Critical Care: Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet

Angelika Fitz, Elke Krasny, Architekturzentrum Wien

MIT Press, Apr 30, 2019 - Architecture - 304 pages

How architecture and urbanism can help to care for and repair a broken planet: essays and illustrated case studies.

Today, architecture and urbanism are capital-centric, speculation-driven, and investment-dominated. Many cannot afford housing. Austerity measures have taken a disastrous toll on public infrastructures. The climate crisis has rendered the planet vulnerable, even uninhabitable. This book offers an alternative vision in architecture and urbanism that focuses on caring for a broken planet. Rooted in a radical care perspective that always starts from the given, in the midst of things, this edited collection of essays and illustrated case studies documents ideas and practices from an extraordinarily diverse group of contributors.

Focusing on the three crisis areas of economy, ecology, and labor, the book describes projects including village reconstruction in China; irrigation in Spain; community land trust in Puerto Rico; revitalization of modernist public housing in France; new alliances in informal settlements in Nairobi; and the redevelopment of traditional building methods in flood areas in Pakistan. Essays consider such topics as ethical architecture, land policy, creative ecologies, diverse economies, caring communities, and the exploitation of labor. Taken together, these case studies and essays provide evidence that architecture and urbanism have the capacity to make the planet livable, again.

Essays by
Mauro Baracco, Sara Brolund de Carvalho, Jane Da Mosto, Angelika Fitz, Hélène Frichot, Katherine Gibson, Mauro Gil-Fournier Esquerra, Valeria Graziano, Gabu Heindl, Elke Krasny, Lisa Law, Ligia Nobre, Meike Schalk, Linda Tegg, Ana Carolina Tonetti, Kim Trogal, Joan C. Tronto, Theresa Williamson, Louise Wright

Case studies
aaa atelier d'architecture autogérée, Ayuntamiento BCN, Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury/Urbana, Cíclica [Space.Community.Ecology] + CAVAA arquitectes, Care+Repair Tandems Vienna (including Gabu Heindl, Zissis Kotionis + Phoebe Giannisi, rotor, Meike Schalk + Sara Brolund de Carvalho, Cristian Stefanescu, Rosario Talevi and many others), Colectivo 720, Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, EAHR Emergency Architecture & Human Rights, Fideicomiso de la Tierra del Caño Martín Peña CLT, Anna Heringer, Anupama Kundoo, KDI Kounkuey Design Initiative, Lacaton & Vassal, Yasmeen Lari, muf architecture/art, Paulo Mendes da Rocha + MMBB, RUF Rural Urban Framework, Studio Vlay Streeruwitz, De Vylder Vinck Taillieu, Xu Tiantian/DnA_Design and Architecture, ZUsammenKUNFT Berlin

Copublished with Architekturzentrum Wien

Contents

• Care: 25
• Ecology: 43
• Labor: 77
• Economy: 107
• Case Studies: 139
• Acknowledgments: 282
• List of Photos: 286
• Bibliography: 287
• Index: 293

About the author

Angelika Fitz is Director of Architekturzentrum Wien. Her curatorial projects include We-Traders: Swapping Crisis for City and Actopolis: The Art of Action (both for the Goethe Institute). She is the coeditor of Assemble: How to Build. Fitz and Elke Krasny are curators of the exhibition at Architekturzentrum Wien, Critical Care: Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet.

Elke Krasny is Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Her curatorial and editorial projects include The Force is in the Mind: The Making of Architecture and Hands-on Urbanism 1850–2012: The Right to Green (both for the Architekturzentrum Wien, with the latter shown at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale). Krasny and Angelika Fitz are curators of the exhibition at Architekturzentrum Wien, Critical Care: Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Critical Care: Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet
• Editors: Angelika Fitz, Elke Krasny, Architekturzentrum Wien
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: MIT Press, 2019
• ISBN: 0262536838, 9780262536837
• Length: 304 pages
• Subjects: Architecture / Urban & Land Use Planning; Political Science / Public Policy / Environmental Policy