Architecturally Speaking

An international collection of essays by architects, artists and theorists of locality and space. New work by contributors including Mark Auge, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Anthony Vidler, Lebbeus Woods and Zaha Hadid is juxtaposed with seminal essays by Bernard Tschumi and Doreen Massey. Work on city space and architecture by radical young companies such as MUF and performance artist Graeme Millar is joined by challenging visions of orientation in the city by anthropologist Franco le Cecla and technologist William Mitchell. Together these essays build to reflect not only what it might mean to "speak architecturally" but also the innate relations between the artist's and architect's work, how they are distinct, and how they might relate through questions of built form. The interdisciplinary is often evoked but in this collection the specificity of practices and their relation with everyday contexts announces grounds for collaboration. This book should appeal to urbanists, geographers, artists, architects, cultural historians and theorists.

'A key premise of this collection is the focus on the enriched field of interdisciplinarity that allows for cross-cultural thinking in areas of research ranging from philosophy, geography, urban planning, sociology, art, digital media and architecture, to name but a few. However, although deeply rewarding and enriching, Read rightly reminds us of the disciplinary significance of each discrete area and its potential loss of significance in the superficial 'blind date' of hasty interdisciplinarity.' - Dorothy Rowe, The Art Book

Alan Read is Professor and Chair of Drama and Theatre Studies at University of Surrey Roehampton. Previously he was Director of Talks at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. A series of talks he arranged there, Spaced Out, was the genesis of this collection. He is an affilated professor of Boston University and founding associate editor of the Routledge journal Performance Research.