Placing Words: Symbols, Space, and the City [Paperback]

William J. Mitchell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 26, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0262633221 | ISBN-13: 978-0262633222

The meaning of a message, says William Mitchell, depends on the context of its reception. "Shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater produces a dramatically different effect from barking the same word to a squad of soldiers with guns," he observes. In Placing Words, Mitchell looks at the ways in which urban spaces and places provide settings for communication and at how they conduct complex flows of information through the twenty-first century city.Cities participate in the production of meaning by providing places populated with objects for words to refer to. Inscriptions on these objects (labels, billboards, newspapers, graffiti) provide another layer of meaning. And today, the flow of digital information -- from one device to another in the urban scene -- creates a digital network that also exists in physical space. Placing Words examines this emerging system of spaces, flows, and practices in a series of short essays -- snapshots of the city in the twenty-first century.Mitchell questions the necessity of flashy downtown office towers in an age of corporate Web sites. He casts the shocked-and-awed Baghdad as a contemporary Guernica. He describes architectural makeovers throughout history, listing Le Corbusier's Fab Five Points of difference between new and old architecture, and he discusses the architecture of Manolo Blahniks. He pens an open letter to the Secretary of Defense recommending architectural features to include in torture chambers. He compares Baudelaire, the Parisian flaneur, to Spiderman, the Manhattan traceur. He describes the iPod-like galleries of the renovated MoMA and he recognizes the camera phone as the latest step in a process of image mobilization that began when artists stopped painting on walls and began making pictures on small pieces of wood, canvas, or paper. The endless flow of information, he makes clear, is not only more pervasive and efficient than ever, it is also generating new cultural complexities.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"William Mitchell is simply the most brilliant urban critic since Lewis Mumford and the most original media theorist since Marshall McLuhan. The combination is awesome: no contemporary thinker has a better grasp of the complex interactions between electronic media and the built environment." Mike Davis, author of Dead Cities and Planet of Slums

"Here is a collection of essays serious and witty that engages, within their variety and validity, the architectural and cultural issues particularly significant for today, and begins with a profoundly relevant focus on the element of iconography: of words not as literature but as signs, within the context of space, to confirm and enliven our urban setting in our Information Age." Robert Venturi

"Mitchell is onto something that most architectural writers ignore: Design permeates our daily life, and it is changing, just as quickly." Architectural Record

"Thank goodness, then, after all this architectural frottage in the agora, to find little that is frivolous and much that is inspiring in William J. Mitchell's new book, Placing Words: Symbols, Space, and the City....The book is less about architecture as a practice than about the world in which they work.... It is the job of the architect, Mitchell's essayistic flights make clear, not merely to build but also to help us assemble an understanding of how 'we make our buildings, and... our buildings make us.'" ID Magazine

"Here is a collection of essays -- serious *and* witty -- that engages, within their variety and validity, the architectural and cultural issues particularly significant for today, and begins with a profoundly relevant focus on the element of iconography: of words not as literature but as signs, within the context of space, to confirm and enliven our urban setting in our Information Age."--Robert Venturi

About the Author

Risto Miikkulainen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin.

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (August 26, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262633221
• ISBN-13: 978-0262633222
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #572,547 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Highly readable, August 27, 2008

By 

B. Lasserre (Sydney) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Placing Words: Symbols, Space, and the City (Paperback)

I enjoyed reading this book because it was very thought provoking and especially was fun to read. Not too academic, but not dumbed down either.

2 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Constantly Changing infostructure and still no "death of distance" news, March 26, 2006

By 

Dr. Mohamed Taher (Toronto) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Placing Words: Symbols, Space, and the City (Paperback)

Placing words continues the author's thesis on no such thing as death of distance. This is a good news for all space loving, teleworking, and distant cousins, in the global village.

Another good thing is, in addition to many stories and histories, this book offers a glimpse of application of data mining technique in the area of architecture and spatial design (62-64).

The weakness of the book (if this book has to be a good reading for the non-architects), is the absence of any explanation on what the title and the sub-title are supposed to be. For instance, symbols, as used in this book, relate to graphic and computer icons, rather than symbols or signs in place, space and visual domains (as in religious, secular, or others).

Further, as seen in the acknowledgements (p. 213), this book also includes auhtor's already published works, and hence it is not much of the current (the worldview as-is) and real-time (synchronous) information visualization.

0 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommended, December 24, 2005

By 

Ron Mader "Planeta.com Founder" (Mexico) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Placing Words: Symbols, Space, and the City (Paperback)

(Planeta Journal) - Subtitled "Symbols, Space and the City" this book is the work of a MIT Professor of Architecture and Media Arts and author of the superb e-topia. Among the topics this book addresses is the necessity of flashy downtown office towers in an age of corporate Web sites. Clever, funny and insightful, this book is highly recommended reading.