[audiobook] Constructing a Place of Critical Architecture in China: Intermediate Criticality in the Journal Time + Architecture by Guanghui Ding at Arts-Photography

Description

The Arab World is perceived to be a region rampant with constructed and ambiguous national identities; overwhelming wealth and poverty; religious diversity; and recently the Arab uprisings; a bottom-up revolution shaking the foundations of pre-established; long-standing hierarchies. It is also a region that has witnessed a remarkable level of transformation and development due to the accelerated pace imposed by post-war reconstruction; environmental degradation; and the competition among cities for world visibility and tourism. Accordingly; the Arab World is a prime territory for questioning urban design; inviting as it does a multiplicity of opportunities for shaping; upgrading; and rebuilding urban form and civic space while subjecting global paradigms to regional and local realities. Providing a critical overview of the state of contemporary urban design in the Arab World; this book conceptualizes the field under four major perspectives: urban design as discourse; as discipline; as research; and as practice. It poses two questions. How can such a diversity of practice be positioned with regard to current international trends in urban design? Also; what constitutes the specificity of the Middle Eastern experience in light of the regional political and cultural settings? This book is about urban designers rsquo;on the marginsrsquo;: how they narrate their cities; how they engage with their discipline; and how they negotiate their distance from; and with respect to global disciplinary trends. As such; the term margins implies three complementary connotations: on the global level; it invites speculation on the way contemporary urban design is being impacted by the new conceptualizations of center-periphery originating from the post-colonial discourse; on the regional level; it is a speculation on the specificity of urban design thinking and practice within a particular geographical and cultural context (here; the Arab World); and finally; on the local level; it is an a