Pamphlet Architecture 21: Situation Normal


Book Description

In this volume, the latest addition to the award-winning Pamphlet Architecture series, the authors examine common architectural forms (chairs, doors, and walls) and programs (a cinema, a health club, a skyscraper) in order to dissect and reconfigure them. In the process they create ten new projects that draw their power from an oscillation between the recognizable and the surreal. Cleverly undermining the conventions and norms of contemporary architectural design, the authors pose a direct challenge to the seemingly endless search for new styles, arguing instead that the greatest potential for architecture in the twenty-first century rests on an imaginative examination of what we take for granted. Designed by authors, Situation Normal... weaves together text, photographs, and drawings. An introductory essay establishes the theoretical and historical position of the book.




Pamphlet Series


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Micrograms


Book Description

Deliberately anachronistic and delightfully extractable, the microgram is a metaphor itself for that which is well worth the digging.




Occupy


Book Description

Since its appearance in Zuccotti Park, New York, in September 2011, the Occupy movement has spread to hundreds of towns and cities across the world. Through talks and conversations with movement supporters, 'Occupy' presents Chomsky's latest thinking on the central issues, questions, and demands that are driving people to protest.




Media Control


Book Description

Noam Chomsky’s backpocket classic on wartime propaganda and opinion control begins by asserting two models of democracy—one in which the public actively participates, and one in which the public is manipulated and controlled. According to Chomsky, "propaganda is to democracy as the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state," and the mass media is the primary vehicle for delivering propaganda in the United States. From an examination of how Woodrow Wilson’s Creel Commission "succeeded, within six months, in turning a pacifist population into a hysterical, war-mongering population," to Bush Sr.'s war on Iraq, Chomsky examines how the mass media and public relations industries have been used as propaganda to generate public support for going to war. Chomsky further touches on how the modern public relations industry has been influenced by Walter Lippmann’s theory of "spectator democracy," in which the public is seen as a "bewildered herd" that needs to be directed, not empowered; and how the public relations industry in the United States focuses on "controlling the public mind," and not on informing it. Media Control is an invaluable primer on the secret workings of disinformation in democratic societies.




Move: Sites of Trauma


Book Description

Founded in 1978 by architect Steven Holl and bookseller William Stout in an attempt to skirt the editorial control of the reigning architectural magazine culture, Pamphlet Architecture has been disrupting the status-quo ever since. This series of small experimental volumes has introduced important ideas and spurred much-needed debate among students and practitioners alike. Pamphlet Architecture 23 carries on this tradition with a book selected in an open competition. Johanna Saleh Dickson's entry was chosen from over seventy submissions received from architects, academics, and students from across the nation and around the world. Her pamphlet investigates the events of May 13, 1985, when a bomb was dropped by police on a Philadelphia row house in order to evacuate its residents-members of the radical organization MOVE. The fire that ensued killed 11 MOVE members and destroyed an entire city block. Tainted by these traumatic events, the reconstructed house located on the site has stood unoccupied for nearly two decades. Dickson proposes an architectural treatment that might facilitate and promote healing within the affected community. A call for ideas for Pamphlet 24 has already gone out. A winner will be selected in September of this year and the next innovative project will be published in spring of 2003.







The Political Pamphlets and Letters of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and Related Pieces


Book Description

Approximately 35 letters, pamphlets, booklets, and leaflets are reprinted here. Written between 1860 and 1897, some are attributed to Dodgson, some to Lewis Carroll, and others to Phayllus, East Sheen, Sir John Lubbock, Arthur Cohen, W.C. Sidgwick, F.R.C., G.A. Simcox, Lord Salisbury, and Dynamite--but they are all the work of one man. The brief pieces discuss fair elections, proportional representation, political humor, and sports (especially lawn tennis). Mathematical and statistical issues are placed in the foreground. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.




Pamphlet Series


Book Description