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      Nils Norman

      The Contemporary Picturesque

      76 pages | Full colour | 165 x 230 mm, Soft cover | 2000 | Edition of 1,000 copies
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The Contemporary Picturesque addresses two areas of contemporary architecture and design. One is the development of a repressive form of urban architecture and design: Nils Norman has collected photographs of devices incluing surface studs, crowd control barriers etc., that are created in order to control the ever increasing privatised space of inner cities.

This development is linked to a new definition of ‘public space’ and private property − an urban space that is owned, operated and policed by private interests and corporations. The other is the vernacular architecture of protest culture; the proliferation of impermanent, makeshift, low-impact architectural structures and designs (such as barricades, tree houses and protest camps) that aid activists in the occupation of privatised space. Using images and texts Norman shows the dialectical relationship between ‘power structures’ and their ‘subversive counterparts’.


本書では、今日の建築とデザインにおける2つの場所に着目する。
1つは都市における抑圧的な建築とデザイン。著者であるNils Normanは建築材の表面にある飾りビョウやクラウドコントロール障壁など、都市の中で絶え間なく増え続けるプライベートな空間を管理するための意匠を撮影した。この変化は「公共」と私有の財産の新しい定義とリンクしていて、今日の都市空間は、個人の興味や団体によって所有され運営されているのである。
もう1つは、バリケードやツリーハウス、プロテストキャンプなど、活動家たちに独特の、一時的に作られた建物である。写真とテキストを使いながらNormanは「権力構造」とそれに対する「破壊活動家」の直接的な関係性を明らかにした。
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