The book offers an in-depth exploration of Hong Kong's extensive public housing program, initiated in the 1950s, highlighting its significance in the global context of modern architecture and urban development. It chronicles the evolution of housing policies and their impact on society, showcasing how these initiatives shaped the city's landscape and addressed the needs of its population. Through detailed analysis, it reveals the complexities and challenges faced by the government in providing affordable housing solutions.
Providing a global approach to the history of Modernist mass-housing production, this authoritative study combines architectural history with the broader social, political, cultural aspects of mass housing - particularly the 'mass' politics of power and state-building throughout the 20th century
As the debate about Scottish independence rages on, this book takes a timely look at how Scotland's politics have been expressed in its buildings, exploring how the architecture of Scotland - in particular the constantly-changing ideal of the 'castle' - has been of great consequence to the ongoing narrative of Scottish national identity. Scotch Baronial provides a politically-framed examination of Scotland's kaleidoscopic 'castle architecture', tracing how it was used to serve successive political agendas both prior to and during the three 'unionist centuries' from the early 17th century to the 20th century. The book encompasses many of the country's most important historic buildings - from the palaces left behind by the 'lost' monarchy, to revivalist castles and the proud town halls of the Victorian age - examining their architectural styles and tracing their wildly fluctuating political and national connotations. It ends by bringing the story into the 21st century, exploring how contemporary 'neo-modernist' architecture in today's Scotland, as exemplified in the Holyrood parliament, relates to concepts of national identity in architecture over the previous centuries.
The book presents a comprehensive history of architectural conservation, detailing its evolution into a dynamic ideology over the past two centuries in Europe and America. It explores the movement's roots in ancient reverence for structures, its alignment with Enlightenment modernity, and the fluctuating ideas and popularity surrounding conservation efforts. The author, Miles Glendinning, critically examines the current global prominence of this movement and raises questions about its sustainability for the future.
Shortlisted for the 2014 SAHGB Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion. Certainly, ancient structures have long been treated with care and reverence in many societies, including classical Rome and Greece. But only in modern Europe and America, in the last two centuries, has this care been elaborated and energised into a forceful, dynamic ideology: a 'Conservation Movement', infused with a sense of historical destiny and loss, that paradoxically shared many of the characteristics of Enlightenment modernity. Miles Glendinning's new book authoritatively presents, for the first time, the entire history of architectural conservation, and traces its dramatic fluctuations in ideas and popularity, ending by questioning whether its recent international ascendancy can last indefinitely.
Architecture's Evil Empire? is a passionate, polemical critique of the state
of contemporary global architecture, in which Miles Glendinning examines
today's cult of architectural individualism and the fashion for 'iconic'
buildings.
This is a concise, up-to-date survey that provides for the visitor or resident
an overview of Scotland's finest buildings and its long line of architectural
geniuses.
