Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Notes on the Text
Introduction
Chapter 1. In the Primeval Fields of Modernity
1.1 Introduction
Part 1. Legibility: A Methodology of Composition
1.2 Setting the Sails—Experience, Sea Voyages, and a Method of Drafting
1.3 Legibility, Interpenetrations, and the Interspersing of the What-Has-Been and the Now
1.4 Constructing on the Mobile Scaffolding
Part 2. Spaces of Knowability
1.5 Pas-sages: Wise-Paths or Not-Wise? The Hollow Mold of Modernity and Architecturability
1.6 Baudelaire’s Allegory, Schwellen of Interpretation, and the “Colportage Phenomenon of Space”
Chapter 2. Abstract Theatricality as Impossible Synthesis
Part 1. Staging the Ephemeral and the Bursts of the Cityscape
2.1 From the Benjaminian “Constructors” to the Second Waves of Futurism
2.2 Plastic Complexes and “Theatrical Instantaneous Acts”: Balla, Depero, and the Synthetic Theater
2.3 Prampolini and the Abstraction of the Emotive Theatrical Space
Part 2. Toward Futurist Allegories of Architecture
2.4 From Machine-Age Art and the Actor-Space to the Magnetic and Magic Theaters
2.5 A Theatrical Synthesis in Chains: Reconstruct Italy with Futurist Sant’Elia Architecture
Chapter 3. Cities and Puzzles: Multiple and Contrasting Emotions
3.1 Of Tenderness and Tension
3.2 Italo Calvino and Invisible Cities: Dialogical and Descriptive Illuminations
3.3 Architectures as Mass Media and Super-Cities in an Interdisciplinary Geography
3.4 Georges Perec’s Species of Spaces: An Adventure of the 1970s
3.5 Life: A User’s Manual—Invisible Scaffolding, Rooms, and Casse-tête
Chapter 4. From Fictionalizing Function to Redefining the Now of the Urban
Part 1. Fictionalizing the Extremes of Functionality
4.1 A Few Glimpses of Superstudio: “Cautionary Tales,” Education Film Script, and “Multimediainfocenters”
Part 2. Bernard Tschumi: How to Trigger Architecture Radically
4.2 A Brief Note on Situated Technologies, before Their Time
4.3 Opening Up the Archictectural Field through the Notion of Space
4.4 Inventing Cinematically Mutant Architectures
4.5 Acting Out the Intermingle: Architectural Gestures at the Parc de la Villette
4.6 Conceptualizing the Conditions for the Event-Cities
Chapter 5. Adventuring (in) the Architectural Field: Rem Koolhaas and the Office of Metropolitan Architecture
Part 1: S,M,L,XL and its “Architecture-Characters”
5.1 The Novel(s) of Architecture
5.2 Three Glances at S and M, or How to Effectively Render Projects in Intermedial Formats
5.2.a Designing from a Distance
5.2.b Cartoonizing Developers’ Taste: OMA’s Junk
5.2.c Turning Spaces Inside Out: A Mirage Project
5.3 A Theatrical Piece vs. A Guided Tour, or the Space that Entertains
5.4 Re-Enabling the Manifesto Style for the Field of After-Architecture
5.5 Metropolitan Moments and Montages: Euralille
5.6 An Intermission: About Networks and Traveling
5.7 Sedating the Classical City: The Generic City
5.8 Exiting the Book: A Flâneur for the Twenty-First Century and Awaiting China’s Adventures
Part 2: Cartoonish “Architecture-Characters” Popping Up from Junkspace
5.9 From AMO’s Altases to the Builtscape as an Endless, Consuming Inside (“Junkspace”)
5.10 Yet Another Ambiguous Publication: Colporting Architectures in Space
5.11 Dewey Decimal System/MLA’s Style
5.12 A Gigantic Built Palindrome: Performing an Allegory of Data Flows
Coda
Works Cited
Notes
Index
