ACADEMIC BOOK REVIEW – BOOK TITLE
BOOK R EVIEW
THE A NESTHETIC A S A N E LEMENT T O P ERSUADE A ND B LOCK O UR S ENSES
Trama 1999, vol.1, page 50 https://www.megustaleer.com/editoriales/trama/ALl
Leach, Neil, The Anaesthetics of architecture, MIT Press, London, 1999, 193, hardback, $ 29.95 T. ISBN: 0262621266
REVIEWED BY: Chávez Salazar, Maria Belen, Perez Sandoval Estefanía Elizabeth mchavez.arq@uisek.edu.ec, eperez.arq@uisek.edu.ec.
INTRODUCTION Theorist like Guy Debord in his "Society of Spectacle" in 1967, he explains his academic support from a sociological basis in which society is an entity of spectacle. Based on this, Baudrillard exposes his theory where he explains that contemporary culture is dominated by simulation and hyperreality, a situation that allows the image to become the new reality as a virtual world. On the other hand, Simmel shows how the accelerated nature of the metropolis produces a series of shocks in the stimulation of the inhabitant, therefore, it creates a defense against this artificial environment. Furthermore, as a theoretical sociological basis, Walter Benjamin's theory talks about the dangers of the aestheticization of politics in fascism, which they trigger in a fascist architecture. The context of the book “The anaesthetic of architecture” exposes the influence of social changes in architecture based on theories and texts previously exposed. Leach starts from sociological studies in order to understand social behavior influenced by social media and social trends such as consumerism. Additionally, Leach analyzes the relationship between the media and human activities in order to understand how an external agent can influence other behaviors. Hence, after understanding relationships and their theories of studies mentioned, Leach generates a radical argument which mentions that society has been fully aestheticized through saturation and intoxication with images (media) producing an anesthetic effect as manifested in the loss of criticality and senseless consumption of everything. Therefore, Leach takes aesthetics as an anasthetizing medium that covers the real value and purpose of the object; for example, he denounces how architects begin to obsess over the production of images (object aesthetics) completely losing the intention to communicate the architectural purpose. Here the aesthetics numb the senses causing users a false perception of architectural value. Additionally, he mentions that currently the aesthetics of architectural projects have been used as a commercial medium, linking them with the media and completely disassociating aspects such as the architectural foundations that enrich the design of spaces, therefore creating meaningless spaces losing meaning of time and the soul of space. To conclude, the book despite of being short exposes in a clear, concise and objective way the author's argument about anaesthetics in architecture. This emphasized in the book´s structure cause its organization by chapters with specific topics allows an easy understanding of the main idea, because the topic is focused and directed from beginning to end.
BOOK REVIEW Neil Leach's book "The anastic of architecture" is a short text with 89 page whose central topic is developed around the social effects given by consumerism reflected in architecture. The base of study is focused on sociology taking as a starting point the social problems of contemporary cities. Owing to it is a text that talks about architecture the way in which Leach interconnects topics with different approaches becomes very interesting and generates new knowledge. For example of this connection of topics is the word "anesthetic" which tells us about anesthesia as a social effect of consumerism and aesthetics as the relationship of perception of the beautiful and the ugly, so this resulting in a critique of new forms of architectural approaches. Additionally, it clearly shows the ways in which society responds to different stimuli, which in the end translate into architectural spaces that are a physical sample of the evolution of societies. Therefore, it is a book that is directed especially for people involved in the field of architecture and urban planning. As a book for academic reading, it is considered pertinent for people who go through the first years of the architecture and urbanism career since it is a book that allows us to see the architectural object as a non-isolated element which reflects society and its evolution through time. On the other hand, as it is a text focused on society, it has a clear language without technical words which allows it to be read, interpreted and understood by the general public and in turn, generates readers' awareness as it internalizes contemporary social problems which are easily recognized and appropriated by anyone who is part of a society Therefore, the structure of the book is clear and understandable because it has a linear reading logic divided into chapters that include 3 general topics: theoretical bases (3 chapters), author's argument or thesis (1 chapter) and the example of the author's argument (1 chapter) . In the first chapter entitled "The saturation of the image" describes the contemporary environment of the cities and refers to the saturation of the media as an inhibitor of the individual's perception towards their environment making them blind and not perceive the essence of the more objects of its aesthetics. This chapter shows social studies and examples of contemporary architecture. The second chapter entitled "Architecture as a fascist" shows the changes or social consequences from the evolution of cities. This chapter takes as reference Baudrillard who mentions that structuralism allows to describe the dynamics of consumption based on the acquisition of signs before objects. In the third chapter entitled "the aesthetics of intoxication" deals with the modern metropolitan individual based on the theory of Georg Simmel, he exposes the evolution of the human being and the new ways of life linked to technological advances. Also,George emphasizes the great number of current media that cloud the perception of the individual towards his environment. The fourth chapter entitled "The architecture of the catwalk" is the only chapter where the author's thesis is mentioned which explains a novel and invasive critique of the consequences of the growing concern for images in contemporary architectural culture. Finally the fifth chapter entitled "Seduction, the last resort" exemplifies Leach's theory by using a scenario known to many as Las Vegas. It should be emphasized that for the correct understanding of the idea of the book it should be read in an orderly manner since it is the only way to understand the author's position On the other hand, regarding the methodology used by the author to communicate his ideas, it is considered that he tries to be as methodical as possible because he defends his position in a critical way based on technical postulates sociological studies which are quantifiable and verifiable, thus giving more truth to his criticism.It should be noted that Universidad Internacional SEK – 2020-3
some of the base studies used as references to write this book were carried out more than 50 years ago, which allows us to verify the social changes and the behavior of society in a given space and time. Additionally, the use of referenced bibliographic citations helps readers to have more confidence in the content of the text as well as allowing readers to find and sort the source of these citations more easily. In addition, Leach uses images as means to synthesize information and accentuate clear ideas from the text, so this methodology is not boring and makes the book not a monotonous text of letters, thus probating the reader with interest and making the information much easier to receive and process, as well as ensuring that the text information remains in the reader's knowledge for much longer. To conclude, Leach built the theoretical basis of the book as an ideas composing in order to made a specific reflection about interest topics. Therefore this ideas which he generates came from a compilation of architectural references. On the other hand, the titles of each chapter are designed to be impressive to the reader For example, he takes Georg Simmel theory and use strong words like intoxication in the title of chapter to refer on this, then these words attract the reader's attention and make them interested in this subject covered chapter to chapter to want to read the book more and more. CONCLUSION
In the final analysis, Neil Leanch exposes his theory as simple as possible. He talks about how images influence in architecture as marketing product and how it influence in the costumer´s felling, decisions on buy something or not and how they appreciate the space. Consequently, the basis of the theory is the society and how it reacts by differents external influences produces by other people like architects. for example some architects try to make up the real meaning of their building with the marketing purpose, they try to make it more attractive and showy. The book structured is divide in five chapters which involve three global topics: the first one talks about the theoretical bases of the book, the second one talk about the author's argument that it explain in a thesis and the last one talks about the examples of the authors argument, in this part Leach tries to be the most explicit as possible because he wants to transmit his critic in the clear way. Leach uses architectural referents as real examples to explain how he generate his critique, also he analyzes this references in a theoretical way because he is an theoretical architect so, he try to contrast ideologies of different theoricals of diverse sciences to conjugate and compare the theories which first purpose is to discern the information because it is analyzing society in an imperative way to see the evolution of society over time. As a result the book expose a critic of how in 1999 the society turned into a consumer society over time, that show the way that architect was built because it crossed of having a space concept as to create livable spaces to just a commercial concept. Thus this book is recommended for students of architecture especially students for the begin years because it let to understand how the society influence in the form and the concept of architecture. REFERENCES
Caniggia, G. and Maffei, G. C. (2001) Architectural composition and building typology: interpreting basic building (Alinea, Firenze).
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Kropf, K. (2001) ‘Conceptions of change in the built environment’, Urban Morphology 5, 29-42. Scheer, B. C. (2010) The evolution of urban form: typology for planners and architects (American Planning Association, Chicago, IL). Todorovic, D. (2008) ‘Gestalt principles’, Scholarpedia (doi:10.4249/scholarpedia.5345) accessed 21 July 2019 Whitehand, J. W. R., Gu, K., Conzen, M. P. and Whitehand, S. M. (2014) ‘The typological process and the morphological period: a cross-cultural assessment’, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 41, 512-33.
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