- 272 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
Collapsing concrete colossuses, run-down overgrown skeletons, immutable architectural misfits: the outcasts from our built environment, which we are dying to dispose of — and yet cannot do without — have inspired many ghost stories, crime novels and urban legends. Such narratives reveal the significance of architectural eyesores for the people who live or work in or near them. After exploring various approaches to building lives and deaths, the author presents a rich variety of undesired edifices in Germany, Hungary, Austria and Bosnia-Herzegovina and investigates the different methods used to dispose of them: eliminating, damaging, transforming or 'reframing' them, abandoning them to progressive dilapidation or virtually rejecting them. Discarding an edifice, however, need not bring its social life to an end. This analysis continues with a reflection on the afterlife of unwanted buildings, and concludes with a discussion on the life expectancy of buildings, their multi-sensory materiality and 'thingly' agency.
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Information
Table of contents
- Title page-Indispensable Eyesores
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Foreword
- Chapter 1-Dragons, Tunnels, Gold and Russians
- Chapter 2-Between Pragmatic Clearance and Pure Iconoclasm
- Chpater 3-13 May 2001, 8.01 A.M. - 1 Building, 20,000 People and 450 Kilograms of Explosives
- Chapter 4-Witnessing Urbicide
- Chapter 5-From Nuclear Waste to a Temple of Consumerism
- Chapter 6-Consuming the 'Platte' in East Berlin
- Chapter 7-If Not Clearing, Then At Least Thinking Them Away
- Chapter 8-'L' like 'Left to Its Own Devices'
- Chapter 9-Exorcizing Remains
- Chapter 10-In Fond Memory of a Rejected Edifice
- Chapter 11-Eyesores Are Indispensable
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Biliography
- Index