
The City of Collective Memory
Its Historical Imagery and Architectural Entertainments
M. Christine Boyer(Author)
MIT Press
Published on 1. May 1996
Book
Paperback/Softback
572 pages
978-0-262-52211-3 (ISBN)
Description
Christine Boyer faces head-on the crisis of the city in the late twentieth century, taking us on a fascinating journey through theaters and museums, panoramas and maps, buildings and institutions that are used to construct a new reading of the city as a system of representation, a complex cultural entity. Boyer brings together elements and concepts from geography, critical theory, architecture, literature, and painting in a synthetic and readable work that is broad in its reach and original in its insights. What finally emerges is a sense of the city reinvigorated with richness and potential.The City of Collective Memory describes a series of different visual and mental models by which the urban environment has been recognized, depicted, and planned. Boyer identifies three major "maps": one common to the traditional city-the city as a work of art; one characteristic of the modern city-the city as panorama; and one appropriate to the contemporary city-the city as spectacle. It is a richly illustrated and documented study that pays considerable attention to the normally hidden and unspoken codes that regulate the order imposed on and derived from the city. A wide range of secondary historical literature and theoretical work is considered, with evident debts to structuralist analysis of urban form represented by Aldo Rossi, as well to much post-structuralist criticism from Walter Benjamin to the present.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, Mass.
United States
Publishing group
MIT Press Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
US School Grade: College Graduate Student and over
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 173 mm
Thickness: 33 mm
Weight
748 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-262-52211-3 (9780262522113)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Author
William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Architecture and UrbanismPrinceton University