The Dead City: Urban Ruins and the Spectacle of Decay (International Library of Visual Culture)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.52 (638 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B01N5UO88B |
| Format Type | : | |
| Number of Pages | : | 569 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-10-27 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
They can equally imply that power structures thought to be deeply ingrained are temporary, contingent and even fragile. Cities are imagined not just as utopias, but also as ruins. It reveals that ruination presents a complex opportunity to envision new futures for a city, whether that is by rewriting its past or throwing off old assumptions and proposing radical change. In literature, film, art and popular culture, urban landscapes have been submerged by floods, razed by alien invaders, abandoned by fearful inhabitants and consumed in fire. Seen in a certain light, for example, urban ruin and decay are a challenge to capitalist narrativ
The book binds together stunning images and carefully crafted prose in an elegy to ruin aesthetics, moving adroitly between critical commentary to personal experience and propelling the reader into unexpected introspection.' Bradley L. `The Dead City is an elegantly argued and lacerating insight into our contemporary collective "ruin lust". Garrett, University of Sydney
. His research focuses on visual culture and the built environment from the 19th century onwards, and he is co-editor of Global Undergrounds: Exploring Cities Within (2016) and Function & Fantasy: Iron Architecture in the Long Nineteenth Century (2016), as well as author of Iron, Ornament and Architecture in Victorian Britain (2014) and London's Sewers (2014). Paul Dobraszczyk is a visiting lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London