Indispensable eyesores : an anthropology of undesired buildings / Melanie van der Hoorn.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hoorn, Mélanie van der.

Series:

Remapping cultural history ; v. 10.

Remapping cultural history ; v. 10

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Architecture and anthropology.

Architecture--Human factors.

Architecture.

Abandoned buildings.

Architecture and society.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

New York : Berghahn Books, 2009.

Summary:

Collapsing concrete colossuses, run-down overgrown skeletons, immutable architectural misfits: the outcasts from our built environment, which we are dying to dispose of — and yet cannot do without — have inspired many ghost stories, crime novels and urban legends. Such narratives reveal the significance of architectural eyesores for the people who live or work in or near them. After exploring various approaches to building lives and deaths, the author presents a rich variety of undesired edifices in Germany, Hungary, Austria and Bosnia-Herzegovina and investigates the different methods used to dispose of them: eliminating, damaging, transforming or ‘reframing’ them, abandoning them to progressive dilapidation or virtually rejecting them. Discarding an edifice, however, need not bring its social life to an end. This analysis continues with a reflection on the afterlife of unwanted buildings, and concludes with a discussion on the life expectancy of buildings, their multi-sensory materiality and ‘thingly’ agency.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Illustrations

Foreword

1. Dragons, Tunnels, Gold and Russians: Narrative Introductions into the Bowels of ‘Corrupt’ Architecture

2. Between Pragmatic Clearance and Pure Iconoclasm: Theoretical Perspectives on the Life and Death of Undesired Buildings

3. 13 May 2001, 8.01 A.M. – 1 Building, 20,000 People and 450 Kilograms of Explosives: The Elimination of the Kaiserbau in Troisdorf as a Secular Sacrifice

4. Witnessing Urbicide: Contested Destruction in Sarajevo

5. From Nuclear Waste to a Temple of Consumerism: The Recuperation and Neutralization of the Ex-would-be Nuclear Power Plant in Kalkar

6. Consuming the ‘Platte’ in East Berlin: The Revaluation of Former GDR Architecture

7. If Not Clearing, Then At Least Thinking Them Away: The Significance of Unrealized Proposals and the Viennese Flaktürme

8. ‘L’ like ‘Left to Its Own Devices’: The Progressive Dilapidation of the Kulturhaus in Zinnowitz

9. Exorcizing Remains: Architectural Fragments as Intermediaries between History and Individual Experience

10. In Fond Memory of a Rejected Edifice: Reaffirming Agency by Rehabilitating Vanished Eyesores

11. Eyesores Are Indispensable: Concluding Remarks

Epilogue. Taboos on the Multi-Sensory Materiality of Buildings and Their Agency

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [238]-253) and index.

ISBN:

9786612627804

9781282627802

1282627805

9781845459215

1845459210

OCLC:

647933072