"Paul Shepheard can make any subject arresting, whether it is ski resorts, cell division, theories of settlement or masterpieces of building. This is an exhilarating book, unlike any other." -- Robert Harbison Paul Shepheard's previous book, "What is Architecture?," was about making real, material things in the world--landscapes, buildings, and machines. "The Cultivated Wilderness" is about those landscapes, and about the strategies that govern what we've done in shaping them.  In the author's words, this book is about "seeing things that are too big to see." His emphasis on strategy makes landscape fundamental--he says that every architectural move is set in a landscape. Norman England, for example, was constructed as a network of strong points, in a strategy of occupation. The eighteenth-century grid cities of the New World reflect a strategy of reason. Our current strategy is the economic exploitation of the Earth, an intricately woven blanket of commerce that covers up a multitude of other possibilities, many other ways to treat the surface of the globe--some of which are the landscapes revealed in this book.  In a series of first-person narratives, reminiscent of his last book, the author pairs six landscapes, in order of descending scale from global to local, from the seven wonders of the ancient world to the condensed destruction of World War I's Western Front. In an engaging style, Shepheard takes the reader on an odyssey through these landscapes, meeting people and seeing places. He states that now, at the end of a century in which the appropriate landscape was sought but never found, the strategy of turningthe land to profit is under review--and offers this book as his contribution to that review.

The Cultivated Wilderness: Or, What is Lanscape? (Graham Foundation / MIT Press Series in Contemporary Architectural Discourse)

Arts & Photography

Shepheard, Paul

Architecture

Mit Pr

According to Paul Shepheard, architecture is the rearranging of the world for human purposes. Sculpture, machines, and landscapes are all architecture-every bit as much as buildings are. In his writings, Shepheard examines old assumptions about architecture and replaces the critical theory of the academic with the active theory of the architect-citizen enamored of the world around him.Artificial Love weaves together three stories about architecture into one. The first, about machines as architecture, leads to speculations about technology and the human condition and to the assertion that machines are the sculptures of today. The second story is about the ways that architecture reflects the tribal and personal desires of those who make it. In the West, ideas of community, multiculturalism, and globalization compete furiously, leaving architecture to exist as it always has, as the past in the present. The third story features individual people experiencing their lives in the context of architecture. Here, Shepheard borrows the rhetorical device of Shakespeare's seven ages of man to propose that each person's life imitates the accumulating history of the human species. Shepheard's version of the history of humans is a technological one, in which machines become sculpture and sculpture becomes architecture. For Shepheard, our machines do not separate us from nature. Rather, our technology is our nature, and we cannot but be in harmony with nature. The change that we have wrought in the world, he says, is a wonderful and powerful thing.

Artificial Love: A Story of Machines and Architecture

British architect and critic Paul Shepheard is a fresh new voice in current postmodern debates about the history and meaning of architecture. In this wonderfully unorthodox quasi-novelistic essay, complete with characters and dialogue (but no plot), Shepheard draws a boundary around the subject of architecture, describing its place in art and technology, its place in history, and its place in our lives now. At a time when it is fashionable to say that architecture is everything―from philosophy to science to art to theory―Shepheard boldly and irreverently sets limits to the subject, so that we may talk about architecture for what it is. He takes strong positions, names the causes of the problems, and tells us how bad things are and how they can get better. Along the way he marshals some unlikely but plausible witnesses who testify about the current state of architecture. Instead of the usual claims or complaints by the usual suspects, these observations are of an altogether different order. Constructed as a series of fables, many of them politically incorrect, What is Architecture? is a refreshing meditation on the options, hopes, possibilities, and failures of shelter in society.

What Is Architecture? An Essay on Landscapes, Buildings, and Machines

MIT Press]

Paul Shepheard's previous book, What is Architecture?, was about making real, material things in the world―landscapes, buildings, and machines. The Cultivated Wilderness is about those landscapes, and about the strategies that govern what we've done in shaping them.In the author's words, this book is about "seeing things that are too big to see." His emphasis on strategy makes landscape fundamental―he says that every architectural move is set in a landscape. Norman England, for example, was constructed as a network of strong points, in a strategy of occupation. The eighteenth-century grid cities of the New World reflect a strategy of reason. Our current strategy is the economic exploitation of the Earth, an intricately woven blanket of commerce that covers up a multitude of other possibilities, many other ways to treat the surface of the globe―some of which are the landscapes revealed in this book.In a series of first-person narratives, reminiscent of his last book, the author pairs six landscapes, in order of descending scale from global to local, from the seven wonders of the ancient world to the condensed destruction of World War I's Western Front. In an engaging style, Shepheard takes the reader on an odyssey through these landscapes, meeting people and seeing places. He states that now, at the end of a century in which the appropriate landscape was sought but never found, the strategy of turning the land to profit is under review―and offers this book as his contribution to that review.
Important Notice: The digital edition of this book is missing some of the images found in the physical edition.

The Cultivated Wilderness: Or, What is Landscape? (Graham Foundation / MIT Press Series in Contemporary Architectural Discourse) (The Graham ... in Contemporary Architectural discOurse)

A vision of architecture that includes sculpture, machines, and technology and encapsulates the history of the human species.
According to Paul Shepheard, architecture is the rearranging of the world for human purposes. Sculpture, machines, and landscapes are all architecture-every bit as much as buildings are. In his writings, Shepheard examines old assumptions about architecture and replaces the critical theory of the academic with the active theory of the architect-citizen enamored of the world around him.
Artificial Love weaves together three stories about architecture into one. The first, about machines as architecture, leads to speculations about technology and the human condition and to the assertion that machines are the sculptures of today. The second story is about the ways that architecture reflects the tribal and personal desires of those who make it. In the West, ideas of community, multiculturalism, and globalization compete furiously, leaving architecture to exist as it always has, as the past in the present. The third story features individual people experiencing their lives in the context of architecture. Here, Shepheard borrows the rhetorical device of Shakespeare's seven ages of man to propose that each person's life imitates the accumulating history of the human species. Shepheard's version of the history of humans is a technological one, in which machines become sculpture and sculpture becomes architecture. For Shepheard, our machines do not separate us from nature. Rather, our technology is our nature, and we cannot but be in harmony with nature. The change that we have wrought in the world, he says, is a wonderful and powerful thing.

Artificial Love: A Story of Machines and Architecture (Mit Press)

Literature & Fiction

• A unique and philosophical insight into buildings: their history, their current state, and their future• Of interest to architects, or anyone else who wants to know more about humanity's habits of constructionWhy write about buildings? Buildings are chunks of natural material, refashioned by humans and set down into place to stand as silent as the rocks and trees from which they were made. How can we describe that mute actuality? A building's only complete description is itself.Writing often intensifies the cloud that obscures buildings rather than dissipates it. So why do it? Two generations ago, architects had a real job to do, rebuilding cities shattered by war. It turned out to be more difficult than it looked. Now the grandchildren of those utopians have a different role, which is to rescue a world that is being turned by the media, the money men and the machines into a replica of itself. In this book Paul Shepheard takes a sideways look at this elusive task and finds himself writing an ode to buildings, asking: What are they? When do they happen? And how are they used?

Buildings: Between Living Time and Rocky Space

Circa Press

In 1998 London-based artist Tom Hunter was awarded the John Kobal Photographic Prize for Woman Reading a Possession Order, an image of a young woman standing at a window reading an eviction notice with a baby at her side. The photograph is part of a series of work that features the community of squatters in Hackney with whom Hunter is familiar, and which he titled Persons Unknown. Directly referencing Vermeer's A Girl Reading at the Open Window through composition, color, and play of light, Hunter produced an image that, as with Vermeer's represntations of the Dutch working class, ennobles his subjects. Hunter's concern with the political issues surrounding the rights of squatters, travelers, and other outsiders is consistently reflected in his choice and treatment of his subjects. Also included here is a new series of portraits that Hunter began in 1998 while traveling around Europe. Entitled Travellers, it focuses on the domestic environments of this nomadic group. Published in conjunction with White Cube.

Tom Hunter

Bracewell, Michael

Individual Artists

Hatje Cantz Publishers

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