Listing 1 - 2 of 2 |
Sort by
|
Choose an application
"The Accidental Playground explores the remarkable landscape created by individuals and small groups who occupied and rebuilt an abandoned Brooklyn waterfront in Williamsburg. Without formal authority, capital, professional assistance, grand vision, consensus, or coordination with each other, these "vernacular" builders transformed a vacated waterfront railroad yard into a unique setting for recreation and creative endeavor. With the Manhattan skyline as its backdrop, the collapsing piers, eroded bulkhead, and remaining building foundations of the former Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal (BEDT) became the raw materials for various forms of waterside leisure and social spaces. Lacking predetermined rules governing its use, this waterfront evolved into the home turf for unusual and sometimes spectacular recreational, social, and creative subcultures. These included skateboarders who built a short-lived, but nationally renowned skatepark; a twenty-five-piece "public" marching band, fire performance troupes, and a variety of artists, photographers, and filmmakers. At the same time the site also served basic recreational needs of local residents. Collapsing piers became great places to catch fish, sunbathe, or take in the Manhattan skyline; the foundation of a demolished warehouse became an ideal place to practice music or skateboard; rubble-strewn earth became a compelling setting for film and fashion shoots; broken bulkhead became a beach; and thick patches of weeds dotted by ailanthus trees became a jungle. Drawing on a rich mix of documentary strategies including observation, ethnography, photography, and first-person narrative, Daniel Campo probes this accidental playground, allowing those who created it to share and examine their own narratives, perspectives, and conflicts. The multiple constituencies of this Williamsburg waterfront were surprisingly diverse, their stories colorful and provocative. When taken together, Campo argues, they suggest a radical reimagining of urban public space, the waterfront, and the practices by which they are created and maintained. The Accidental Playground, which treats readers to an utterly compelling story, is an exciting and distinctive contribution to the growing literature on the unplanned and the undesigned spaces and activities in cities today"--
Recreation --- Communities --- Waste lands --- Waterfronts --- Recreational use --- Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal. --- Brooklyn. --- Cultural studies. --- Do-it-yourself. --- Landscape Architecture. --- Public Space. --- Urban Leisure studies. --- Urban Parks. --- Urban Planning and Design. --- Urban ethnography. --- Urban nature. --- Waterfronts. --- Williamsburg.
Choose an application
Preserved buildings and historic districts, museums and reconstructions have become an important part of the landscape of cities around the world. Beginning in the 1970's, Tokyo participated in this trend. However, repeated destruction and rapid redevelopment left the city with little building stock of recognized historical value. Late twentieth-century Tokyo thus presents an illuminating case of the emergence of a new sense of history in the city's physical environment, since it required both a shift in perceptions of value and a search for history in the margins and interstices of a rapidly modernizing cityscape. Scholarship to date has tended to view historicism in the postindustrial context as either a genuine response to loss, or as a cynical commodification of the past. The historical process of Tokyo's historicization suggests other interpretations. Moving from the politics of the public square to the invention of neighborhood community, to oddities found and appropriated in the streets, to the consecration of everyday scenes and artifacts as heritage in museums, Tokyo Vernacular traces the rediscovery of the past-sometimes in unlikely forms-in a city with few traditional landmarks. Tokyo's rediscovered past was mobilized as part of a new politics of the everyday after the failure of mass politics in the 1960's. Rather than conceiving the city as national center and claiming public space as national citizens, the post-1960's generation came to value the local places and things that embodied the vernacular language of the city, and to seek what could be claimed as common property outside the spaces of corporate capitalism and the state.
Architecture --- Historic buildings --- Historic preservation --- Preservation, Historic --- Preservationism (Historic preservation) --- Cultural property --- Historic houses, etc. --- Historical buildings --- Buildings --- Monuments --- Historic sites --- Architecture, Western (Western countries) --- Building design --- Construction --- Western architecture (Western countries) --- Art --- Building --- Government policy --- History --- Conservation and restoration --- Protection --- Design and construction --- Tokyo (Japan) --- Architecture, Primitive --- anthropology. --- asian history. --- city life. --- close knit communities. --- crowded cities. --- culture. --- engaging. --- gardens. --- historic architectural preservation. --- historic districts. --- historical value. --- japan. --- material culture. --- modernizing cityscape. --- neighbors. --- physical environment. --- politics. --- preserved buildings. --- public space. --- regional japan. --- repeated destruction. --- retrospective. --- social history. --- sociology. --- spaces and architectures. --- suburban. --- suburbs. --- theoretical. --- tokyo. --- traditional landmarks. --- urban life. --- urban. --- urbanism. --- vernacular architecture.
Listing 1 - 2 of 2 |
Sort by
|