Customer Reviews

Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture

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As the title indicates, Vidler's recent publication guides us to see the underlying forces that caused warping and irregularity in contemporary architecture. Beginning with defining various conceptions of 'phobias', Vidler navigates us into the realm of abnormal psychology. Critical theorists, such as Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin, are also introduced to interweave the ideas of 'estrangement' and 'flaneur(metropolitan nomad wandering unconsciously)'. In so doing, he allows readers to understand underlying mindset behind the buildings of Libeskind, Himmelblau, and Eric Owen Moss.

This is among the books that has given me a wholistic view of the design field- combining aspects of culture and society at the subliminal framework of understanding. It is a good read and very objective in its approach. I personally enjoy criticism and have read books by Victor Margolin and this one analyses the merits and demerits of a field that draws influences and in turn influences a wider spectrum of issues. It is interesting to perceive the manner in which the book uses a synchronic approach to arrive at a very comprehensive analysis of the current day status. For a young designer this book gives a lot of thought to treating design as a part of a larger framework. It forces one to think on larger issues that can be solved through design.

If one examines modernism, one is faced with a choice: either reject dialectic discourse or conclude that context comes from the masses, but only if consciousness is interchangeable with culture; if that is not the case, we can assume that the goal of the writer is deconstruction. In a sense, the premise of Sartreist absurdity suggests that society, somewhat paradoxically, has objective value. The example of dialectic discourse which is a central theme of Vidler's Warped Spaces ir Dogs is also evident in Hanfkopf's Narratives of Stasis, although in a more semanticist sense.