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Clean Living Under Difficult Circumstances:Finding a Home in the Ruins of Modernism
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How to make a fairer, more just city.
From the grandiose histories of grand state building projects to the minutiae of street signs and corner pubs, from the rebuilding of capital cities to the provision of the humble public toilet, Clean Living in Difficult Circumstances argues for the city as a socialist project. Combining memoir, history, portraits of particular places and things, Hatherley argues for those who have tried to create and imagine a better modernity, both in terms of architecture, such as Zaha Hadid or Ian Nairn, in terms of the urban space, like Jane Jacobs or Marshall Berman, and the way we see the world more widely, like Mark Fisher or Adam Curtis. Together, these outline a vision of the city as both as a place of political argument and dispute, and as a space of everyday experience, one that we shape as much as it shapes us.
Reviews
A brave, incisive, elegant and erudite writer, whose books dissect the contemporary built environment to reveal the political fantasies and social realities it embodies.
Demonstrates the qualities of empathy and social conscience, combined with acute judgement, that confirms Owen Hatherley to the only true heir today of the great architectural critic Ian Nairn.
Owen Hatherley brings to bear a quizzing eye, venomous wit, supple prose, refusal to curry favor, rejection of received ideas, exhaustive knowledge and all-round bolshiness. He travels, self-consciously, in the famous footsteps of J. B. Priestley and Ian Nairn, and there can be no higher praise than to suggest that he proves himself their peer.
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Owen Hatherley’s eye is so acute, his architectural expertise so lightly deployed, his sympathies so wide and generous, that reading it is like a tour of a whole world of unsuspected curiosities and richnesses conducted by a guide whose wit is as refreshing as his knowledge is profound
, [for Landscapes of Communism] -
No one else writes so clearly yet with such elegiac intensity about the symbiosis that exists between history and the built environment, or the lives that are caught, mangled and realised in its midst.
, [for The Adventures of Owen Hatherley in the Post-Soviet Space] -
The clear-sighted vision, analysis and optimism of a writer like Hatherley shines through when we need it most.
Wallpaper* -
An antidote to the market-dominated colonisation of our cities. [Hatherley] celebrates the civic values that drove politicians, civil servants and architects to build good quality affordable homes, well-stocked public libraries, hospitals and schools, where people had universal access to healthcare and education.
, Irish Times -
A valuable exploration of the many modernist projects that have defined our society and politics.
, Morning Star -
Modernism’s most prolific and persuasive contemporary advocate ... One of the joys of Hatherley’s writing is that he so often focuses on the unusual and eccentric.
, Literary Review