Critical Care. Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet – Buchvorstellung in Berlin

Buchvorstellung mit Elke Krasny
23. September 2019, 20:30

Pro qm – thematische Buchhandlung zu Stadt, Politik,
Pop, Ökonomiekritik, Architektur, Design, Kunst & Theorie 
Almstadtstraße 48-50
D-10119 Berlin

Today, architecture and urbanism are capital-centric, speculation-driven, and investment-dominated. Many cannot afford housing. Austerity measures have taken a disastrous toll on public infrastructures. The climate crisis has rendered the planet vulnerable, even uninhabitable. This book offers an alternative vision in architecture and urbanism that focuses on caring for a broken planet. Rooted in a radical care perspective that always starts from the given, in the midst of things, this edited collection of essays and illustrated case studies documents ideas and practices from an extraordinarily diverse group of contributors.

Focusing on the three crisis areas of economy, ecology, and labor, the book describes projects including village reconstruction in China; irrigation in Spain; community land trust in Puerto Rico; revitalization of modernist public housing in France; new alliances in informal settlements in Nairobi; and the redevelopment of traditional building methods in flood areas in Pakistan. Essays consider such topics as ethical architecture, land policy, creative ecologies, diverse economies, caring communities, and the exploitation of labor. Taken together, these case studies and essays provide evidence that architecture and urbanism have the capacity to make the planet livable, again.

Fitz, Krasny, Architekturzentrum Wien (Eds)
Critical Care. Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet
MIT Press, 2019, 9780262536837
EUR 35.90