1st Edition

Image, Text, Architecture The Utopics of the Architectural Media

By Robin Wilson Copyright 2015
252 Pages
by Routledge

252 Pages
by Routledge

252 Pages
by Routledge

Image, Text, Architecture brings a radical and detailed analysis of the modern and contemporary architectural media, addressing issues of architectural criticism, architectural photography and the role of journal editors. It covers examples as diverse as an article by British artist Paul Nash in The Architectural Review, 1940, an early project by French architects Lacaton & Vassal published... Read more
Introduction; Chapter 1 Utopic Method; Chapter 2 Editorial Projects and Figural Projections; Chapter 3 A Present Presence; Chapter 4 ‘Now, this square is beautiful’; Chapter 5 Articles of Landscape, the Ruin and the ‘Foreign’; Chapter 6 Of ‘Delegate Figures’ and ‘Magic Light’; Chapter 101 Conclusion;

Biography

Robin Wilson works at the intersection of architecture and art through the writing of criticism and theory, curatorship and collaborative practice. He teaches history and theory of architecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London.

"With critical sharpness and aesthetic attentiveness, Robin Wilson treads the elusive yet restrained territory of the architectural journal page. Through a materially inquisitive process of de-editing and re-assembling, Wilson unfolds an unsettling and revitalising u-topics challenging ingrained ideas of architectural representation, revealing the performative capabilities of the journal page as the disturbing and indeterminate elsewhere of a complex architectural present." – Maria Hellstrm Reimer, University, Sweden and The Swedish Design Faculty for Design Research and Research Education

"In his new book on architectural media, Image, Text, Architecture, Robin Wilson develops carefully-nuanced readings of a series of case-studies, ranging from a 1940 article by the artist Paul Nash in The Architectural Review to Hisao Suzuki’s photography for the Spanish publication El Croquis. Whilst focused on the construction of individual journal pages, Wilson’s expansive discussion brings much to bear upon this, drawing upon recent visual and literary theory in subtle and often surprising ways. Central here is Louis Marin's influential post-structuralist account of utopic discourse, with which Wilson works to develop sophisticated arguments about the meanings and effects of specific presentational strategies. Image, Text, Architecture not only draws our attention to something habitually overlooked, but also gives us a powerful way of thinking about it." – Mark Dorrian, University of Edinburgh, UK

"... we are led from the surface of the page into its depths, emerging equipped to reassess the surface as a whole.  As such Wilson's work sits in somthing of a field of its own making." - Jon Astbury, Architectural Review