Overview

Boredom is a ubiquitous feature of modern life. Endured by everyone, it is both cause and effect of modernity, and of situations, spaces and surroundings. As such, this book argues, boredom shares an intimate relationship with architecture—one that has been seldom explored in architectural history and theory. Boredom, Architecture, and Spatial Experience investigates that relationship, showing how an understanding of boredom affords us a new way of looking at and understanding the modern experience. It reconstructs a series of episodes in architectural history, from the 19th century to the present, to survey how boredom became a normalized component of the everyday, how it infiltrated into the production and reception of architecture, and how it serves to diagnose moments of crisis in the continuous transformations of the built environment. Erudite and innovative, the work moves deftly from architectural theory and philosophy to literature and psychology to make its case. Combining archival material, scholarly sources, and illuminating excerpts from conversations with practitioners and thinkers—including Charles Jencks, Rem Koolhaas, Sylvia Lavin, and Jorge Silvetti—it reveals the complexity and importance of boredom in architecture.

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9781350148130

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Reviews

This is an innovative introduction to a new subject which would be of interest to a readership of researchers and architectural theoreticians. A significant contribution to architectural theory, it comes at a time when alternative ways of addressing modernist history and theory are gaining interest fast. --Dr Timothy Brittain-Catlin, Director for the Centre of Research in European Architecture (CREAte), University of Kent Writing about boredom requires a special skill for sure and I believe that the book for the most part accomplishes this admirably. . . . As to the market, this is no textbook, but a serious work of scholarship that will appeal primarily to the history/theory world. It is also interdisciplinary and so will appeal to philosophy and literature. All in all, I strongly recommend publication. It is an outstanding work, thoughtful, meaningful and provocative. --Mark Jarzombek, Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture, MIT

Author Information

Christian Parreno is Assistant Professor of History and Theory of Architecture at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador.

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