Anybody - Softcover

Anyone Corporation

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262540886 ISBN 13: 9780262540889

Publisher: Mit Pr, 1997

Synopsis

The Vitruvian Man, the Golden Section, and the Modular Man were once seen as idealized, iconic representations of the relationship of the human body to architecture. But the widespread practice of psychoanalysis, the development of genetic engineering, and the raised consciousness of the female body have altered not only the traditional idea of body but also how we inhabit the body, and how we make and inhabit space. How does the new understanding of the body relate to space? How does architecture adjust to this new idea of body? When does the body become the body politic? In Anybody, these and other questions are argued by thirty essayists, including architects Peter Eisenman, Arata Isozaki, Ben van Berkel, Enrique Norten, and Alejandro Zaero-Polo, and critics Fredric Jameson, Sylviane Agacinski, Elizabeth Grosz, Beatriz Colomina, and Brian Massumi.

Anybody is the sixth book in the ongoing series that began in 1991 with Anyone and was followed by Anywhere, Anyway, Anyplace, and Anywise. Each volume is based on a conference in which architects, philosophers, historians, theoreticians, artists, and intellectuals come together to present papers and discuss a particular theme from a multicultural and multidisciplinary perspective. The conference upon which Anybody is based took place at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in June 1996. Anybody will be followed by Anyhow, Anytime, Anymore, and Anything.

About this title

About the Author

Cynthia Davidson is the editor of ANY Magazine, the director of Anyone Corporation, and a member of the editorial board of the Writing Architecture series.

Reviews

This work results from the proceedings of a conference of the same name in Buenos Aires in 1996. Following a concise introduction by the editor, 26 essays render an animated picture of the current shape of architectural theory. Davidson's (Anyplace, LJ 1/96) introduction nicely explains the theoretical context of the conference, and she touches on concepts to follow in the discussion, such as undecidability and indeterminacy. She correctly characterizes the scope of the essays as "enfolding high and low," thus providing a springboard for eliminating the polarization between purely aesthetic considerations and those related to social action. These essays are grouped into five abstractly conceived aspects of the idea of the body: the idealized body, the body politic, the virtual body, the formless body, and the architectural body. The stunning graphic design makes this volume desirable in aesthetic terms alone?freedom with type size, color, and placement on the page produces a very handsome document. Anybody may prove to be difficult reading for undergraduates, but despite the somewhat inflated prose of some of the essays, this volume should be added to any architectural theory collection.?Paul Glassman, Pratt Inst. Lib., Brooklyn
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Mit Pr
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262540886
• ISBN 13: 9780262540889
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 285
• Editor: Davidson Cynthia C.