On the Ruins of Babel

On the Ruins of Babel
Author :
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Total Pages : 328
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780801476969
ISBN-13 : 0801476968
Rating : 4/5 (968 Downloads)

Book Synopsis On the Ruins of Babel by : Daniel Leonhard Purdy

Download or read book On the Ruins of Babel written by Daniel Leonhard Purdy and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The eighteenth century struggled to define architecture as either an art or a science—the image of the architect as a grand figure who synthesizes all other disciplines within a single master plan emerged from this discourse. Immanuel Kant and Johann Wolfgang Goethe described the architect as their equal, a genius with godlike creativity. For writers from Descartes to Freud, architectural reasoning provided a method for critically examining consciousness. The architect, as philosophers liked to think of him, was obligated by the design and construction process to mediate between the abstract and the actual. In On the Ruins of Babel, Daniel Purdy traces this notion back to its wellspring. He surveys the volatile state of architectural theory in the Enlightenment, brought on by the newly emerged scientific critiques of Renaissance cosmology, then shows how German writers redeployed Renaissance terminology so that "harmony," "unity," "synthesis," "foundation," and "orderliness" became states of consciousness, rather than terms used to describe the built world. Purdy's distinctly new interpretation of German theory reveals how metaphors constitute interior life as an architectural space to be designed, constructed, renovated, or demolished. He elucidates the close affinity between Hegel's Romantic aesthetic of space and Daniel Libeskind's deconstruction of monumental architecture in Berlin's Jewish Museum. Through a careful reading of Walter Benjamin's writing on architecture as myth, Purdy details how classical architecture shaped Benjamin's modernist interpretations of urban life, particularly his elaboration on Freud's archaeology of the unconscious. Benjamin's essays on dreams and architecture turn the individualist sensibility of the Enlightenment into a collective and mythic identification between humans and buildings.


On the Ruins of Babel Related Books

On the Ruins of Babel
Language: en
Pages: 328
Authors: Daniel Leonhard Purdy
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2011-03-15 - Publisher: Cornell University Press

GET EBOOK

The eighteenth century struggled to define architecture as either an art or a science—the image of the architect as a grand figure who synthesizes all other d
Arm of the Sphinx
Language: en
Pages: 443
Authors: Josiah Bancroft
Categories: Fiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 2017-08-22 - Publisher: Orbit

GET EBOOK

Senlin continues his ascent up the tower in the word-of-mouth phenomenon fantasy series about one man's dangerous journey through a labyrinthine world. "One of
The Dogs of Babel
Language: en
Pages: 173
Authors: Carolyn Parkhurst
Categories: Fiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 2003-06-01 - Publisher: Hachette UK

GET EBOOK

A poignant and beautiful debut novel explores a man's quest to unravel the mystery of his wife's death with the help of the only witness -- their Rhodesian ridg
The Library of Babel
Language: en
Pages:
Authors: Jorge Luis Borges
Categories:
Type: BOOK - Published: 2021 - Publisher:

GET EBOOK

At His Side
Language: en
Pages: 212
Authors: A.N. Pirozhkova
Categories: Biography & Autobiography
Type: BOOK - Published: 1998-06-01 - Publisher: Steerforth

GET EBOOK

I WISH TO RESTORE to public memory certain features of a man endowed with great goodness of spirit, a passionate interest in people, and a miraculous gift for d