Customer Reviews

Breathing Cities: the Architecture of Movement

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Although it's not consistently successful, this book contains many thought-provoking essays and photographic studies, all of which acknowledge the growing interest in the way cities work. It's a confusing book because it mixes ideas from artists, architects, philosophers and geographers, so the changes of pace are often hard to take. Many of the artists make work which is rather allusive and oblique, although I found nearly all of the art projects fascinating. Overall it's one of the better, and more accessible introductions to ideas which have been developed by philosophers such as Paul Virilio and Gilles Deleuze. If you want to know what they are about, read this book first.

In Breathing Cities, projects from various disciplines are presented which closely examine the nature of urban flux. The British architect, Richard Rogers, remarks on the topic that "the buildings of the future will be less immobile than the temple of the past and more like moving, thinking, organic robots." Archigram as well also remarked once that "When it rains in Oxford Street, the architecture is no more significant than the rain." The work of various architects and artists is compiled under the headings "People","Goods", "Geography", "Information" and "Ideologies". The photographers Martyn Rose und Takashi Homma and the artists Langlands & Bell und Nathan Coley use the examples of London, Berlin and Tokyo to present their approach to "breathing cities". The architectural group "Foreign Office", the architect Zaha Hadid, the architectural historian Mark Cousins and the philosopher Simon Glendinning as well as other contributors reflect on the phenomenon of architecture in movement, each from their own particular point of view. In this highly valuable book, it is not the lifeless 'nice' side of the city which is focused on but the city as a living organ with all its "processes of digestion and excretion."

Read more in a-matter.

In Breathing Cities, projects from various disciplines are presented which closely examine the nature of urban flux. The British architect, Richard Rogers, remarks on the topic that "the buildings of the future will be less immobile than the temple of the past and more like moving, thinking, organic robots." Archigram as well also remarked once that "When it rains in Oxford Street, the architecture is no more significant than the rain." The work of various architects and artists is compiled under the headings "People","Goods", "Geography", "Information" and "Ideologies". The photographers Martyn Rose und Takashi Homma and the artists Langlands & Bell und Nathan Coley use the examples of London, Berlin and Tokyo to present their approach to "breathing cities". The architectural group "Foreign Office", the architect Zaha Hadid, the architectural historian Mark Cousins and the philosopher Simon Glendinning as well as other contributors reflect on the phenomenon of architecture in movement, each from their own particular point of view. In this highly valuable book, it is not the lifeless 'nice' side of the city which is focused on but the city as a living organ with all its "processes of digestion and excretion."

Read more in a-matter.

Anyone choosing this book on the basis of the title will be disappointed, since it has nothing to do with architecture and nothing to do with transportation. Instead, this book consists of 22 collections of photographs, all of which take unorthodox approaches to photography in urban settings. We have such things as photos of the pattern of pipes on the ceilings of Paris subway stations, an artificial mountain in the Netherlands made of garbage, snapshots someone found laying in the street, fictitious typed letters between a photographer and some imaginary character, street markings that have been spray-painted by municipal workers, and so on. Despite the editor's introductory essay, I'm mystified as to why this book exists.

Anyone choosing this book on the basis of the title will be disappointed, since it has nothing to do with architecture and nothing to do with transportation. Instead, this book consists of 22 collections of photographs, all of which take unorthodox approaches to photography in urban settings. We have such things as photos of the pattern of pipes on the ceilings of Paris subway stations, an artificial mountain in the Netherlands made of garbage, snapshots someone found laying in the street, fictitious typed letters between a photographer and some imaginary character, street markings that have been spray-painted by municipal workers, and so on. Despite the editor's introductory essay, I'm mystified as to why this book exists.