Informal Architecture: Space and Contemporary Culture

Informal Architectures: Space and Contemporary Culture is a compilation of new and classic writing and visual art on spacial culture in modernity post 9/11. Contributors include established figures in the fields of cultural studies, art theory, urbanism and design. Informal Architectures creates an alternative perspective on the built environment through contemporary culture by focusing on the works and writing of international artists such as Dan Graham, Marjetica Potrc, and Gordon Matta-Clark. Particular attention is paid to spaces that are in some way temporary, contingent, marginal, or fictional in order to critically analyse the meaning of art, and to provide a tenable counter-narrative to architecture's dominant ideologies concerning the monumental and technological imperatives. Diverse perspectives are mobilised in order to question paradigms of modernity and postmodernity, such as progress, irony and rationalism. Informal Architectures: Space and Contemporary Culture examines theories or and relations to space from descriptive, analytic and creative perspectives in a number of disciplines. It puts forward alternative strategies and criteria for the creation, representation and interpretation of space and its cultural implications. Informal Architectures features essays, artworks and images, with a particular interest in decay, monument, ruin, weakness, permanence, waste and consumption.