Dolores Hayden: The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods, and Cities (1981)

“Long before Betty Friedan wrote about ‘the problem that had no name’ in The Feminine Mystique, a group of American feminists whose leaders included Melusina Fay Peirce, Mary Livermore, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman campaigned against women’s isolation in the home and confinement to domestic life as the basic cause of their unequal position in society.

The Grand Domestic Revolution reveals the innovative plans and visionary strategies of these persistent women, who developed the theory and practice of what Hayden calls ‘material feminism’ in pursuit of economic independence and social equality. The material feminists’ ambitious goals of socialized housework and child care meant revolutionizing the American home and creating community services. They raised fundamental questions about the relationship of men, women, and children in industrial society.

In reevaluating these early feminist plans for the environmental and economic transformation of American society and in recording the vigorous and many-sided arguments that evolved around the issues they raised, Hayden brings to light basic economic and spacial contradictions which outdated forms of housing and inadequate community services still create for American women and for their families.”

Publisher MIT Press, 1981
ISBN 0262081083, 9780262081085
367 pages
via Dubravka

Reviews: Paul Goldberger (New York Times, 1981), Eugenie L. Birch (J Society of Architectural Historians, 1982), Ellen Carol DuBois (Signs, 1982), Nancy F. Cott (NY Review of Books, 1983), André Levesque (Urban History Review, 1983), Daniel Garr (American Historical Review, 1983), Deborah Altus (Behavior and Social Issues, 1995).

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Kisho Kurokawa: Metabolism in Architecture (1977)

A collection of essays on the emergence and continued theorization regarding the architectural movement known as Metabolism.

“This book is a collection of my most important works-in architecture and theoretical writing -from the period 1960 to 1975. I have chosen the title Metabolism in Architecture despite the fact that the Metabolist group, formed in 1960, now carries on virtually no activity as a group, and despite the many changes in my work and thought in the fifteen years since the Metabolist movement began. The word ‘metabolism’ nevertheless stands in order to secure a wider understanding of the concept and because there is value in using it in this extended sense. I was also led to select this title out of a desire to reflect upon and organize the relation between my writings and works of these fifteen years and Metabolist thought.

For the convenience of the reader the book is organized into four chapters. The architecture and writings are not in chronological order, although the date at which each work was designed or written is important to me. As we live in an international society with rapid communication in which we are constantly open to new influences the date for each piece indicates the spirit in which it was written.

Although I reject traditionalism, I attach great importance to the influence which the culture of one country may exert on another. It is my belief that the cultures of different countries will stand individually but together, allied with technology, to provide the future language of architecture. That modern architecture appears diffuse is proof that the cultures of different regions each contribute to the language of modern architecture, and as a result modern architecture will probably come to speak not with a lingua franca but with a complex and many-faceted language.” (from Preface)

Publisher Studio Vista, London, 1977
ISBN 0289707331, 9780289707333
208 pages
via ARG

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Simon Sadler: The Situationist City (1998)

“From 1957 to 1972 the artistic and political movement known as the Situationist International (SI) worked aggressively to subvert the conservative ideology of the Western world. The movement’s broadside attack on “establishment” institutions and values left its mark upon the libertarian left, the counterculture, the revolutionary events of 1968, and more recent phenomena from punk to postmodernism. But over time it tended to obscure Situationism’s own founding principles. In this book, Simon Sadler investigates the artistic, architectural, and cultural theories that were once the foundations of Situationist thought, particularly as they applied to the form of the modern city.

According to the Situationists, the benign professionalism of architecture and design had led to a sterilization of the world that threatened to wipe out any sense of spontaneity or playfulness. The Situationists hankered after the “pioneer spirit” of the modernist period, when new ideas, such as those of Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche, still felt fresh and vital.

By the late fifties, movements such as British and American Pop Art and French Nouveau Ralisme had become intensely interested in everyday life, space, and mass culture. The SI aimed to convert this interest into a revolution—at the level of the city itself. Their principle for the reorganization of cities was simple and seductive: let the citizens themselves decide what spaces and architecture they want to live in and how they wish to live in them. This would instantly undermine the powers of state, bureaucracy, capital, and imperialism, thereby revolutionizing people’s everyday lives.

Simon Sadler searches for the Situationist City among the detritus of tracts, manifestos, and works of art that the SI left behind. The book is divided into three parts. The first, “The Naked City,” outlines the Situationist critique of the urban environment as it then existed. The second, “Formulary for a New Urbanism,” examines Situationist principles for the city and for city living. The third, “A New Babylon,” describes actual designs proposed for a Situationist City.”

Publisher MIT Press, 1998
ISBN 9780262193924
ix+233 pages
via heimitokunst, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Reviews: Andrew Hussey (LRB, 1999), Notbored (n.d.), Andy Merrifield (Harvard Design Mag, 2000), Rosemary Wakeman (French Polit Cult Soc, 2000), James L. Penner (TDR, 2001), Sarah Deyong (J Society Arch Hist, 2001), Benedict Seymour (Mute, 2004), Natasha Gershfield (Manchester School Arch, 2010).

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