On the secret life and future of street furniture in both the contemporary imagination and the city streets themselves
There is a layer of the public architecture that has become so familiar that we barely notice it. Street furniture has the capacity to define a city, to locate it and to anchor us within it. Benches, bollards, streetlights, signs, barriers, postboxes and phone booths constitute a network of goods between architecture and the body. In this book, Edwin Heathcote looks at the cultural impact of street furniture, using photography as a measure of how these things have become indispensable components of the cityscape. Focusing mainly on London but including New York, Paris and Budapest, Heathcote uses history, personal reflection and the lenses of photographers to examine the status of these urban artifacts. Edwin Heathcote (born 1968) is a writer living and working in London. He has been the architecture and design critic at the Financial Times since 1999 and is the author of over a dozen books, including The Meaning of Home.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Widewalls
Balasz Takac
Another example of the author's capabilities to meticulously dissect the public sphere by taking into consideration the history of photography. The proposal that the language of street furniture can be mapped through the glaze of photography and contemporary culture makes his new manuscript vibrant and fresh reading for the curious mind.
Wallpaper*
Rosa Bertoli
Through a succession of historical photography, reportage and artworks accompanied by insightful text with history and clever observation, the history of street furniture emerges as a touching history of humanity in all its facets.
The RIBA Journal
Hugh Pearman
A paean to the ubiquitous, overlooked and magnificently evocative.
New York Review of Architecture
Philippa Snow
Deliciously obsessive and meticulously detailed, his discursive, sometimes personal compendium of 101 alphabetized texts is a snapshot of a time during which street life became all of life.
FORMAT: Hbk, 6.75 x 9.5 in. / 288 pgs / 284 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $45.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $63 ISBN: 9781912122530 PUBLISHER: HENI Publishing AVAILABLE: 5/16/2023 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA ONLY
On the secret life and future of street furniture in both the contemporary imagination and the city streets themselves
There is a layer of the public architecture that has become so familiar that we barely notice it. Street furniture has the capacity to define a city, to locate it and to anchor us within it. Benches, bollards, streetlights, signs, barriers, postboxes and phone booths constitute a network of goods between architecture and the body.
In this book, Edwin Heathcote looks at the cultural impact of street furniture, using photography as a measure of how these things have become indispensable components of the cityscape. Focusing mainly on London but including New York, Paris and Budapest, Heathcote uses history, personal reflection and the lenses of photographers to examine the status of these urban artifacts.
Edwin Heathcote (born 1968) is a writer living and working in London. He has been the architecture and design critic at the Financial Times since 1999 and is the author of over a dozen books, including The Meaning of Home.
