[Themaintainers] new book - Maintenance Architecture

Tue Sep 13 14:08:01 EDT 2016

Lawrence - 

Fascinating site, thanks for sending.  It reminds me in some ways of a 1999 book by Bill Bamberger and Cathy Davidson, Closing: The Life and Death of An American Factory (https://www.amazon.com/Closing-Life-Death-American-Factory/dp/0393319229).  

Andy

> On Sep 12, 2016, at 6:22 PM, Lawrence Greenspun <lawrence.greenspun at cgu.edu> wrote:
> 
> Hi, All.
> 
> I was talking about the Maintainers with my wife today, and she brought up the photographer Matthew Christopher, who has a work out called Abandoned America: an Autopsy of the American Dream.
> 
> Here is the link <http://www.abandonedamerica.us/>, if you're interested--some pretty striking images.
> 
> Lawrence
> 
> Lawrence Greenspun, Senior Manager of Public Sector Engagement, 909.607.8755 <tel:909.607.8755> @DruckerInst
> 
>  YESTERDAY/
>  TODAY/
>  MONDAY*
> 
>   Drucker Institute
> * What will you do on Monday that's different?
> 
> From: themaintainers-bounces at lists.stevens.edu <mailto:themaintainers-bounces at lists.stevens.edu> <themaintainers-bounces at lists.stevens.edu <mailto:themaintainers-bounces at lists.stevens.edu>> on behalf of Lee Vinsel <lee.vinsel at gmail.com <mailto:lee.vinsel at gmail.com>>
> Sent: Monday, September 12, 2016 2:15:42 PM
> To: themaintainers at lists.stevens.edu <mailto:themaintainers at lists.stevens.edu>
> Subject: Re: [Themaintainers] new book - Maintenance Architecture
>  
> 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 <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 <mailto: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 <mailto:mavery at amherst.edu>
> 413-542-5519 <tel:413-542-5519>
> 
> Robert Frost Library
> Amherst College
> Amherst, MA 01002
> 
> http://acpress.amherst.edu <http://acpress.amherst.edu/>
> @amcollpress
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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 <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 <http://leevinsel.com/>
> Twitter: @STS_News
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