Architecture

With more than half of the world’s population living in cities, informal settlements, or slums, continue to expand. This book explores the informality-urban design nexus, and asks why formal urban designers and planners have remained largely reluctant to address these challenges facing our cities.

What distinguishes the formal vs. informal urban design paradigm? While urban designers are able to identify and address specific problems like walkability, gentrification, or sense of place, informal settlement problems prove inexorably complex, and harder to fathom to begin with.

Therefore, seeking to demystify these epistemological ambiguities – while difficult – makes sense. The use of abductive reasoning, regulations, aesthetics, and design epitomise the formal, while informal urban planning and design is characterized by information, assets and adaptation. In support of these thematic differentiations, this book uses case studies to better contextualize and unpack the metaphorical distinctions of the two theoretical entities.

Conceptualizing these two schools of thought this way, the book engages urban designers with these debates, and explores how informal settlement residents see themselves, act collectively, care about their settlements, and leverage opportunities.

At the intersection of heritage, design history and contemporary art, this book offers new perspectives on the way historical interiors are encountered by, and viewed and presented for, present-day audiences. Many studies have highlighted the historical significance and meanings embedded in the landscape, architecture, decoration and objects to be found within houses and homes. But what about the social meanings of these spaces?

Central to this book is the idea that in reflecting, remaking and reimagining historical interiors, the contributions of artists, designers and craftspeople should be foregrounded in constructing ideas of authenticity, transparency, and materiality in the making process. The chapters present a range of case studies that reflect upon on how historical interiors are remade and reimagined by looking in and out; at how a reassembling of spaces ought to avoid ‘a shrinking definition of the social itself’ (Latour, 2005).

Surveying a range of interior ‘types’ from a number of historical periods, the book includes contributions from practitioners, scholars and makers. From digital reconstructions of a seventeenth-century Belgian constcamer to the interior and exterior worlds of specific historical figures, including Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Beatrix Potter, the book considers how these spaces have powerful significance for contemporary audiences, particularly in ways that are relatable to shared experiences of work, leisure, family, community, power and politics.

This book will be of interest to scholars of the history of interiors and collections, museology, archaeology, architectural history, art, and design history, as well as curators and caretakers of historical sites, spaces and objects.

A compelling account of the project to transform post-war Manchester, revealing the clash between utopian vision and compromised reality.

Urban renewal in Britain was thrilling in its vision, yet partial and incomplete in its implementation. For the first time, this deep study of a renewal city reveals the complex networks of actors behind physical change and stagnation in post-war Britain.

Using the nested scales of region, city and case-study sites, the book explores the relationships between Whitehall legislation, its interpretation by local government planning officers and the on-the-ground impact through urban architectural projects. Each chapter highlights the connections between policy goals, global narratives and the design and construction of cities.

The Cold War, decolonialisation, rising consumerism and the oil crisis all feature in a richly illustrated account of architecture and planning in post-war Manchester.

In this wide-ranging study of architecture and cultural evolution, the author argues that underlying the global environmental crisis is a general resistance to changing personal and social identities shaped by a technology-based culture and its energy-hungry products. The book traces the roots of that culture to the coevolution of Homo sapiens and technology, from the first use of tools as artificial extensions of the human body, to the motorised cities spreading around the world, whose uncontrolled effects are changing the planet itself.

Advancing a new concept of the meme, called the ‘technical meme’, as the primary agent of cognitive extension and technical embodiment, the author proposes a theory of the ‘extended self’ encompassing material and spatial as well as psychological and social elements.

Drawing upon research from philosophy, psychology and the neurosciences, the book presents a new approach to environmental and cultural studies that will appeal to a broad readership searching for insights into the crisis.

This book charts the building of 1 Angel Square, the remarkable new head office for The Co-operative Group in Manchester’s new NOMA district.

Combining text and photographs to illustrate the building from commissioning to completion, Len Grant has interviewed the whole project team – clients, architects, engineers, project managers and builders – and has had unreserved access to document the creation of this already award-winning structure. The design of 1 Angel Square by the architects 3DReid, is currently the UK’s highest BREEAM (Building Research Establishment’s Environmental Assessment Method) rated office building to date, and it is set to be one of the most sustainable buildings in Europe.

1 Angel Square, the book, is an intimate record of this fascinating building. Some of the impressive facts include: 3,157 internal and external window panels make up the façade; there are 10,500 data and power outlets; it sits on 539 foundation piles, with an average depth of 18 metres below ground; and there are approximately 22km of power cables.

This book will be required reading for students of architecture and construction, sustainability studies and urban planning, and for those with an interest in the history of one of the world’s great businesses.