Living with Buildings: And Walking with Ghosts - On Health and Architecture

Description

We shape ourselves, and are shaped in return, by the walls that contain us. Buildings affect how we sleep, work, socialise and even breathe. They can isolate and endanger us but they can also heal us. We project our hopes and fears onto buildings, while they absorb our histories. In Living With Buildings, Iain Sinclair embarks on a series of expeditions - through London, Marseille, Mexico and the Outer Hebrides. A father and his daughter, who has a rare syndrome, visit the estate where they once lived. Developers clink champagne glasses as residents are 'decanted' from their homes. A box sculpted from whalebone, thought to contain healing properties, is returned to its origins with unexpected consequences. Part investigation, part travelogue, Living With Buildings brings the spaces we inhabit to life as never before.

Iain Sinclair's books include Downriver (winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Encore Prize), Lights Out for the Territory and The Last London. Living with Buildings is published in association with Wellcome Collection, a free museum and library that aims to challenge how we think and feel about health. Inspired by the medical objects and curiosities collected by Henry Wellcome, it connects science, medicine, life and art. Wellcome Collection exhibitions, events and books explore a diverse range of subjects, including consciousness, forensic medicine, emotions, sexology, identity and death.

A remarkable book; surprisingly gripping and often very moving ... at once disorientating and illuminating. * Robert Macfarlane * One of Iain Sinclair's best books ... His walks are described with pithy lyricism. His moving accounts of friends and their complicated relationship to housing estates, hospitals and ancient rural sites, describe our attempts to remain healthy and humane in increasingly hostile environments * New Statesman Books of the Year * Iain Sinclair feeds us a rich diet of shrewd insights ... He leaves you gasping with the punch and pungency of his images * Observer *