Grand Theater Urbanism

Download or read book Grand Theater Urbanism written by Charlie Qiuli Xue and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-07-04 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the phenomenon and trend of cultural buildings by investigating 10 typical cities in China from the first, second, and third tiers, and from the Chinese diaspora. Each grand theater design was the result of a high-profile international competition and created by global architects in collaboration with Chinese design institutes. The national and international significance of these iconic projects lies in the fact that they not only reflect the dynamics of global design ideas, but also represent a particular historical moment in China’s modernization process. The development, histories, and purposes of constructing cultural buildings are carefully outlined and colorfully presented. Given China’s tremendous population, the development trajectory of its urban construction will provide insights for other regions that hope to embark on the high-speed track in the 21st century. “In 'Grand Theater Urbanism', Professor Charlie Xue and his team document China’s current shift towards a culture of consumption and leisure, symbolized by the construction of multi-use Grand Theaters in major cities. 'Grand Theater Urbanism' reveals the unexpected variety and complexity of this contemporary cultural drive in a series of exemplary chapters with highly detailed, local, case studies.” --Professor David Grahame Shane, Columbia University, New York "Jane Jacobs likened city life to a performance. This book goes a stage further and analyses the actual performance spaces within cities in China. In doing so it makes a valuable connection between urban design and the cultural life in cities. This is an important and often forgotten dimension of urbanism and I heartily commend this book to readers.'" --Professor Matthew Carmona, The Bartlett, University College London

Download or read book The Urbanization of Opera written by Anselm Gerhard and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1998-08-15 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do so many operas end in suicide, murder, and death? Why do many characters in large-scale operas exhibit neurotic behaviors worthy of psychoanalysis? Why are the legendary grands operas - much celebrated in their time - so seldom performed today?

Download or read book The Emerging Public Realm of the Greater Bay Area written by Miodrag Mitrašinović and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-07-29 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through illustrated case studies and conceptual re-framings, this volume showcases ongoing transformations in public space, and its relationship to the public realm more broadly in the world’s most populous urban megaregion—the Greater Bay Area of southeastern China—projected to reach eighty million inhabitants by the year 2025. This book assembles diverse approaches to interrogating the forms of public space and the public realm that are emerging in the context of this region’s rapid urban development in the last forty years, bringing together authors from urbanism, architecture, planning, sociology, anthropology and politics to examine innovative ways of framing and conceptualizing public space in/of the Greater Bay Area. The blend of authors’ first-hand practical experiences has created a unique cross-disciplinary book that employs public space to frame issues of planning, political control, social inclusion, participation, learning/education and appropriation in the production of everyday urbanism. In the context of the Greater Bay Area, such spaces and practices also present opportunities for reconfiguring design-driven urban practice beyond traditional interventions manifested by the design of physical objects and public amenities to the design of new social protocols, processes, infrastructures and capabilities. This is a captivating new dimension of urbanism and critical urban practice and will be of interest to academics, students and practitioners interested in urbanization in China.

Download or read book Intercultural Aesthetics in Traditional Chinese Theatre written by Wei Feng and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-06-11 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the transformation of traditional Chinese theatre’s (xiqu) aesthetics during its encounters with Western drama and theatrical forms in both mainland China and Taiwan since 1978. Through analyzing both the text and performances of eight adapted plays from William Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, and Samuel Beckett, this book elaborates on significant changes taking place in playwriting, acting, scenography, and stage-audience relations stemming from intercultural appropriation. As exemplified by each chapter, during the intercultural dialogue of Chinese and foreign elements there exists one-sided dominance by either culture, fusion, and hybridity, which corresponds to the various facets of China’s pursuit of modernity between its traditional and Western influences.

Download or read book Exporting Chinese Architecture written by Charlie Qiuli Xue and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-08-18 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book studies the unexplored history of China-aided architecture erected in the developing world since the 1950s. By 2019, over 1,000 buildings had been delivered to more than 160 countries, including parliament houses, convention centers, stadiums, gymnasiums, theaters, schools, hospitals, libraries, railways, and stations. These projects, which have played a significant role in promoting economic transformation, cultural engagement and social and environmental well-being, have largely been overlooked or misunderstood by the international community. Why did China donate so many foreign-aid buildings? How were these buildings built in the remote land of developing countries with intricate influences and limited resources? Have they helped modernize the recipient countries? The authors of this book use a wide range of representative projects built in different historic periods and geographical locations as case studies to address the above questions from various perspectives. This book fills an enormous gap in modern architecture in China and the world. It offers architectural students and scholars in various disciplines the necessary knowledge on "diplomatic architecture"; informs architects the appropriate methods of cross-border design and low-tech building; teaches government officials the best practice of donating and receiving foreign-aid buildings; and enhances public awareness of cultural diversity in Asia, Africa, Oceania, and Latin America. With abundant first-hand materials, historical pictures, and drawings, the book is a must-read for those who are interested in modern architecture and developmental aid in the world. China’s architecture abroad, notably in Africa and Asia, has been perceived with both fascination and anxiety. Based on a wealth of sources often difficult to access for scholars from outside China, this book links the history and present of China’s architectural mobilities in ways that will stimulate new debates in architectural history and urban studies. - Łukasz Stanek, Professor of Architectural History, The University of Manchester, UK

Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Infrastructure Design written by Joseph Heathcott and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-01-31 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Handbook of Infrastructure Design explores the multifaceted nature of infrastructure through the global lens of architectural history. Infrastructure holds the world together. Yet even as it connects some people, it divides others, sorting access and connectivity through varied social categories such as class, race, gender, and citizenship. This collection examines themes across broad spans of time, raises questions of linkage and scale, investigates infrastructure as phenomenon and affect, and traces the interrelation of aesthetics, technology, and power. With a diverse range of contributions from 33 scholars, this volume presents new research from regions including South and East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, South America, North America, Western Europe, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union. This extraordinary group of authors bring close attention to the materials, functions, and aesthetics of infrastructure systems as these unfold within their cultural and political contexts. They provide not only new knowledge of specific artifacts, such as the Valens Aqueduct, the Hong Kong waterfront, and the Pan-American Highway, but also new ways of conceptualizing, studying, and understanding infrastructure as a worlding process. The Routledge Handbook of Infrastructure Design provides richly textured, thoroughly evidenced, and imaginatively drawn arguments that deepen our understanding of the role of infrastructure in creating the world in which we live. It is a must-read for academics and students.

Download or read book Urban Infrastructuring written by Deljana Iossifova and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-04-18 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about urban infrastructuring as the processes linking infrastructural configurations and their components with other social, ecological, political, or otherwise defined systems as part of urbanisation and globalisation in the Global South. It suggests that infrastructuring is essential to urbanisation and that it is entangled with socio-spatio-ecological transformations that often have negative outcomes over time. Furthermore, it argues that infrastructuring requires an ethical positioning in research and practice in order to enhance infrastructural sustainability in the face of intersecting environmental, social and economic crises. “Urban Infrastructuring” is developed in three parts. First, it identifies infrastructural entanglements across various urban and urbanising settings in the Global South. Second, it highlights some of the damaging processes and outcomes of urban infrastructuring and argues that the absence, presence and transformation of infrastructure in the Global South (re-)produces socioecological injustice in the short- and long term. Third, the book argues for a shift of infrastructuring agendas towards more just and sustainable interventions. It suggests that an ethico-politics of care should be embedded in systems approaches to infrastructuring in both research and practice. The edited volume contains contributions from authors with backgrounds in a variety of academic disciplines from the natural and social sciences, engineering and the humanities. It provides valuable insights for anyone concerned with the study, design, planning, implementation and maintenance of urban infrastructures to enhance human well-being and sustainability. It will be of interest to researchers and urban decision-makers alike.