NEW IN PAPERBACK: A GUIDE TO THE NEW RUINS OF GREAT BRITAIN
BY OWEN HATHERLEY
PUBLISHED: 18TH JULY 2011
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OWEN HATHERLEY SPEAKING EVENTS IN LONDON
July 14, 2011 , 6.45pm
Institute of Contemporary Arts
Join Patrick and Owen Hatherley as they discuss what they think urban regeneration has meant in the past few decades and their views on the future of our towns and cities under the current government and beyond.
http://www.versobooks.com/events/175-modern-ruins-with-owen-hatherley-and-patrick-keiller
July 27, 2011, 7.00pm
Housmans, 5 Caledonian Road , King's Cross, London N1 9DX
To launch the paperback edition of his book, Owen Hatherley will be at Housmans to share his journey through the wreckage of London and give us his cutting take on the aspirational politics that resulted in a now-blighted urban landscape.
http://www.versobooks.com/events/194-owen-hatherley-the-new-ruins-of-london
For more information and to book:
http://www.versobooks.com/books/534-a-guide-to-the-new-ruins-of-great-britain
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Erudite, radical and viciously funny, Owen Hatherley’s compelling modern-day tour of the country’s towns and cities – from Southampton to Liverpool – throws open a window onto early 21st society in the UK through the prism of its architectural adventures and follies.
From riverside apartment complexes, art galleries and amorphous interactive ‘centres’ to shopping malls, call centres and factories turned into expensive lofts, Hatherley maps the now-decrepit Britain of the 2010s, the most emphatic expression of neoliberalism in crisis. Hatherley finds the imaginative, utopian dynamism of postwar architecture reduced to a level depth of dullness: the homogenous, flat-pack architecture of “aspirational” consumerism; communal housing replaced by city pied-à-terres for yuppies and students.
When New Labour came to power in 1997, all the talk was of the regeneration of inner cities left to rot under successive Conservative governments. Over the next decade, British cities became the laboratories of the new enterprise economy: of finance, property speculation and the service industry. As Britain hurtles towards the Olympics, Hatherley sets out to explore the architectural wreckage of the age of greed and aspiration.
Hatherley wanders through Greenwich and Glasgow, Milton Keynes to Manchester, providing a mordantly funny commentary on the urban environment in which we live, work and consume. Scathing, forensic, bleakly humorous, A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain is a coruscating autopsy of a get-rich-quick, aspirational politics: a brilliant, architectural “state we're in.”
Launch event, 14 July 2011, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London: ‘Modern Ruins with Owen Hatherley and Patrick Keiller’
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PRAISE FOR A GUIDE TO THE NEW RUINS OF GREAT BRITAIN
“A book of finespun rage ... a book that had to be written. Wittily, bitterly, pithily, mostly accurately, Hatherley tells it how it is.” Rowan Moore, OBSERVER
“Roomy and intellectually sophisticated… It is bold and original, and it may change how you see British cities.” Andy Beckett, GUARDIAN
“This is the real Britain, and Hatherley is the most informed, opinionated and acerbic guide you could wish for.” Hugh Pearman, SUNDAY TIMES
“Owen Hatherley is a fulminating critic-cum-flaneur... This is fear and loathing in Lost Albion riffed by a quainter version of Hunter S Thompson.” Jay Merrick, INDEPENDENT
“Compendious, erudite and witty… a man to watch.” Ken Worpole, OPENDEMOCRACY
“A serious left-field attempt to provoke thought and argument ... This is an important book that is entirely worthy of the arguments it sets out to provoke.” Patrick Wright, ARCHITECTURE TODAY
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OWEN HATHERLEY is the author of the acclaimed MILITANT MODERNISM, A DEFENCE OF MODERNISM AGAINST ITS DETRACTORS. He writes regularly on the political aesthetics of architecture, urbanism and popular culture for a variety of publications, including the GUARDIAN, THE NEW STATESMAN, BUILDING DESIGN, and FRIEZE. He blogs on political aesthetics at nastybrutalistandshort.blogspot.com
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ISBN: 978 1 84467 700 9 / $19.95 / £9.99 / $25.00CAN / Paperback / 408 pages
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For more information about A GUIDE TO THE NEW RUINS OF GREAT BRITAIN or to buy the book visit:
http://www.versobooks.com/books/534-a-guide-to-the-new-ruins-of-great-britain
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