Polar Inertia

Migrating Urban Systems

Ted Kane

Reyner Banham once observed that in Los Angeles “mobility outweighs monumentality.” What was true for the automobile is fast becoming true for the home. It is possible today to live on wheels, to be completely transient and yet remain completely connected. Noted contemporary architect Ted Kane takes a critical look at how city life predicated on total mobility and utterly dependent upon the corporate-controlled wireless world is expanding the meaning of urbanity while constricting the bedrock virtue of citizenship. It is possible today to live on wheels, to be completely transient and yet remain completely connected. In Polar Inertia, Ted Kane’s snapshot-like photographs accompanied by his critical writing examine the transformative qualities of cell phones, satellite dishes, RV’s, and taco trucks on urban form. An absolute “must have” handbook to anyone thinking of an alternative lifestyle while still connected to their Blackberry. Introduction by Greg Goldin.

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Ruins in the Netherlands XIX–XXI

Lara Almarcegui

For the purpose of this fascinating guide, a building is considered a ruin when its windows or doors are no longer intact or when walls or roofs have holes. The result: the building is exposed to the weather, to wind and rain, to invasions by wildlife and vegetation. Ruins in the Netherlands focuses on buildings that are in the process of the merging of building and nature. The buildings in this guide are not the idealized ruins of churches or cottages so beloved of the Romantic poets: most of them are at an earlier stage, more recently abandoned, though some are little more than a pile of rubble. The important thing to notice is that each ruin is open to all kinds of possibilities. A unique publication exploring the architectural ruins from our contemporary culture.

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