Out of print for almost a decade, we are thrilled to bring back one of our most requested hard-to-find titlesphilosopher and cultural theorist Paul Virilio's Bunker Archeology. In 1994 we published the first English-language translation of the classic French edition of 1975, which accompanied an exhibition of Virilio's photographs at the Centre Pompidou. In Bunker Archeology, urbanist Paul Virilio turns his attentionand camerato the ominous yet strangely compelling German bunkers that lie abandoned along the coast of France. These ghostly reminders of destruction and oppression prompted Virilio to consider the nature of war and existence, in relation to both World War II and contemporary times. Virilio discusses fortresses and military space in general as well as the bunkers themselves, including an examination of the role of Albert Speer, Hitler's architect, in the rise of the Third Reich.

Henri Duday is Director of Research for CNRS at the University of Bordeaux. The Archaeology of the Dead is based on an intensive specialist course in burial archaeology given by Duday in Rome in November 2004. The primary aim of the project was to contribute to the development of common procedures for excavation, data collection and study of Roman cemeteries of the imperial period. Translated into English by Anna Maria Cipriani and John Pearce, this book looks at the way in which the analysis of skeletons can allow us to re-discover the lives of people who came before us and inform us of their view of death. Duday throughly examines the means at our disposal to allow the dead to speak, as well as identifying the pitfalls that may deceive us.

A curated collection of some of the most powerful and awe-inspiring Brutalist architecture ever built This Brutal World is a global survey of this compelling and much-admired style of architecture. It brings to light virtually unknown Brutalist architectural treasures from across the former eastern bloc and other far flung parts of the world. It includes works by some of the best contemporary architects including Zaha Hadid and David Chipperfield as well as by some of the master architects of the 20th century including Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Kahn, Paul Rudolph and Marcel Breuer.

A critic of the art of technology, Paul Virilio has taught us that much media image is a strategy of war and that accident is becoming indistinguishable from attack. In these times of fierce conflict over which kind of capitalism is to take over the shrinking globe, and indeed which modernities we will live in during the twenty-first century, Paul Virilio is a significant contemporary theorist. But Virilio's work, originally published in French and stretching back to the 1950s, has until now been very difficult to access in full in English translation, available as it is in expensive little books or obscure catalogues and journals. The Paul Virilio Reader collects together for the first time readable extracts of Virilio's work from the entire range of his career. It is prefaced by an editorial introduction showing that Virilio has produced important - if controversial - 'theory at the speed of light' that can uncannily illuminate the impact of new information and communications technologies in a world which collapses time and distance as never before. Features* Extracts have been carefully selected to reflect the whole of Virilio's diverse career* A chronological ordering illustrates the development, and interconnectedness, of Virilio's work* Each extract is prefaced by a bibliographical and contextual commentary, and the book is completed by an innovative guide to reading Virilio.

Paul Virilio is known as the high priest of speed. His discourses on speed, military technology, and modernity are highly influential among urban and cultural theorists, but he has influenced the work of many in other fields as well, including media theory, international relations, art history, cultural politics, architecture, and peace studies, to name a few. The first authoritative study of the life and work of Virilio, Steve Redhead's Paul Virilio: Theorist for an Accelerated Culture explains and analyses Virilio's work, correcting many mistaken interpretations that have surfaced in the literature over the years. Although now retired from his position at the École Spéciale d'Architecture in Paris, Virilio remains an active political and cultural thinker and commentator with a significant catalogue of work stretching back to the 1950s. Redhead reviews Virilio's intellectual career, from his days hanging out in an architect's office in the 1960s to his recent creation of a major art foundation exhibition on 'the accident' in the wake of 11 September 2001. Paul Virilio: Theorist for an Accelerated Culture is a rigorous and accessible introduction to Virilio that places him in the pantheon of critical thinkers in today's accelerated culture.

Concrete has been used in arches, vaults, and domes dating as far back as the Roman Empire. Today, it is everywhere—in our roads, bridges, sidewalks, walls, and architecture. For each person on the planet, nearly three tons of concrete are produced every year. Used almost universally in modern construction, concrete has become a polarizing material that provokes intense loathing in some and fervent passion in others. Focusing on concrete’s effects on culture rather than its technical properties, Concrete and Culture examines the ways concrete has changed our understanding of nature, of time, and even of material. Adrian Forty concentrates not only on architects’ responses to concrete, but also takes into account the role concrete has played in politics, literature, cinema, labor-relations, and arguments about sustainability. Covering Europe, North and South America, and the Far East, Forty examines the degree that concrete has been responsible for modernist uniformity and the debates engendered by it. The first book to reflect on the global consequences of concrete, Concrete and Culture offers a new way to look at our environment over the past century.

In the years of reconstruction and economic boom that followed the Second World War, the domestic sphere encountered new expectations regarding social behaviour, modes of living, and forms of dwelling. This book brings together an international group of scholars from architecture, design, urban planning, and interior design to reappraise mid-twentieth century modern life, offering a timely reassessment of culture and the economic and political effects on civilian life. This collection contains essays that examine the material of art, objects, and spaces in the context of practices of dwelling over the long span of the postwar period. It asks what role material objects, interior spaces, and architecture played in quelling or fanning the anxieties of modernism’s ordinary denizens, and how this role informs their legacy today.