{"85901":{"#nid":"85901","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Andreotti\u0027s SpielRaum: Benjamin et l\u0027architecture Now Available","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EArchitecture Professor Libero Andreotti recently released \u003Cem\u003ESpielRaum: Benjamin et l\u0027architecture\u003C\/em\u003E (Paris, Editions La Villette 2011), now available in bookstores and \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.amazon.fr\/Spielraum-Benjamin-larchitecture-Libero-Andreotti\/dp\/2915456607\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022\u003Eonline.\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe book focuses on Walter Benjamin\u0027s contribution to architectural thinking through four groups of essays addressing, respectively, nineteenth century interiors and the notion of dreamspace; twentieth century collective dreamworlds and the relationship between architecture, cinema, and the popular press; Benjamin`s writings on architecture in relation to art history, architectural theory, and philosophy; and Benjamin\u0027s relevance to architecture today. \u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe lavishly illustrated book includes contributions by Georges Teyssot, Martin Bressani, Marc Gringon, and Jean Luis Deotte, Lutz Robbers, Esther Leslie, Esthelle Thibault, Veronique Fabbri, Ken Knoespel, Betrand Lemoine, and Frances Hsu, Philippe Duboy, Antoine Picon, Mario Carpo, Nadir Lahiji, and Diane Morgan, including an extended preface by Andreotti, and an introductory essay by the noted philosopher Jean Paul Doll\u00e9.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EINTRODUCTION\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ESeventy years after his death, Walter Benjamin\u2019s popularity shows no sign of abating. A veritable torrent of books, conferences, exhibitions, films, commemorations attest to his rising status as XXth century\u2019s most influential European cultural critic. Almost every area of the humanities, from history to philosophy, film and media studies, literary criticism, politics, and art, has felt the impact of Benjamin\u2019s work. Within this farflung zone of influence, architecture occupies a special place, as the subject of what some consider to be Benjamin\u2019s most important project, the Passagen-Werk, and the source of seminal reflections on the metropolitan experience, wish images, tactility, the aesthetics of shock, and the aestheticisation of politics -- to mention only some notions familiar to architectural scholars. For more than a generation now, Benjamin\u2019s ideas have spread through architectural studies, opening up many new areas of research; yet despite its impact, Benjamin\u2019s thinking on architecture has rarely been made the object of focussed or systematic study. As a result, the precise nature of his influence, the import of his ideas, and the questions of interpretation they pose for architectural scholars today remain largely unexamined.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOne reason for this neglect is practical : Benjamin\u2019s reflections on architecture are scattered across of large body of writing, often buried in discussions of apparently remote subjects. Furthermore, as any reader can attest, his writings do not lend themselves to easy summary, tending rather to generate different and at times even strongly divergent interpretations (depending on whether one wishes to emphasize, for instance, Benjamin\u2019s role as a Marxist historian, or Frankfurt school philosopher, or Jewish mystic). To this, one must add the hagiographic approach of many of his devotees, which -- ironically for someone who welcomed the decline of aura -- does not generally encourage open and rational debate. This book is one effort to rescue Benjamin from the fate that so often befalls \u2018difficult\u2019 writers : to be often quoted but rarely read. Its goal is to consider critically Benjamin\u2019s thinking from a point of view that is already in some part shaped by his work, to assess its effect on the history, theory, and practice of architecture, and consider its relevance today.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003ESpielraum : Benjamin and Architecture\u003C\/em\u003E originated with a symposium organized in Paris in late 2007 under the title \u003Cem\u003EArchitecture and the Technological Unconscious\u003C\/em\u003E. Sponsored jointly by the College of Architecture of the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Ecole Nationale Superieure d\u2019Architecture de Paris La Villette, the conference brought together scholars from a variety of countries and disciplines to consider Benjamin\u2019s writings from a historical, philosophical, and theoretical perspective. One of the goals of the meeting was to revisit notions that have played such an important role in recent years : among them the decline of aura, mechanical reproducibility, and the esthetics of shock. At the same time, as indicated in the conference\u2019s title, the aim was to consider these issues from the standpoint of Benjamin\u2019s larger concern for the new forms of experience generated through architecture and technology \u2013 particularly the new perceptual realms opened up by the press, photography, radio, cinema, up to and including the recent revolution brought on by digital media.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThis volume presents, in a slightly different order that nevertheless respects the main sequence of themes, papers delivered at this event, including some commissioned after. The contributors make no claim to address all the questions Benjamin\u2019s work raises for scholars, practitioners, and educators in the architectural field. Their goal is rather to open up Benjamin\u2019s thinking to rigorous reflection, analysis and criticism, to highlight the centrality of architecture in his thought and to evaluate its influence on a field that has been profoundly shaped by his work. As Jean Paul Doll\u00e9 makes clear in his foreword, Benjamin\u2019s thinking is structured around a whole series of antinomies that remain, today, less than ever resolved. Central among them is the question of the ownership and control of the great power unleashed by technology, of the alienations it inflicts on the human sensorium, as well as the new possibilities it opens for expanded and more democratic forms of participation. Today, after more than half a century of accelerated change that has increased immeasurably technology\u2019s power to control human hearts and minds, the same questions \u2013 reformulated in terms appropriate to the present \u2013 are as urgent as ever. At a time when, as Hal Foster notes in his afterword, architecture\u2019s relentless integration into an increasingly global and centralized economy has resulted in the new market-driven phenomena of branding and celebrity architecture, Benjamin\u2019s reflections are one necessary starting point for any theory of architecture that aspires to a degree of social and political relevance.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ELavishly illustrated book focuses on Walter Benjamin\u0027s contribution to architectural thinking.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":"","uid":"27213","created_gmt":"2012-01-24 13:54:58","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:10:57","author":"Teri Nagel","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2012-01-24T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2012-01-24T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"85911":{"id":"85911","type":"image","title":"Spielraum : W. 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