In 1981; Alison Lurie published The Language of Clothes; a meditation on costume and fashion as an expression of history; social status and individual psychology. Amusing; enlightening and full of literary allusion; the book was highly praised and widely anthologized.Now Lurie has returned with a companion book; The Language of Houses; a lucid; provocative and entertaining look at how the architecture of buildings and the spaces within them both reflect and affect the people who inhabit them. Schools; churches; government buildings; museums; prisons; hospitals; restaurants; and of course; houses and apartments—all of them speak to human experience in vital and varied ways.The Language of Houses discusses historical and regional styles and the use of materials such as stone and wood and concrete; as well as contemplating the roles of stairs and mirrors; windows and doors; tiny rooms and cathedral-like expanses; illustrating its conclusions with illuminating literary references and the comments of experts in the field.Accompanied by lighthearted original drawings; The Language of Houses is an essential and highly entertaining new contribution to the literature of modern architecture.
#3527539 in eBooks 2014-08-07 2014-08-07File Name: B00MHUXOAE
Review
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Reconstructing a ldquo;Nation Divided into Fragmentsrdquo;By michael stantonReconstructing a ldquo;Nation Divided into Fragmentsrdquo;Published in the International Journal of Islamic Architecture; Volume 1; Number 1; Islamic architecture; urbanism; and design; 2012 ldquo;hellip;the word revolutionhellip; in the opposite sense meaning reconstruction.rdquo; Fernand BraudelItself a case study in regional political discourse; this book addresses several selected critical case studies by an affiliated group within the Departments of Architecture and Design; Landscape Design and the Facilities Planning and Development Unit from the American University of Beirut; one of many Lebanese institutions of higher education. As such it presents a few of hundreds of attempts to help in the reconstruction of the nation after the devastating war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006. Good intentions are not in short supply in Lebanon. Plans; proposals and studies proliferate. Local philanthropic players; NGOs; nations adopting villages; Lebanese ex-pats; and volunteers of all sorts provide endless remedies for ailments that the powers-that-be inflict and profit from. Given this scenario success is predictably rare and the few efforts that find some sort of result are compromised by the corruption; disorganization and autocracy that confront such endeavors in most countries; but that are epidemic in Lebanon. Furthermore intention is often seen as sufficient by its perpetrators. This book fires another warning shot across the bow of those who wish to more than propose lsquo;doing goodrsquo; in Lebanon.Given constraints; the Lessons noted in this book did have effect and several of the assembled group are quite candid about the limits they faced and the tangible outcomes thus achieved. The frustration with the opaque decision-making process in Dahiye is palpable in the chapter authored by Monas Harb and Fawaz. That these exemplary scholars; who have worked for at least a decade in that zone of Beirut; should be met by opacity from Hezbollah and by bureaucratic impediments from public officials was surprising. The chapter authored by the bookrsquo;s editor Howayda Al-Harithy reviews the work of the Reconstruction Unit at AUB in Bint Jbeil; with the intriguing suggestion that the reinvention of heritage may have a salubrious; even remedial effect on community. Beginning with the chapter in which Habib Debs also discusses work in Bint Jbeil; there is a distinct recognition of the degree of disappointment that was implicit in the attempt to work with agencies and entities that were both authoritarian; corrupt and in direct conflict with each other. The final salvaging of only a fraction of the older stone houses in the town center is correctly seen as a loss somewhat mitigated. Debsrsquo; use of structuralist semiotics presents a more critical and operative methodology than previous discussions of tradition and identity; terms that have become both infinitely flexible due to overuse and the tools of conservatism.The last two chapters; written by younger members of the group who were recently students at AUB; bring a welcome eacute;lan. The first by Abir Saksouk Sasso; Nadine Bekdache and Ismael Sheikh Hassan veers toward the self-congratulatory but outlines the roadblocks confronting efforts where opaque politics and corruption rule. It is good that the book concludes with the work of Rabih Shibli. His bottom-up efforts in the creation of the Beit bil-Jnoub project are exemplary in their focus on achieving local results; countering the worst of corrupt and shoddy building practices; accepting and then critically adjusting municipal construction formats and approaching the citizens involved without naiveteacute;; condescension or subterfuge. Putting practical desire first and treating this lsquo;lessonrsquo; as one of reconstruction ecology and potential therapy seems to have produced tangible value in small villages in the south. Meanwhile he and his team are self-critical about working lsquo;to change the system; without becoming the system.rsquo; (211) The notion of therapy is an essential and unaddressed one in a country as traumatized by war as Lebanon. Not only the 33 days of intense assault in 2006; but the nearly 6000 days of the recent civil war have produced many of the dilemmas and militia-based institutions that plague the nation. How to address such a trauma on a regional level remains a question without answer; particularly because television; controlled as it is exclusively by political factions; is another problem when it could offer a form of national therapy. As such; the identification with dwelling; reconstruction as a cultural process and the remaking of community seem to be optimistic approaches that can return some sense of healthy stability to this shattered place; short of the creation of an actual civil society.Perhaps it is that which is not discussed here that is most telling. The book is a study in selective confrontation with problems that continually render this potential utopia its opposite. It thus mirrors the critical climate in the region; struggling not to offend and perpetually finding external culprits. The noun corruption never appears in the main text and only once in a footnote! On page 172 its adjective is used. How is it that this impediment; the first after sectarianism itself; was not more directly addressed? On the other hand the word resistance is used enthusiastically and promiscuously without definition of its role after 2000. Is it permanent; thus great for the privileged of the region while debilitating for its disenfranchised populations? Is it resistance to the political economy that is draining this society - real estate for instance? If so; then the resistancersquo;s reestablishment of existence-minimum housing in the southern suburbs; the international sign of real-estate exploitation; seems quite cynical. In Lebanonrsquo;s reconstruction appears to take on a paradoxical task: to rebuild lives and to continue to lsquo;resist.rsquo;The political woes of this multi-sectarian war-lord-run oligarchy are here simplified into a confrontation between lsquo;governmentrsquo; and lsquo;opposition;rsquo; a relation that actually reversed its polarities during publication. And those polarities look more like reciprocities upon a more critical appraisal ndash; ways to mutually exploit and simultaneously to rally respective constituencies. The 2008 week-long war between opposition and loyalists is described only as a raid on Saad Hariris offices in Beirut ndash; invoking the eternal conflict between Shia and Sunni. The larger; much more bloody and technologically advanced fighting with Druze in the Shouf is not mentioned; thus maintaining an attempt to simplify or cleanse that which appears to be irretrievably complex and sullied. Why such omissions of issues that are central to the reconstruction and the health of Lebanon? Perhaps; as Jacques Ranciegrave;re writes; ldquo;Politics is the art of suppressing the political.rdquo; In Lebanon; deletions and clicheacute;s abound; usual suspects are found according to different political interests and fingers point everywhere except back at the pointer.Perhaps to further simplify the Ottoman tale that is contemporary Lebanon; several fascinating narratives relating to destruction and construction are not mentioned in this book along with the obvious relations to feudal/religious politics and uncivil social structures. For example; the much-discussed Haret Hreik bombing site and the similar Solidere tabula rasa that was the ancient city center offer strong critical material. These two voids were created by war and real-estate (phenomena more closely linked than generally acknowledged: in fact the same economic process at different volumes); each at the scale of more than a thousand buildings lost; with similar reciprocities; class issues; authoritarian practices and peculiar reinventions of history determining strategies of reconstruction. Likewise uninvestigated is the link between these two voids; the rest of reconstruction and the rhetoric of martyrdom that permeates Lebanese culture and sublimates the suffering and exploitation of quotidian society in wars generated by elites and international players. By default this books asks - is renewal possible if it calls for more than stone and benevolence; and demands new civil understandings? Michael Stanton
