1st Edition
Generosity and Architecture
This book proposes that architecture can function as a true embodiment of generosity and examines how generosity in architecture operates within, and questions, current and historical socio-economic and political systems. As such, it interrogates ways in which architecture aspires for something more, whether within economic austerities or within historic contexts of a discipline that has often been preoccupied with cost and quantitative measurement.
The texts presented in this book critically examine the theme of generosity and architecture from a variety of perspectives, addressing the theoretical, the historical, and the everyday processes of architectural practice, procurement, and policy in a global context. The book is a richly collaborative text which explores how architecture – in its processes of ordering and shaping space – can represent and embody generosity in all its multi-faceted potential.
List of figures
Illustration credits
List of contributors
Preface: A love letter to generosity
Nathalie Weadick
Introduction
Mhairi McVicar, Stephen Kite and Charles Drożyński
PART 1: Humanity and Delight
1. Waterlines: RiverBank – Change and the necessity of generosity
Ronit Eisenbach
2. Generosity as excess: Medievalism and fantasy in London’s Victorian sewer works Martin Bressani and Cigdem Talu
3. ‘Think first of the walls’: Surfaces of generosity – William Morris, Philip Webb, and the Arts and Crafts domestic interior
Stephen Kite
4. Of being an actor or an audience: Generosity in the pattern of staircase as a stage
Nooridayu Ahmad Yusuf
5. Immanent gifts
Lily Chi
6. Vessels and landscapes: Emotion and social function
Christopher Platt
7. Good Life and Flower Tree project
Antonio Capelao
8. ‘Rewild My Street’: A model for community-led urban rewilding
Siân Moxon
PART 2: Abundance of Spirit
9. Modernist, Metabolist, and Brutalist generosity
Albert van Jaarsveld
10. Generosity and architecture’s wide-open spaces
Chris L. Smith
11. Conditional generosity: Architecture for the subvert, Gerlev Parkour Park
Charles Drożyński
12. Generosity through co-design: Collaborating with the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate
Phoebe Crisman
13. Care and Generosity in Architectural Design
Shelly Cohen
14. Illegal architecture?: Unravelling the ethics of insurgent practice through the work of Santiago Cirugeda in Spain
Juan Usubillaga
15. Synergic effects as practical generosity in architecture
Xavier Bonnaud
16. Camden Active Spaces
Susanne Tutsch and Sarah Ackland
PART 3: Policies of Participation
17. Surplus land
William Hodgson
18. Maintenance and repair as care with generosity
Juliet Davis
19. Asking much of all involved: A Community Asset Transfer in Grangetown, Cardiff
Mhairi McVicar
20. Meanwhile use as generosity?
Cathy Smith
21. Practice of/with generosity in the contested space of Cyprus
Esra Can
22. The multi-scalar production of intercultural urban landscapes: Inter-Cultural Nodes as urban and social re-activators - The case of Ballarò, Palermo
Federico Wulff Barreiro and Oscar Brito-Gonzalez
23. A place for participation on the Old Kent Road
Jane Clossick
24. Beyond Lending: A case study
George Lovesmith, Mohamad Fez Miah, and Dr Aled Singleton
Select Bibliography
Index
Biography
Mhairi McVicar is a Professor at the Welsh School of Architecture and Academic Lead of Cardiff University’s Community Gateway, a partnership platform which has developed collaborative work with individuals and groups in Grangetown, Cardiff, since 2012. Mhairi’s published and current research examines the role of the architect in pursuing quality and equity in the built environment, with interest in how procedures of architectural education and practice can support trust and long-term collaboration.
Stephen Kite is an Emeritus Professor at the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University, Wales, UK. His research explores the history and theory of architecture and its wider links to visual culture. His many publications include the monographs: Shadow Makers: A Cultural History of Shadows in Architecture (2017) and Building Ruskin's Italy: Watching Architecture (2012). Forthcoming, from his more recent research is: Shaping the Surface: Materiality and the History of British Architecture 1840-2000 (2022).
Charles Drożyński is a Senior Lecturer of Architecture at the University of the West of England, UK. His research interests include the intersections of architecture and post-linguistic schools of thought; in particular, these put forward by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, with a focus on the significance of subversion as well as new or unconventional ideas in spatial design.
