ABSTRACT

This book proposes that architecture can function as a true embodiment of generosity and examines how generosity in architecture operates within, and questions, current and historical socio-economic and political systems. As such, it interrogates ways in which architecture aspires for something more, whether within economic austerities or within historic contexts of a discipline that has often been preoccupied with cost and quantitative measurement.

The texts presented in this book critically examine the theme of generosity and architecture from a variety of perspectives, addressing the theoretical, the historical, and the everyday processes of architectural practice, procurement, and policy in a global context. The book is a richly collaborative text which explores how architecture – in its processes of ordering and shaping space – can represent and embody generosity in all its multi-faceted potential.

part 1|84 pages

Humanity and delight

chapter 1|6 pages

WaterLines: RiverBank

Change and the necessity of generosity

chapter 2|17 pages

Generosity as excess

Medievalism and fantasy in London's Victorian sewer works

chapter 3|11 pages

‘Think first of the walls': Surfaces of generosity

William Morris, Philip Webb, and the Arts and Crafts domestic interior

chapter 4|9 pages

Of being an actor or an audience

Generosity in the pattern of staircase as a stage

chapter 5|9 pages

Immanent gifts

chapter 6|9 pages

Vessels and landscapes

Emotion and social function

chapter 8|8 pages

‘Rewild My Street'

A model for community-led urban rewilding

part 2|80 pages

Abundance of spirit

chapter 11|13 pages

Conditional generosity

Architecture for the subvert, Gerlev Parkour Park

chapter 12|10 pages

Generosity through co-design

Collaborating with the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate

chapter 14|12 pages

Illegal architecture?

Unravelling the ethics of insurgent practice through the work of Santiago Cirugeda in Spain

chapter 16|7 pages

Camden Active Spaces

part 3|98 pages

Policies of participation

chapter 17|6 pages

Surplus land

chapter 19|11 pages

Asking much of all involved

A Community Asset Transfer in Grangetown, Cardiff

chapter 20|15 pages

Meanwhile use as generosity?

chapter 24|11 pages

Beyond Lending

A case study