FRAMING PLACES(London: Routledge, 1999, 2nd edition 2007) Excerpt from the Preface: Architecture and urban design are the most contradictory of practices -- torn between a radically optimistic belief in the creation of the new, and a conservative acceptance of the prevailing order. Architects and urban designers engage with the articulation of dreams -- imagining and constructing a 'better' future in someone's interest. This optimistic sense of creative innovation largely defines the design professions which are all identified with constant change. Yet architecture is also the most conservative of practices. This conservatism stems from the fundamental inertia of built form as it 'fixes' and 'stabilizes' the world -- space is deployed to stabilize time. It is this antinomous quality -- coupling imaginative innovation with a stabilizing conservatism -- that makes the interpretation of place so interesting yet problematic. |
Contents1. POWER
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REVIEWS OF 1st EDITION:
"This is a complex and challenging book: Dovey attempts to tread where others have not done before... This deeply critical and perceptive book... stimulates thought and may prove to be a seminal work... His book deserves to be widely read..." (Urban Design Quarterly)
"Dovey exposes the underbellies of power politics in the shaping and framing of urban imaginaries... Framing Places is an example of critical theory with a smile and a hope for emancipation in spite of our perpetual capacity for chaos.... These finely wrought case studies reveal a fascination with the multilayered experiences of place and how we are active participants in their framing, or rather in the socio-historical process of continuous re-framing of places and built forms." (Thesis Eleven)