Architecture or Revolution: Emancipatory Critique After Marx

Arts & Photography

Lahiji, Nadir

Architecture

Routledge

By linking building theory to the emancipatory project of critique advanced by radical thinkers in our time, this work investigates the key conceptual and historical elements that culminate in an emancipatory theory of buildingentitled: 'Toward A Philosophy of Shelter'. Taking Marx as its only resource, this work proceeds with the conviction that our era is contemporaneous to Marx's historical era. This means 'not judging the validity of Marx from the perspective of the historical situation', but rather, 'demonstrating the validity of a Marxian perspective for a singular historical situation', as ours. This work will therefore translate this perspective into seeing the situation of architecture through the eyes of Marx. All those concerned with the predicament in our current condition in which architecture must play a major social role in upholding the universal value of what Alain Badiou calls 'generic humanity' will take an interest in this work. In particular, architects, critics, scholars and students inside the field of architecture who would be seeking the application of this universal value to a new theory of building will be a welcoming audience for this work. &#12288;

Architecture, Philosophy, and the Pedagogy of Cinema: From Benjamin to Badiou

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

Philosophers on the art of cinema mainly remain silent about architecture. Discussing cinema as ‘mass art’, they tend to forget that architecture, before cinema, was the only existing ‘mass art’. In this work author Nadir Lahiji proposes that the philosophical understanding of the collective human sensorium in the apparatus of perception must once again find its true training ground in architecture. 
Building art puts the collective mass in the position of an ‘expert critic’ who identifies themselves with the technical apparatus of architecture. Only then can architecture regain its status as ‘mass art’ and, as the book contends, only then can it resume its function as the only ‘artform’ that is designed for the political pedagogy of masses, which originally belonged to it in the period of modernity before the invention of cinema.

Architecture in the Age of Pornography: Reading Alain Badiou

<ul> <li>The 7th book from Nadir Lahiji for the Routledge architecture list. Adopts Alain Badiou's thesis from</li> <li>The Pornographic Age to argue that the dominant pedagogy within architecture is at odds with the intended purpose of architectural practice and education.</li> <li>Aimed at architecture students at higher graduate and post-graduate levels.</li> </ul>

Architecture, and its pedagogy in the academy, is dominated by the technology of image production that veils the ‘naked power’ behind its operation. It conforms to the principles of cultural logic of the society of the spectacle, consistent with neoliberal capitalism. The problem with this dominant pedagogy is that it violates the fundamental ethical imperative, putting architecture in direct contradiction with the ‘common good’. In addition, it has let architecture enter the brothel of pornographic capitalism which turns every object into an object of obscene gratification of the senses. 
In this book, Nadir Lahiji adopts Alain Badiou’s thesis from The Pornographic Age to demonstrate that contemporary architecture is in absolute complicity with the pornographic present. The traits that Badiou identifies in this age are manifestly visible in architectural surfaces which are subordinated to the same ‘regime of images’. Similarly to Badiou’s political indictments of the society which has given rise to the pornographic present, the book condemns the architecture that has lent its service to the same society with a license to consummate its transgression to better cater to the imperative of the ‘regime of images’. 
Transposing the conceptual categories in Badiou’s analysis to the critique of architecture’s pornographic turn in contemporary society, the book constructs a conceptual framework by which to demonstrate the specific manifestations of pornography in building. The book is aimed at architecture students at higher graduate and post-graduate levels.

Kōjin Karatani’s Philosophy of Architecture

<ul> <li>The first book to uncover K&#333;jin Karatani's highly significant ideas on architecture for an architectural audience.</li> <li>Explores Karatani's Architecture as Metaphor where he introduces a different definition of philosophy.</li> <li>The eighth book from Nadir Lahiji to be published by Routledge.</li> </ul>

Reference

Kōjin Karatani's Philosophy Of Architecture

Abingdon, Oxon ; Routledge

The Architecture of Phantasmagoria: Specters of the City (Routledge Research in Planning and Urban Design)

In a time of mass-mediated modernity, the city becomes, almost by definition, a constitutively ‘mediated’ city. Today, more than ever before, the omnipresence of media in every sphere of culture is creating a new urban ontology, saturating, fracturing, and exacerbating the manifold experience of city life. The authors describe this condition as one of 'hyper-mediation' – a qualitatively new phase in the city’s historical evolution. The concept of phantasmagoria has pride of place in their study; using it as an all-embracing explanatory framework, they explore its meanings as a critical category to understand the culture, and the architecture, of the contemporary city. Andreotti and Lahiji argue that any account of architecture that does not include understanding the role and function of media and its impact on the city in the present ‘tele-technological-capitalist’ society is fundamentally flawed and incomplete. Their approach moves from Walter Benjamin, through the concepts of phantasmagoria and of media – as theorized also by Theodor Adorno, Siegfried Kracauer, and a new generation of contemporary critics – towards a new socio-critical and aesthetic analysis of the mediated space of the contemporary city.

The Architecture of Phantasmagoria (Routledge Research in Planning and Urban Design)

Politics & Social Sciences

Andreotti, Libero

Philosophy

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lahiji, Nadir. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Lahiji, Nadir

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lahiji, Nadir. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Architecture or Revolution: Emancipatory Critique After Marx

Architecture or Revolution: Emancipatory Critique After Marx

Architecture, Philosophy, and the Pedagogy of Cinema: From Benjamin to Badiou

Architecture, Philosophy, and the Pedagogy of Cinema: From Benjamin to Badiou

Architecture in the Age of Pornography: Reading Alain Badiou

Architecture in the Age of Pornography: Reading Alain Badiou

Kōjin Karatani’s Philosophy of Architecture

Kōjin Karatani’s Philosophy of Architecture

Kōjin Karatani's Philosophy Of Architecture

The Architecture of Phantasmagoria (Routledge Research in Planning and Urban Design)