publications
HYPERCONTEXTUALITY: THE ARCHITECTURE OF DISPLACEMENT AND PLACELESSNESS
Author: Michael Herrman
Publisher: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR); First Edition (2009)
Paperback: 356 pages
Language: English
Hypercontextuality explores the psychological-social phenomenon through which architecture interconnects distant, past, and imagined contexts, profoundly altering the way spaces have been perceived, inhabited, and built since the mid-twentieth century. Through a fascinating journey across Europe’s cities, through its airports, and inside its neighborhoods, this book weaves together an exploration of works of architecture that have eradicated the postmodern concept of contextuality to reveal an increasingly hypercontextual world.
Text from back cover:
What do Disneyland Paris, a room in Rome’s Fiumicino Airport, and a suburb of Amsterdam have in common? What links Sigmund Freud’s residence in London, Chinatown in Paris, and a neighborhood once defined by the Berlin Wall? Since the 1950s, as the number of people who have moved to and between different locations throughout the world as tourists and various kinds of migrants – even if for vastly different motives – has soared, the way spaces have been perceived, inhabited, and built has been profoundly affected. Although intensely contextual, these spaces reference distant, past, or imaginary contexts, rather than actual and present ones – a psychological, social, and architectural phenomenon that is increasingly characterizing the spaces of the contemporary world.
Hypercontextuality is both an interpretation of, and a manifesto for, the architecture of displacement and placelessness – examining how tourism, media, and numerous forms of migration are deeply affecting the production and perception of architecture in the early twenty-first century.
CITY WALKS ARCHITECTURE: PARIS
Author: Michael Herrman
Publisher: Chronicle Books; First Edition (2009)
Cards: 106 pages
Language: English
City Walks Architecture: Paris deciphers and explores the centuries of architecture in Paris that reflect the diverse ideals of the monarchies, empires, and republics that have shaped the city over the millennia. From its Gothic monuments to its most recent works of contemporary architecture, this series of itineraries through the city explores how Paris developed and how it has managed to integrate great works of contemporary architecture into a carefully preserved urban fabric. The twenty-five itineraries are organized around critical moments in the city’s history, drawing a chronological and geographic coherence between these seemingly incongruous historical moments. From the home and studios of iconic architects such as Le Corbusier and Hector Guimard and the emergence of Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and Modernism, to how the portrayal of Paris in cinema and other forms of media has begun to influence the form of the city, this publication explores all sides of architecture culture in Paris.
ESTRANGED ROME: DELINEARE L’ARCHITETTURA DELLA MIGRAZIONE
Author: Michael Herrman
Publisher: Regione Lazio; First Edition (2006)
Paperback: 195 pages
Language: Italian
currently out of print
Estranged Rome: delineare l’architettura della migrazione traces the origin and development of the impact of migratory phenomena on the architecture and the history of Rome. Focusing on the contemporary city, the book follows the historical-mythological Appian Way from its construction during the ancient Roman Empire to its fragmented “reincarnation” in the twenty-first century among transportation terminals and transformed urban neighborhoods. This new fragmented space dictates the textual and photographic journey of the book and reveals how both the development of ancient Rome and the contemporary city share similar relationships with their large foreign populations. In the early twenty-first century, the Eternal City is estranged by the profound influence of migration that moves through its spaces, transforming its architecture from the inside out.