complexity within architecture, and its relationship today’s built environment. With its emphasis on differentiation, heterogeneous space is pliant, flexible and highly relevant to the contemporary condition.

The Space Reader features:

• A comprehensive introduction by the editors foregrounding spatial issues and the potential of heterogeneous space
• Seminal essays by Stan Allen, Reyner Banham, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Robin Evans, Jeff Kipnis and Bernard Tschumi.
• New, revised and recent texts by architects and theorists, such as Albert Pope, Charles Rice, Peter Sloterdijk and Jakob von Uexküll.