Topophilia and Topophobia: Reflections on Twentieth-Century Human Habitat

Description

This book is about the love and hate relations that humans establish with their habitat, which have been coined by discerning modern thinkers as topophilia and topophobia. Whilst such affiliations with the topos, our manmade as well as natural habitat, have been traced back to antiquity, a wide range of twentieth-century cases are studied here and reflected upon by dwelling on this framework. The book provides a timely reminder that the qualitative aspects of the topos, sensual as well as intellectual, should not be disregarded in the face of rapid technological development and the mass of building that has occurred since the turn of the millennium. Topophilia and Topophobia offers speculative and historical reflections on the human habitat of the century that has just passed, authored by some of the world's leading scholars and architects, including Joseph Rykwert, Yi-Fu Tuan, Vittorio Gregotti and Jean-Louis Cohen. Human habitats, ranging broadly from the cities of the twentieth century, highbrow modern architecture both in Western countries and in Asia, to non-architect/planner designed vernacular settlements and landscapes are reviewed under the themes of topophilia and topophobia across the disciplines of architecture, landscape studies, philosophy, human geography and urban planning.

Xing Ruan is Professor of Architecture at the University of New South Wales and is the author of Allegorical Architecture (2006) and New China Architecture (2006). He has published on a wide range of topics concerning legible relations between humans and the built world in some of the world's leading scholarly journals, as well as professional magazines in China and Australia. Paul Hogben is a lecturer in architecture at the University of New South Wales. His research focuses on promotional politics and the discourse of architecture over the twentieth century. This research has been published in Architectural Theory Review and Fabrications, the journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand.