In search of commitment.NEW COMMITMENT IN ARCHITECTURE, ART AND DESIGN Edited by NAi Publishers. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers. 2003. [euro]25 In a sense, the very appearance of this book is a sign of the futility Futility See also Despair, Frustration. American Scene, The portrays Americans as having secured necessities; now looking for amenities. [Am. Lit.: The American Scene] Babio performs the useless and supererogatory. [Fr. of its mission. The unnamed editors at NAi have commissioned a series of essays, both long and short, from people mainly active in Dutch and Belgian academia or media on the subject of architects' and artists' obligations--their 'commitment', their 'engagement'--to contemporary society. The authors mainly mourn mourn v. mourned, mourn·ing, mourns v.intr. 1. To feel or express grief or sorrow. See Synonyms at grieve. 2. the lack of such commitment, which may or may not have existed during an imagined golden age of Dutch Modernism modernism, in religion, a general movement in the late 19th and 20th cent. that tried to reconcile historical Christianity with the findings of modern science and philosophy. , dated here generally to somewhere around the mid '60s. Some are cynical, but some make a bold stab at identifying small instigators of change. But I fear they all know that their various contemporary protagonists are for the most part following current fashions, rather than changing public opinion or for that matter 'engaging' with it. If anyone believed that there were designers who significantly challenged today's social conventions, who fought with fire in their heart, then NAi would be publishing a book about them, instead. So the tone of the essays is often too general to be either interesting or informative, and not helped, in some cases, by rather a plodding translation into English. There are distinguished exceptions. The first chapter by Rene Boomkens, professor of social and cultural philosophy at Groningen, sets out the broad theme of the book effectively. Architecture critic Hans Ibelings briefly but thoughtfully questions the role and the influence of his profession. Chris Dercon bravely questions the 'customer--or consumer--is always right' attitude to museum display policy. Hilde Heynen Hilde Heynen is professor of architectural theory at the KULeuven. She is the author of Architecture and Modernity. A Critique (MIT Press, 1999) and co-editor of Dat is architectuur. Sleutelteksten uit de 20ste eeuw (010 Publishers, 2001), Back from Utopia. , following Tzonis and Lefaivre, plots the descent descent, in anthropology, method of classifying individuals in terms of their various kinship connections. Matrilineal and patrilineal descent refer to the mother's or father's sib (or other group), respectively. of visionary architecture Visionary architecture is the name given to architecture which exists only on paper or which has visionary qualities. Étienne-Louis Boullée, Claude Nicolas Ledoux and Jean-Jacques Lequeu are one of the earliest examples of the discipline. into its current status as a lifestyle subsector of a shopping culture. NAi are planning a series of these books: they may make depressing reading. Book reviews from this and recent issues of The Architectural Review The Architectural Review is a monthly international architectural magazine published in London since 1896. Articles cover the built environment which includes landscape, building design, interior design and urbanism as well as theory of these subjects. can now be seen on our website at www.arplus.com and the books can be ordered online, many at special discount. |
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