Christian Parreno - Böcker

Boredom is a ubiquitous feature of modern life. Endured by everyone, it is both cause and effect of modernity, and of situations, spaces and surroundings. As such, this book argues, boredom shares an intimate relationship with architecture—one that has been seldom explored in architectural history and theory. Boredom, Architecture, and Spatial Experience investigates that relationship, showing how an understanding of boredom affords us a new way of looking at and understanding the modern experience. It reconstructs a series of episodes in architectural history, from the 19th century to the present, to survey how boredom became a normalized component of the everyday, how it infiltrated into the production and reception of architecture, and how it serves to diagnose moments of crisis in the continuous transformations of the built environment. Erudite and innovative, the work moves deftly from architectural theory and philosophy to literature and psychology to make its case. Combining archival material, scholarly sources, and illuminating excerpts from conversations with practitioners and thinkers—including Charles Jencks, Rem Koolhaas, Sylvia Lavin, and Jorge Silvetti—it reveals the complexity and importance of boredom in architecture.

Situated at the crossroads of the foreign and the vernacular, Quito—the capital of Ecuador, with its world-famous yet understudied built environment—stands as a testament to architectural in-betweenness. This book interweaves history and theory to explore how near and far influences have shaped its unique character.Case studies present diverse and unexpected episodes in the architectural history of this city, spanning the intricacies of its topography, the design of modernist houses and the appropriation of the motel typology. Together, they show how fluxes of different origins have created an architecture marked by diversity and interrelation. To theoretically frame these investigations, this anthology readdresses the notions of the global and the local, examining their tension and unavoidable coexistence, while introducing the in-between as a phenomenon with many variations and embodiments, increasingly referenced in architectural thinking. This book not only furthers the evolution of these concepts but also demonstrates their value as tools for analyzing the architectures of Latin America and the Global South more broadly.With contributions from both international experts and a new generation of Ecuadorian scholars, Modern Architecture of Quito is an indispensable resource for students and researchers investigating the development of architectural modernism in Latin America.

Situated at the crossroads of the foreign and the vernacular, Quito—the capital of Ecuador, with its world-famous yet understudied built environment—stands as a testament to architectural in-betweenness. This book interweaves history and theory to explore how near and far influences have shaped its unique character.Case studies present diverse and unexpected episodes in the architectural history of this city, spanning the intricacies of its topography, the design of modernist houses and the appropriation of the motel typology. Together, they show how fluxes of different origins have created an architecture marked by diversity and interrelation. To theoretically frame these investigations, this anthology readdresses the notions of the global and the local, examining their tension and unavoidable coexistence, while introducing the in-between as a phenomenon with many variations and embodiments, increasingly referenced in architectural thinking. This book not only furthers the evolution of these concepts but also demonstrates their value as tools for analyzing the architectures of Latin America and the Global South more broadly.With contributions from both international experts and a new generation of Ecuadorian scholars, Modern Architecture of Quito is an indispensable resource for students and researchers investigating the development of architectural modernism in Latin America.

This book collects the lifelong research on boredom by American psychologist Augustin de la Peña (1942-2021). It focuses on the experience of boredom—and other similar states, including ennui, melancholy, laziness, interest, attention, and entertainment—and its associated behaviors. Offering an interdisciplinary chronicle of boredom, from Antiquity to the present, special attention is paid to its daily experience as a ubiquitous phenomenon that informs cultural and political actions that continue to shape our society. Dr. de la Peña describes the obsolescence of the Western Commonsense View of Reality to propose a Developmental Psychophysiological Approach to Reality, reconceptualizing boredom. The book theorizes the condition as both logical and emotional, an axis that has defined the sensibility of the modern era. This is a volume edited posthumously by Josefa Ros Velasco and Christian Parreno in homage to Augustin’s work and his invaluable contribution to the establishment of the field of boredom studies.