Electric Light

Electric Light
Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
Total Pages : 303
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780262038171
ISBN-13 : 026203817X
Rating : 4/5 (17X Downloads)

Book Synopsis Electric Light by : Sandy Isenstadt

Download or read book Electric Light written by Sandy Isenstadt and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-09-25 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How electric light created new spaces that transformed the built environment and the perception of modern architecture. In this book, Sandy Isenstadt examines electric light as a form of architecture—as a new, uniquely modern kind of building material. Electric light was more than just a novel way of brightening a room or illuminating a streetscape; it brought with it new ways of perceiving and experiencing space itself. If modernity can be characterized by rapid, incessant change, and modernism as the creative response to such change, Isenstadt argues, then electricity—instantaneous, malleable, ubiquitous, evanescent—is modernity's medium. Isenstadt shows how the introduction of electric lighting at the end of the nineteenth century created new architectural spaces that altered and sometimes eclipsed previously existing spaces. He constructs an architectural history of these new spaces through five examples, ranging from the tangible miracle of the light switch to the immaterial and borderless gloom of the wartime blackout. He describes what it means when an ordinary person can play God by flipping a switch; when the roving cone of automobile headlights places driver and passenger at the vertex of a luminous cavity; when lighting in factories is seen to enhance productivity; when Times Square became an emblem of illuminated commercial speech; and when the absence of electric light in a blackout produced a new type of space. In this book, the first sustained examination of the spatial effects of electric lighting, Isenstadt reconceives modernism in architecture to account for the new perceptual conditions and visual habits that followed widespread electrification.


Electric Light Related Books

Electric Light
Language: en
Pages: 303
Authors: Sandy Isenstadt
Categories: Architecture
Type: BOOK - Published: 2018-09-25 - Publisher: MIT Press

GET EBOOK

How electric light created new spaces that transformed the built environment and the perception of modern architecture. In this book, Sandy Isenstadt examines e
Electricity, Magnetism, and Light
Language: en
Pages: 809
Authors: Wayne M. Saslow
Categories: Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2002-07-19 - Publisher: Elsevier

GET EBOOK

A very comprehensive introduction to electricity, magnetism and optics ranging from the interesting and useful history of the science, to connections with curre
Light, Sound and Electricity
Language: en
Pages: 0
Authors: Kirsteen Rogers
Categories: Electricity
Type: BOOK - Published: 2002-03 - Publisher: Usborne Books

GET EBOOK

-- Amazingly in-depth reference books covering physics, chemistry, biology, information technology, earth sciences and astronomy, with up-to-date information on
Lights Out
Language: en
Pages: 322
Authors: Jason Makansi
Categories: Business & Economics
Type: BOOK - Published: 2007-08-24 - Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

GET EBOOK

A behind-the-scenes exposure why our electricity system is headed for a state of emergency-and what can be done to head it off Most people don't realize that sk
Children of Light
Language: en
Pages: 331
Authors: Gavin Weightman
Categories: Technology & Engineering
Type: BOOK - Published: 2011-04-01 - Publisher: Atlantic Books

GET EBOOK

In the early 1870's a nighttime view over Britain would have revealed towns lit by the warm glow of gas and oil lamps and a much darker countryside, the only li