ABSTRACT
This book looks at specific instances in the Renaissance, Enlightenment and our own time when architectural ideas and ideas of biological life come into close proximity with each other. These convergences are fascinating and complex, offering new insights into architecture and its role. Establishing architecture as a product of the ascendancy of the position of human life, the author shows here that while architecture is dependent on life forces for its existence, at the same time it must be, at some level, indifferent to the life within it. Life, for its part, privileges itself above all else, and seeks to continuously expand its field of expression. This, then, is the asymmetrical condition, and to understand it is to gain important new theoretical perspectives into the nature of architecture.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |29 pages
INTRODUCTION
part I|48 pages
LIFE (BEFORE)
chapter 1|20 pages
PARTITIONING THE ORTHOPEDIC WHOLE
chapter 2|12 pages
INSIDE AND OUTSIDE
chapter 3|13 pages
LIFE (BEFORE)
part II|62 pages
LIFE (AFTER): POST-ANIMAL LIFE
chapter 4|10 pages
POST-ANIMAL LIFE
chapter 5|22 pages
AFTER
chapter 6|18 pages
WAYS OF LIFE
chapter 7|9 pages
HYENA: TOTEM ANIMAL OF THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY
part III|86 pages
THE DIVIDE
chapter 8|24 pages
BIRDS (FROM ABOVE)
chapter 9|20 pages
BIRDS (FROM BELOW)
chapter 10|16 pages
SPACE: THE ANIMAL-FIELD
chapter 11|12 pages
PRAYING MANTIS: TOTEM ANIMAL OF THE THIRTIES
chapter 12|11 pages
MIMICRY
part IV|32 pages
MILIEU
chapter 13|12 pages
VERTICAL, STANDING UPRIGHT
chapter 14|12 pages
FRAMING
chapter 15|5 pages
LASCAUX: TOTEM MILIEU OF THE SIXTIES
part V|40 pages
ANIMAL URBANISM
chapter 16|26 pages
STOCK EXCHANGE: STANDING UPRIGHT, IDLE
chapter 17|11 pages
THE CITY: HORIZONTAL, UPRIGHT, WORKING
part VI|37 pages
PROCESSING