This week I thought I would let the authors speak to their intentions. If they draw you in, please stop by the New Books Table at APL to explore the works further.

Wharton, Annabel Jane. Architectural Agents: The Delusional, Abusive, Addictive Lives of Buildings. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015.

According to Wharton:

The case made for agency in this book is social and political, not legal or economic…Things and places work differently in different cultures and at different times. Indeed, the sample cases in this volume are presented to argue that the power of sites lies in the specificity of their location in the physical and social landscape and in the distinctive marks they make on their settings. Now, as in the past, buildings may be immobile, but they are by no means passive. (xix)

Kanekar, Aarati. Architecture’s Pretexts: Spaces of Translation. New York: Routledge, 2015.

According Kanekar:

This book will attempt to address issues concerning the intelligibility of compositional structure and formal meaning in architecture. In order to focus on this, the forthcoming chapters concentrate on specific architectural projects that are either inspired by and/or based upon works in other arts,  or specific conceptual ideas that are shared between some architectural project and works in another art form which can help understand architecture (3).