Architecture and Ugliness - by Wouter Van Acker & Thomas Mical

Book Synopsis

Whatever 'ugliness' is, it remains a problematic category in architectural aesthetics - alternately vilified and appropriated, either to shock or to invert conventions of architecture.

This book presents eighteen new essays which rethink ugliness in architecture - from brutalism to eclectic postmodern architectural productions - and together offer a diverse reappraisal of the history and theory of postmodern architecture and design. The essays address both broad theoretical questions on ugliness and postmodern aesthetics, as well as more specific analyses of significant architectural examples dating from the last decades of the twentieth century, addressing the relation between the aesthetic register of ugliness and aesthetic concepts such as brutalism, kitsch, the formless, ad hoc-ism, the monstrous, or the grotesque.

Architecture and Ugliness not only documents the history of a postmodern anti-aesthetic through a diverse set of case studies, it also sheds valuable light on an aesthetic problem which has been largely overlooked in architectural discourse. It is essential reading for all students and scholars with an interest in postmodern architectural history, architectural theory and aesthetics.

Review Quotes

"A wonderfully rich and stimulating collection of essays, which plumbs the fraught nooks and crannies of the ugly's discursive terrain. Taken together, the detailed case studies build a satisfyingly variegated account of the complex play of fascination and repulsion that attends aberrant form and architecture's negotiations with it since the mid-twentieth century." --Mark Dorrian, Forbes Chair in Architecture, University of Edinburgh, UK

About the Author

Wouter Van Acker is chargé de cours (Associate Professor) and Chair of Architectural Theory at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium.

Thomas Mical is Professor of Architectural Theory and Head of the School of Art and Design of Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. He is the author of Surrealism and Architecture (2004).