Main entry:

Karatani, Kōjin, 1941- author.

Title & Author:

Architecture as metaphor : language, number, money / Kojin Karatani ; translated by Sabu Kohso ; edited by Michael Speaks.

Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : MIT Press, [1995].
©1995.

Description:

xlv, 199 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm

Series:

Writing architecture

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 189-199).
Introduction: A map of crises / Arata Isozaki -- Translator's remarks -- Introduction to English edition -- Part one: Making. The will to architecture -- The status of form -- Architecture and poetry -- The natural city -- Structure and zero -- Natural numbers -- Part two: Becoming. Natural language -- Money -- Natural intelligence -- Schismogenesis -- Being -- The formalization of philosophy -- Part Three: Teaching and selling. Solipsism -- The standpoint of teaching -- Architecture as metaphor -- On rules -- Society and community -- The linguistic turn and Cogito -- Selling -- Merchant capital -- Credit -- Afterword.
Current Copyright Fee: GBP15.00 0.
Translation of: In'y-u to shite no kenchiku.

Summary:

"In Architecture as Metaphor, Karatani detects a recurrent "will to architecture" that he argues is the foundation of all Western thinking, traversing architecture, philosophy, literature, linguistics, city planning, anthropology, political economics, psychoanalysis, and mathematics. In the three parts of the book, he analyzes the complex bonds between construction and deconstruction, thereby pointing to an alternative model of "secular criticism," but in the domain of philosophy rather than literary or cultural criticism." "As Karatani claims in his introduction, because the will to architecture is practically nonexistent in Japan, he must first assume a dual role: one that affirms the architectonic (by scrutinizing the suppressed function of form) and one that pushes formalism to its collapse (by invoking Kurt Godel's incompleteness theorem). His subsequent discussions trace a path through the work of Christopher Alexander, Jane Jacobs, Gilles Deleuze, and others. Finally, amidst the drive that motivates all formalization, he confronts an unbridgeable gap, an uncontrollable event encountered in the exchange with the other; thus his speculation turns toward global capital movement. While in the present volume he mainly analyzes familiar Western texts, it is precisely for this reason that his voice discloses a distance that will add a new dimension to our English-language discourse."--Jacket.

ISBN:

0262611139 (pbk. ; alk. paper)
9780262611138 (pbk. ; alk. paper)

Subject:

Architecture Philosophy.
Architecture Philosophie.
architectural theory.
Architectuurtheorieën.
Bouwkunst.
Filosofische aspecten.
Arquitetura.
Metaphor.
Architecture

Form/genre:

Derrida copy Inscriptions (Provenance) NjP
Derrida copy Insertions (Provenance) NjP

Added entries:

Kohso, Sabu, translator.
Speaks, Michael, editor.
Wilcox, Jean, book designer, bookjacket designer.
Writing architecture.

Holdings:

Location: Library archives collection 263652
Call No.: ARCH240747
Copy: c. 2
Status: Available

Location: Library main 81217
Call No.: AC146.K3 (ID:95-B2629)
Copy: c. 1
Status: Available