Take Rem Koolhaas's lauded new Seattle Public Library, and remove it from its context. Would it be as beautiful? Would it lose something of its meaning (not to mention the books off the shelves), if you picked it up and placed it elsewhere? Is it even possible for a building to have no relation whatsoever to the place where it is erected? Is it pointless to talk about architecture as a pure intellectual enterprise, without grounding it in its surroundings? These are among the important questions raised by the German ...
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Take Rem Koolhaas's lauded new Seattle Public Library, and remove it from its context. Would it be as beautiful? Would it lose something of its meaning (not to mention the books off the shelves), if you picked it up and placed it elsewhere? Is it even possible for a building to have no relation whatsoever to the place where it is erected? Is it pointless to talk about architecture as a pure intellectual enterprise, without grounding it in its surroundings? These are among the important questions raised by the German architecture scholar Florentine Sack in this exploration of the philosophical, aesthetic and subjective links between a building and its environment. Drawing upon traditions as old as that of the Japanese house through models of classical Western Modernism, she brings the notion of unity to bear on contemporary architecture, referring to exemplary buildings by Koolhaas, Herzog & de Meuron, Peter Zumthor, Kazuyo Sejima, Ryue Nishizawa and many others.
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