http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754648277
Travel, Space, Architecture defines a new theoretical territory in architectural and urban scholarship that frames the processes of spatial production through the notion of travel. The authors argue that in contrast to identifying space and architecture with "rootedness," as istraditionally asserted, it is instead "routes", border crossings, and cross-cultural encounters that have always been of paramount importance to the conceptualization, representation, and production of space. In aligning architectural thinking with current critical theory debates, this book argues forcefully that by dissociating culture from place and identity, and detaching the idea of architecture from both, we can reframe our understanding of spatial and architectural practices.
Travel, Space, Architecture presents seventeen studies from a range of perspectives historical, theoretical, and praxis-based to examine spatio-cultural encounters that have occurred through a variety of travel modes, including exploratory, professional, or educational travel, tourism, colonization, immigration, and refuge-seeking. These studies range from interrogations of architectural travel and new perceptions of space that emerged within conditions of internationalism to searches for alternative architectural models throughout the various stages of modernity, as architects questioned notions of belonging and nationhood as well as established geopolitical hierarchies. The book also addresses the institutionalization of architectural travel from the early twentieth century to the present, and the ways in which the intensified mobility that characterizes the era of globalization has influenced urban design, architecture, and broader practices of spatial production. In doing so, it examines the impact of immigration on contemporary metropolitan environments, the spread of signature architectural practices throughout the world, and the effect of routine mobility and long-distance electronic communication processes on contemporary architectural practice.