[Themaintainers] new book - Maintenance Architecture

[Lee Vinsel]

Thanks, Margy. This is great.

We had at least one presentation on architecture and maintenance at the
first Maintainers conference. The one I'm most thinking of by Hugh Lester
on designing prisons with maintainability in mind was later became a post
for the Maintainers blog:
http://themaintainers.org/blog/2016/5/12/escape-from-maintenance

BTW, everyone, we will be bringing the Maintainers blog back to life in the
next few weeks. We have 3-4 posts already planned. If you have any ideas or
pieces of writing you'd like to share, please let us know.

Best,

Lee

On Mon, Sep 12, 2016 at 9:33 AM, Marguerite Avery <mavery at amherst.edu>
wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I thought this list might be interested in a new book from MIT Press - Maintenance
> Architecture <https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/maintenance-architecture> by
> Hilary Sample. (A description of the work follows this message.) Although
> this work was acquired by the architecture editor rather than through the Infrastructures
> series <https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/series/infrastructures> (part of
> my former STS list), this indicates a heightening  awareness and acceptance
> of such scholarship.  That said, I’ve not yet had a chance to read it and
> cannot personally vouch for it.
>
> Margy
> ————————————————
>  Marguerite Avery
> Executive Editor
> Amherst College Press
> mavery at amherst.edu
> 413-542-5519
>
> Robert Frost Library
> Amherst College
> Amherst, MA 01002
>
> http://acpress.amherst.edu
> @amcollpress
>
> *Show your support for Open Access Publishing on Social Media!*
> Follow us on Twitter:  @amcollpress |  @lever_press
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>
>
> *Maintenance Architecture*
>
>
>
> By Hilary Sample <https://mitpress.mit.edu/authors/hilary-sample>
>
> *Overview*
>
> Maintenance plays a crucial role in the production and endurance of
> architecture, yet architects for the most part treat maintenance with
> indifference. The discipline of architecture values the image of the new
> over the lived-in, the photogenic empty and stark building over a messy and
> labored one. But the fact is: homes need to be cleaned and buildings and
> cities need to be maintained, and architecture no matter its form cannot
> escape from such realities. In *Maintenance Architecture*, Hilary Sample
> offers an inventive examination of the architectural significance of
> maintenance through a series of short texts and images about specific
> buildings, materials, and projects. Although architects have seldom choose
> to represent maintenance—imagining their work only from conception to
> realization—artists have long explored subjects of endurance and permanence
> in iconic architecture. Sample explores a range of art projects—by artists
> including Gordon Matta-Clark, Jeff Wall, and Mierle Laderman Ukeles—to
> recast the problem of maintenance for architecture. How might architectural
> design and discourse change as a building cycle expands to include
> “post-occupancy”?
>
>
> Sample looks particularly at the private home, exhibition pavilion, and
> high-rise urban building, giving special attention to buildings constructed
> with novel and developing materials, technologies, and precise detailing in
> relation to endurance. These include Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion House
> (1929), the Lever House (1952), the U.S. Steel Building (1971), and the
> O-14 (2010). She considers the iconography of skyscrapers; maintenance
> workforces, both public and private; labor-saving technology and devices;
> and contemporary architectural projects and preservation techniques that
> encompass the afterlife of buildings. A selection of artworks make the
> usually invisible aspects of maintenance visible, from Martha Rosler’s *Cleaning
> the Drapes* to Inigo Manglano-Ovalle’s *The Kiss*.
>
> https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/maintenance-architecture
>
>


-- 
Assistant Professor
Program on Science and Technology Studies
College of Arts and Letters
Stevens Institute of Technology
Hoboken, NJ 07030
leevinsel.com
Twitter: @STS_News
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