The Age of Spectacle: Adventures in Architecture and the 21st-Century City - Softcover

Dyckhoff, Tom

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099538237 ISBN 13: 9780099538233

Publisher: Windmill Books, 2018

Synopsis

In Dubai, a luxury apartment block is built in the shape of a giant iPod. In China, President Xi Jinping denounces the trend of constructing "bizarre" new buildings in wacky shapes and colors. In Cincinnati, celebrity architect Zaha Hadid is paid millions to design a single "iconic’ structure"—with the hope of single-handedly transforming the region’s ailing fortunes. These incidents are all part of the same story: the rise of the age of spectacle. Over the last 50 years, there has been a revolution in how our cities operate. Here, Tom Dyckhoff tells the story of how architecture became obsessed with the flashy, the monumental and the ostentatious—and how we all have to live with the consequences. Exploring cityscapes from New York to Beijing, Dyckhoff shows that we are living through a fundamental transformation in how our urban spaces work. The corporate explosion of the last few decades has fundamentally shifted the relationship between architects, politicians and cities’ inhabitants, fostering innovation, but also facilitating vanity projects and commercial power-grabs. Timely, passionate and bursting with new ideas, The Age of Spectacle is both an examination of how 21st century cities work, and a manifesto for a radically new kind of urbanism. 

About this title

About the Author

Tom Dyckhoff is the host of The Great Interior Design Challenge. He was previously architecture and design critic for BBC2’s The Culture Show and architecture critic of The Times. His seven-part BBC2 series, Saving Britain’s Past, examined Britain's obsession with heritage. An Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute for British Architects, Dyckhoff has written for Guardian, GQ, Wallpaper, and the New Statesman. 

Edition details

• Publisher: Windmill Books
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0099538237
• ISBN 13: 9780099538233
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320