Subnature

topics

Publishers

Architecture

ISBN: 9781568987774
English edition
Princeton Architectural Press
Softcover, 224 pages
17,8 x 22,9 cm
colour/black & white
November 2009
€26,60 (excl. VAT)

Subnature

Architecture's Other Environments

David Gissen

We are conditioned over time to regard environmental forces such as dust, mud, gas, smoke, debris, weeds and insects as inimical to architecture. Much of today’s discussion about sustainable and green design revolves around efforts to clean or filter out these primitive elements. Yet, these “subnatural forces” are nothing new. In Subnature, David Gissen examines experimental work by today’s leading designers, scholars, philosophers and biologists that rejects the idea that humans can somehow recreate a purely natural world, free of the untidy elements that actually constitute nature. Each chapter provides an examination of a particular form of subnature and its actualization in contemporary design practice.