'A great storyteller . . . you would be hard pushed to find a more
knowledgeable or entertaining [guide]' Icon
'Such an interesting book . . . I cannot recommend it enough.' Lauren
Laverne
In Dubai, a luxury apartment block is built in the shape of a giant
iPod. In China, President Xi Jinping denounces the trend of constructing
'bizarre' new buildings in wacky shapes and colours. In Cincinnati,
celebrity architect Zaha Hadid is paid millions to design a single
'iconic' structure - with the hope of single-handedly transforming the
region's ailing fortunes. These incidents are all part of the same
story: the rise of the age of spectacle.
Over the last fifty years, there has been a revolution in how our cities
operate. In The Age of Spectacle, Tom Dyckhoff tells the story of how
architecture became obsessed with the flashy, the monumental and the
ostentatious - and how we all have to live with the consequences.
Exploring cityscapes from New York to Beijing, and from Bilbao to
Portsmouth, Dyckhoff shows that we are not just witnessing a new kind of
building: we are living through a fundamental transformation in how our
urban spaces work. The corporate explosion of the last few decades has
fundamentally shifted the relationship between architects, politicians
and cities' inhabitants, fostering innovative new kinds of engineering
and design, but also facilitating ill-conceived vanity projects and
commercial power-grabs.
Timely, passionate and bursting with new ideas, The Age of Spectacle
is both an examination of how twenty-first century cities work, and a
manifesto for a radically new kind of urbanism. Our cities, Dyckhoff
shows, can thrive in the age of spectacle - but only if they engage us
not just with dazzling structures, but by responding to the needs of the
people who inhabit them.
'Engaging . . . The "iconic" building is the most obvious
architectural phenomenon of our age yet, somehow, no one has quite done
what Tom Dyckhoff does with The Age of Spectacle, which is to tell its
story clearly and plainly.' Rowan Moore, Observer
'First class. Finally, a book that nails the iconic movement - Tom
Dyckhoff's The Age of Spectacle is the book that I wish I had
written.' Simon Jenkins
'Unusually accessible [and] well argued.' Evening Standard
