Overview

Back in 1997, New Labour came to power amid much talk of regenerating the inner cities left to rot under successive Conservative governments. Over the next decade, British cities became the laboratories of the new enterprise economy: glowing monuments to finance, property speculation, and the service industry-until the crash. In A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain, Owen Hatherley sets out to explore the wreckage-the buildings that epitomized an age of greed and aspiration. From Greenwich to Glasgow, Milton Keynes to Manchester, Hatherley maps the derelict Britain of the 2010s: from riverside apartment complexes, art galleries and amorphous interactive ""centers,"" to shopping malls, call centers and factories turned into expensive lofts. In doing so, he provides a mordant commentary on the urban environment in which we live, work and consume. Scathing, forensic, bleakly humorous, A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain is a coruscating autopsy of a get-rich-quick, aspirational politics, a brilliant, architectural ""state we're in.""

Full Product Details

9781844677009

Table of Contents

Reviews

In this angry, fiercely funny book, Owen Hatherley steps forward as the Pevsner of the PFI generation, an erudite, urbane guide to the Ballardian wreckage of millennial Britain. Essential reading for anyone who ever feels their blood start to boil when they hear the word 'regeneration'.A Hari Kunzru, author of My Revolutions An exhilarating book. Owen Hatherley brings to bear a quizzing eye, venomous wit, supple prose, refusal to curry favour, rejection of received ideas, exhaustive knowledge and all-round bolshiness. This book is as much a marker for an era as English Journey and Outrage were.A Jonathan Meades

Author Information

Owen Hatherley was born in 1981. He writes regularly on architecture and cultural politics for Architects Journal, Architectural Review, Icon, Guardian, London Review of Books and New Humanist and is the author of several books.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available