Happy World Architecture Day!
As described by the International Union of Architects, “World Architecture Day (WAD), created by the International Union of Architects (UIA) in 1985, is celebrated annually on the first Monday of October. This day coincides with the United Nations World Habitat Day, aligning the architectural community’s efforts with global urban development goals.”. This year’s theme is ‘Empowering the next generation to participate in urban design’. Read more from their page here.
In the spirit of this day, we have compiled some of our Architecture titles below, spanning across subjects, with free to read introductions.
You may also be interested in our series Space and Place:
Bodily, geographic, and architectural sites are embedded with cultural knowledge and social value. This series provides ethnographically rich analyses of the cultural organization and meanings of these sites of space, architecture, landscape, and places of the body. Contributions examine the symbolic meanings of space and place, the cultural and historical processes involved in their construction and contestation, and how they communicate with wider political, religious, social, and economic institutions.
The Yenidze Cigarette Factory, Dresden
David Nielsen
The Yenidze Cigarette Factory of 1909 was constructed as an industrial, architectural object that advertised Dresden as a center for the tobacco trade. Born from a unique client-architect relationship between Hugo Zietz and Martin Hammitzsch, the factory’s importance to modernism has been understated. Smoke and Mirrors uncovers the history of the factory’s planning, design, and construction, and for the first time, apart from the building’s historical narrative, positions this addition to Dresden’s skyline within the formative histories of the modern movement.
Volume 22, Space and Place
Read freely available introduction.
From Sites of Pilgrimage to Cultural Hubs
Edited by Ulrike Spring, Johan Schimanski and Thea Aarbakke
“This is a fine and rich collection of essays on the topic of the literary museum, notably on the writer’s house museum. It offers engaging perspectives and new horizons that in the international scholarship on this topic will be highly appreciated.” • Harald Hendrix, University of Utrecht
Volume 13, Museums and Collections
Read freely available introduction.
Anthropological Perspectives on Changing Practices of Dwelling and Building
Edited by Jonathan Alderman and Rosalie Stolz
“An interesting and worthwhile collection, covering a wide range of different themes relating to change and transformation related to the house.” • Monica Janowski, University of London
Read freely available introduction.
Architecture, Material Culture and the Workhouse under the New Poor Law
Charlotte Newman and Katherine Fennelly
“This is an excellent and fascinating examination of how archaeology can inform the study of poverty in nineteenth century England. The work takes as its focus the exploration of workhouses and how the analysis of the built material culture can aid our understanding of them. It exemplifies the value of using detailed case studies to interrogate and critique national models and understandings of social experience. To tell, what Hicks and Beaudry have called, ‘stories that matter’.” • Matthew Jenkins, University of York
Read freely available introduction.
Rethinking Refugee Shelter
Edited by Tom Scott-Smith and Mark E. Breeze
“While there has been an exponential growth in the literature on refugees and forced migration over the past decade, the issue of shelter has received very little attention. This volume fills that important gap in an admirable manner.” • Jeff Crisp, University of Oxford
Volume 39, Forced Migration
Read freely available introduction.
Translations and Transmutations
Edited by A.-Chr Engels-Schwarzpaul, Lana Lopesi, and Albert L. Refiti
“The authors make an important contribution to understanding spatial relationships within indigenous communities. The book highlights an important, and often overlooked, connection between space, time, and the built environment by breaking the disciplinary bounds that often confine our understandings.” • Jamon Alex Halvaksz, University of Texas at San Antonio
Volume 10, Pacific Perspectives: Studies of the European Society for Oceanists
Read freely available introduction.
Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative
Nordic Maritime Museums’ Portrayals of Shipping, Seafarers and Maritime Communities
Annika Bünz
A characteristic trait of the maritime museums is that they are often located in a contemporary and/or historical environment from which the collections and narratives originate. The museum can thereby be directly linked to the site and its history. It is therefore vital to investigate the maritime museums in terms of relationships between landscape, architecture, museum and collections. This volume unravels the kinds of worlds and realities the Nordic maritime museums stage, which identities and national myths they depict, and how they make use of both the surrounding maritime environments and the architectural properties of the museum buildings.
Volume 15, Museums and Collections
Read freely available introduction.
Forging Architectural Tradition
National Narratives, Monument Preservation and Architectural Work in the Nineteenth Century
Edited by Dragan Damjanović and Aleksander Łupienko
“The book Forging Architectural Tradition is an excellent contribution for anyone interested in the creation of national narratives around architectural buildings. It is suitable for architects, art historians, historians, sociologists, cultural researchers, and the general cultural public, as well as anyone interested in the national narratives of ‘small’ nations. The topics explored in the book should not be viewed as a part of the distant past but as still current as the historical processes described in the book can help us deal with problems related to the politicization of heritage that is still evident today.” • Prostor
Volume 4, Explorations in Heritage Studies
Read freely available introduction.
Poetry, Architecture, and Coloniality at the Open City
Maxwell Woods
“At the heart of the project are the politics of avant-gardism and of the brutally repressive dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. Though not an easy read, this is certainly a volume that specialists in visionary experiments of the 20th century will want to take into account…Recommended.” • Choice
Volume 19, Space and Place
Read freely available introduction.
The Construction of Capitals and the Politics of Space
Edited by Michael Minkenberg
“…a volume which, through its innovative approach, provides numerous valuable insights.” · Contemporary European Studies
Volume 12, Space and Place