Wow! eBook
A New Kind of Bleak: Journeys Through Urban Britain
Author(s): Owen Hatherley (Author)
- Publisher: Verso
- Publication Date: April 9, 2013
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 400 pages
- ISBN-10: 1781680752
- ISBN-13: 9781781680759
Book Description
In a journey that begins and ends in the capital, but takes in Belfast, Aberdeen, Plymouth and Brighton, Hatherley explores modern Britain’s urban landscape and finds a short-sighted disarray of empty buildings, malls and glass towers. Yet while
A New Kind of Bleak anatomizes “broken Britain,” Hatherley also looks to a hopeful future and discovers fragments of what it might look like.Illustrated by Laura Oldfield Ford, author and artist of
Savage Messiah.Editorial Reviews
Review
“Hatherley has busily constructed a cult reputation as the angry young man of architectural criticism.”—
Guardian“Engaging, fearless and startlingly intelligent polemicist.”—
Time Out“Essential reading for anyone who ever feels their blood start to boil when they hear the word ‘regeneration.’”—Hari Kunzru
“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.”—Jonathan Meades
“Fierce and original.”—Andy Beckett,
Guardian“He writes with venom and flare … [It is] refreshing to see politics reintroduced to the architectural debate.”—Edwin Heathcote,
Financial Times“[A] bracing antidote to the faux-chumminess of so much British cultural discourse.”—Sukhdev Sandhu,
Icon“A timely counterpoint to Britain’s jubilee and Olympics self-congratulation … observed with a precision and fury to force you to open your eyes.”—
Metro
