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Digital Monuments

The Dreams and Abuses of Iconic Architecture
By Simone Brott
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Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Digital Monuments challenges the glorification of iconic architecture in the new millennium, focusing on how digital imagery shapes public perception. Simone Brott examines the likes of Rem Koolhaas's CCTV headquarters, Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao, and Zaha Hadid’s Abu Dhabi Performing Arts Centre—showing how their digital representations create a dreamlike, often misleading narrative that obscures social and political realities. Through 18 sharp micro-essays, the book exposes the stark contrasts between dazzling digital visions and the harsh truths behind their construction, from economic crises to labour exploitation.
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Format: Hardback
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

Ideal for readers interested in architecture, digital culture, and social critique, as well as those who seek to understand the intersection of technology, design, and urban realities.

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In 18 micro-essays, Digital Monuments exposes the stereotypes of iconic architecture while depicting the savagery of the industry, from the Greek and Spanish Crises triggered by financialised iconic development to mass labour-deaths on construction sites in the UAE.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Digital Monuments radically explodes "iconic architecture" of the new millennium and its hijacking of the public imagination via the digital image. Hallucinatory constructions such as Rem Koolhaas’s CCTV headquarters in Beijing, Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and Zaha Hadid’s Performing Arts Centre in Abu Dhabi are all introduced to the world by immortal digital imagery that floods the internet—yet comes to haunt the actualised buildings.

Like holograms, these "digital monuments," which violently push physics and engineering to their limits, flicker eerily between the real and the unreal—invoking fantasies of omnipotence, immortality and utopian cities. But this experience of iconic architecture as a digital dream on the ground conceals from the urban spectator the social reality of the buildings and the rigidity of their ideology.

In 18 micro-essays, Digital Monuments exposes the stereotypes of iconic architecture while depicting the savagery of the industry, from the Greek and Spanish crises triggered by financialised iconic development to mass labour-deaths on construction sites in the UAE.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780367201111

Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 08 October 2019

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Routledge

Illustration: 49 Halftones, black and white; 49 Illustrations, black and white

Audience: General / adult, Tertiary education

DIMENSIONS

Width: 123.0mm

Height: 186.0mm

Weight: 453g

Pages: 196

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Arts & Culture Non-Fiction Simone Brott

About the Author

Simone Brott is an architect and theorist, and Senior Lecturer in Architecture at Queensland University of Technology. Educated at Yale University and The University of Melbourne, she writes on the politics of the digital image in architectural production and the contemporary city. Her books include Architecture for a Free Subjectivity: Deleuze and Guattari at the Horizon of the Real (Routledge, 2011) and Architecture Post Mortem: The Diastolic Architecture of Decline, Dystopia, and Death (New editions, Routledge, 2016). A regular contributor to Log (Anycorp, New York), Brott has also written for AD Architectural Design (Wiley, London); Thresholds: Journal of the MIT Department of Architecture; Architectural Theory Review: Journal of the Department of Architecture, The University of Sydney; Journal of Public Space (City Space, Italy); and The Journal of Architecture and Urbanism. She has lectured at Yale University, Harvard University, Boston University, the University of Michigan, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Strathclyde University, Glasgow, and the University of Melbourne. Brott is currently working on a new project about the financialisation of cities.

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