Sarah Chaplin

Alexandra Stara

Striking a balance between theoretical investigations and case studies, this book addresses the collection, representation and exhibition of architecture and the built environment. International in scope, this collection investigates curation, architecture and the city across the world, opening up new possibilities for exploring the urban fabric.

Curating Architecture and the City

Addressing the collection, representation and exhibition of architecture and the built environment, this book explores current practices, historical precedents, theoretical issues and future possibilities arising from the meeting of a curatorial ‘subject’ and an architectural ‘object’. Striking a balance between theoretical investigations and case studies, the chapters cover a broad methodological as well as thematic range. Examining the influential role of architectural exhibitions, the contributors also look at curatorship as an emerging attitude towards the investigation and interpretation of the city. International in scope, this collection investigates curation, architecture and the city across the world, opening up new possibilities for exploring the urban fabric.

John Albert Walker

It is the only guide to the subject written specifically for undergraduates.. The authors draw upon many years of teaching experience in this field.. The coverage is systematic, and the writing accessible.

An Introduction

Visual Culture

John A. Walker

This book is about the expanding realm of visual culture: in architecture, art, design, advertising, photography, film, television, video, theatre performance, computer imagery and virtual reality. It is also about Visual Culture Studies, a relatively new academic discipline, or rather range of disciplines, that scholars employ to analyse visual artefacts. Unlike many other texts on the same subject, it foregrounds the ‘visual’ and is systematic and accessible. Visual culture provides an overview of the subject that pays heed to the achievements of both traditional and new theory whilst directing the reader to a large body of literature via references and an extensive bibliography. Walker and Chaplin discuss the concepts of ‘the visual’ and of ‘culture’ as well as the field and origins of Visual Culture Studies; coping with theory; models of production and consumption; institutions; pleasure; the canon and concepts of value; visual literacy and poetics; modes of analysis; culture and commerce; and new technologies. This book is designed for those studying the history and theory of fine arts, design and the mass media.

Eric Holding

Articles on the nature of consumerism in relation to architectural practice.

Consuming Architecture

Drawing on theories of place, consumption and identity, Sarah Chaplin details the evolution of the love hotel in urban Japan since the 1950s. Love hotels emerged in the late 1950s following a ban of licensed prostitution, then were extremely popular in the 1970s, were then legislated against in the 1980s and are now perceived as ‘leisure’, ‘fashion’ or ‘boutique’ hotels. Representing a timely opportunity to capture and evaluate the dying manifestations of an important era in Japanese social and cultural history, this book provides a critical account of the love hotel as a unique typology. It considers its spatial, aesthetic, semiotic, and locational denotations and connotations, which results in a richly nuanced cultural reading. The love hotel is presented as a key indicator of social and cultural change in post-war Japan, and as such this book will be of interest to a wide and international readership including students of Japanese culture, society and architecture.

Sarah Chaplin

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