thresholds, 41: Revolution! (2013)

“What actions are prompted by revolution in the space of the city? Which publics take part in this struggle, and who are the agents that mobilize it? And after a revolution has subsided, how is it remembered, represented and memorialized? thresholds 41: REVOLUTION! turns to the history, design, and cultural production of the public realm as a site of dissensus. Rather than focusing on a specific revolutionary time and place, we have strived to include different periods and regions, organizing contributions in terms of the relations they establish between sites, actors, and contexts. In the essays and designs featured in these pages, political struggle often shifts established roles—agitators create new types of public space, designers become activists and fundraisers, individual figures fade in favor of collectives or groups, and actions are best remembered through misrepresentation. How do we write revolution, who writes it and for whom? And, in turn, how does urban conflict inform writing, design, and cultural production at large? Our authors, designers, and artists open up revolution as subject, as event, and as historiographical problem—a problem complicated by discrete actions, multiple publics, critical practices, and the politics of display and remembrance.”

Contributors: David Gissen, Robin Adèle Greeley, Britt Eversole, Arindam Dutta, Diane E. Davis and Prassana Raman, Mark Jarzombek, Thérèse F. Tierney, Kenneth Ip, Nasser Rabbat, Reinhold Martin, Tunney Lee and Lawrence Vale, Andrés Jaque Architects + Office for Political Innovation, Santiago Cirugeda + Recetas Urbanas, Nomeda Urbonas and Gediminas Urbonas, The Yes Men, Ateya Khorakiwala, Simone Brott, Andrés Estefane, Kelly Presutti, Mechtild Widrich, Montenegro Airways

Edited by Ana María León
Publisher SA+P Press / MIT Department of Architecture, Cambridge, MA, Spring 2013
Open Access
ISSN 1091-711X
ISBN 9780983508267
212 pages

Journal website

PDF (13 MB)

Sergei Eisenstein: Nonindifferent Nature (1987)

“This is the first publication in English of Eisenstein‘s major theoretical work from the last decade of his life. Almost completed but unrevised at the time of his death in 1948, it comprises three articles from 1939-41 rewritten for the book, together with a substantial text from the period 1945-47. More than a treatise of film theory (though its immediate impetus is clearly the films that Eisenstein worked on at this time, Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible Parts I and II), Nonindifferent Nature aspires to the status of a contribution to general aesthetics, and its numerous examples are drawn more from the other arts than from cinema. Indeed, apart from analysing, in retrospect, his own work, Eisenstein scarcely touches on film at all. Instead he deals with the novel (Zola, Tolstoy, Wilkie Collins), painting (El Greco, Chinese landscapes), architecture (Chartres Cathedral, Mayan temples), etching (Piranesi), opera (Wagner), poetry (Pushkin), acting (Frederick Lemaitre), music (Bach, jazz), even cartooning (Saul Steinberg).” (from a review by Russell Campbell)

Translated by Herbert Marshall
Publisher Cambridge University Press, 1987
ISBN 0521324157, 9780521324151
xxv+428 pages
via jchill, land

Reviews: Ronald R. Levaco (Los Angeles Times, 1987), Russell Campbell (New Zealand Slavonic Journal, 1991).

WorldCat

PDF (Introduction missing, 7 MB, no OCR)

Aldo Rossi: The Architecture of the City (1966–) [IT, DE, EN, BR-PT, CR]

“Aldo Rossi, a practicing architect and leader of the Italian architectural movement La Tendenza, is also one of the most influential theorists of the second half of the 20th century. The Architecture of the City is his major work of architectural and urban theory. In part a protest against functionalism and the Modern Movement, in part an attempt to restore the craft of architecture to its position as the only valid object of architectural study, and in part an analysis of the rules and forms of the city’s construction, the book has become immensely popular among architects and design students.”

First published as L’architettura della città, Padova: Marsilio, 1966.

English edition
Introduction by Peter Eisenman
Translation by Diane Ghirardo and Joan Ockman
Revised for the American Edition by Aldo Rossi and Peter Eisenman
Publisher Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Chicago; Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, New York; and MIT Press, 1982
Oppositions Books series
208 pages

Reviews and commentaries: Adolf Max Vogt & Radka Donnell (Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 1983), Mary Louise Lobsinger (Journal of Architectural Education, 2006), Farida Nilufar (Protibesh, 2004).

Publisher (EN)
WorldCat (EN)

L’architettura della città (Italian, 1966/2006, 137 of 235 pages, 3 MB, via)
Die Architektur der Stadt (German, trans. Arianna Giachi, 1973/1998, 6 MB, added 2015-7-18)
The Architecture of the City (English, trans. Diane Ghirardo and Joan Ockman, 1982, pages 20-27 & 164ff missing, 49 MB; OCR version added 2015-7-5 via Marcell Mars, 46 MB)
A arquitetura da cidade (Brazilian Portuguese, trans. Eduardo Brandão, 1995/2001, 83 MB, added 2015-6-30)
Arhitektura grada (Croatian, trans. Sanja Bingula, 1999, 5 MB, via Sara Renar, updated 2015-6-30; OCR version added 2015-7-5 via Marcell Mars, 20 MB)

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