Sustainable Schools: a consultation paper
Austin Williams | 31 August 2006 Future Cities Project respond to ‘Sustainable Schools: for pupils, communities and the environment’, a consultation paper for the Department for Education and Skills (DfES). The opening pages of the consultation set out the agenda under discussion. It suggests that ‘issues that matter to young people, from the state of the local park to global warming, (be) used as a context for learning...
Arts in Society
‘Arts in Society’ edited by Paul Barker; Five Leaves, 2006. 196pp Reviewed by Austin Williams | 18 August 2006 There’s a certain self-assured confidence about this series of essays that first appeared in the social sciences magazine New Society between 1964 and 1976. Barker, who was the editor of New Society from 1968 until 1986, has dipped into a rich archive and rescued some of that magazines finest writing, most...
‘Waist Down’ travelling exhibition
‘Waist Down–Miuccia Prada: Art and Creativity’ Exhibition at Prada Los Angeles: July 27 – August 27, 2006 Reviewed by Elisabetta Gasparoni-Abraham | 20 August 2006 One of my favourite places in Los Angeles is the Prada Epicenter – Prada’s retail ‘experience’ on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills which opened in 2004 and is the third of its kind in the world. On my last visit, “Waist Down” was its latest marvel – a touring...
Future Systems
‘Future Systems’ by Deyan Sudjic; Phaidon Press, 2006. 238pp Reviewed by Austin Williams | 9 July 2006 At an Architecture Week event a few years ago, Amanda Levete, discussing Future Systems’ place in the modern architectural pantheon, announced that there were two types of people: ‘there are those who love our work and there are those who are stuck in the past.’ Ironically, this piece of vanity publishing encourages the...
Camouflage
Camouflage by Neil Leach; MIT Press, 2006. 289pp Reviewed by Austin Williams | 1 July 2006 After the Alan Sokal affair, cultural studies writers have been nervous of transgressing the boundaries between pretentious quackery and insightfulness. Reviewers too, tread cautiously for fear of humiliation. This is a pity, because such intellectual caution tends to obscure the rare occasions when a cultural studies’ book hits the nail on the...
Kicking the Carbon Habit
‘Kicking the Carbon Habit: Global Warming and the Case for Renewable and Nuclear Energy’ by William Sweet; Colmbia University Press, 2006. 239pp Reviewed by Austin Williams | 30 June 2006 This is a remarkably detailed analysis of the evidence for climate change and the causal link between carbon emissions and global temperature rise. Starting from an acceptance of the famous Milankovitch cycles – identified in the...
The Revenge of Gaia
‘The Revenge of Gaia’ by James Lovelock; Penguin, 2006. 192pp Stephen Rowland reviews The Revenge of Gaia in the form of a letter to the author Dear James Many thanks for your latest book, The Revenge of Gaia. It’s given me plenty to think about. When I first read your earlier book on Planetary Medicine, I thought the whole idea of the Gaia metaphor was intriguing, and this book takes these ideas further, albeit in a...
New York’s Beaux-Arts masterpiece
Elisabetta Gasparoni | 12 June 2006 The New York Public Library – majestic columns and arches, grand marble staircases, high, elaborately decorated ceilings – stands magnificent and inviting at the intersection of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. Begun in 1899 and completed in 1911 it is a continuing monument to knowledge and research. The Beaux-Arts style employed by architects John Merven Carrere and Thomas Hastings...
Gardens of Canal Houses
‘Behind the Facades: Gardens of Canal Houses’ by Renate Dorrestein, Koen Kleijn and Harold Strak D’Arts/Architectura & Natura; 2005. 226pp Reviewed by Austin Williams | 9 March 2006 This book comprises a long essay on the history of gardens in Amsterdam and photographs of those individual gardens over the seasons. Excellent and revealing though most of the images are, it is the historic overview that makes this book....
Mobilising Active Citizens
Dave Clements | 4 March 2006 At election time every politician faced with a drubbing claims to have no time for opinion polls. For the rest of us, the general view seems to be that consultation is all very well but there’s a lot of it about and nothing much seems to come of it. The more cynical talk about government by ‘tick box’ or ‘focus group’. And to be fair, there may be something in this. After...
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