Kester Rattenbury

Thomas Hardy's architectural career is not considered a success. Seen usually as a mere prelude to his literary output, it is most often summed up by reference to the 'shockingly' suburban home he built himself at Max Gate. But in this new work, Professor Kester Rattenbury argues the opposite: that far from being incidental, Hardy's architectural thinking is integral to a full understanding of his life's work. This is the first time Hardy's life and legacy have been studied by a fellow architectural writer and critic. Reconstructed from the wealth of little-known drawings, photographs, experimental illustrations and modest built work he produced or oversaw, and an architecturally-biased re-reading of his novels, this book sets out a startling new vision of Thomas Hardy's work, and how it has shaped England in fact and fiction. The Wessex Project exposes the architectural thinking and invention underlying Hardy's novels. It shows how his famous imaginary realm Wessex can be seen as a forerunner of the experimental architectural projects of our own times - in which architects weave together design, description, polemic, and images of both real and imagined spaces, to form highly developed and challenging unbuilt projects, published in books designed to change the way we see the world. The book makes a compelling case for listing Hardy among the greatest of all conceptual architects, as well as recognising him as one of the most influential and active conservationists and architectural critics of all time. This radical new perspective gives Hardy's many readers a chance, at last, to see Wessex as the author himself constructed it: through architectural eyes.

Thomas Hardy, Architect

The Wessex Project

Kieran Long

Robert Bevan

This volume offers both an introduction to and an insight into key contemporary architects as well as giving a snapshot of the varied nature of architecture today. For each architect there are details of their life and work and illustrations of their most representative and iconic buildings.

Architects Today

Samantha Hardingham

Richard George Rogers

The Supercnt series revisits some of the most influential architectural projects of the recent past and examines their impact on the way we think and design today. Based on live studio debates between protagonists and critics, the books describe, explore and criticise these major projects. Supported by an extensive illustrated section describing the project itself and a wider selection of pictures describing the wider context of the debate, these books are aimed at both a new and an expert audience. While introducing the projects themselves to newcomers, with original descriptions and adding generous lootnotes and sources to a full transcript of the debate, they are also an important contribution to the ongoing discussion which surrounds these seminal projects. Supercrit #3: The Pompidou Centre explores Piano + Rogers' phenomenal project for a new type of major cultural building in Paris. You can hear Richard Rogers' description of the proiecl. see the images and

The Pompidou Centre

Richard Rogers

Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown revisit their 'infamous' book which overturned the barriers separating high architecture from the commercial architecture of the Strip. You can get involved, hear the couple's project description, see the drawings and join in the crit.

Learning from Las Vegas

Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

This is Not Architecture assembles architectural writers of different kinds - historians, theorists, journalists, computer game designers, technologists, film-makers and architects - to discuss the characteristics, cultures, limitations and bias of the different kinds of media, and to build up an argument as to how this complex culture of representations is constructed.

Kester Rattenbury

Books

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