Owen Hatherley | |
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Born | Southampton, Hampshire, England | 24 July 1981
Alma mater | Goldsmiths, University of London Birkbeck, University of London |
Occupations |
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Writing career | |
Subjects | |
Notable works | A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain The Ministry of Nostalgia |
Scientific career | |
Thesis | The Political Aesthetics of Americanism in Weimar Germany and the Soviet Union, 1919-34 (2011) |
Doctoral advisor | Esther Leslie |
Website | twitter |
Owen Hatherley (born 24 July 1981 in Southampton, England) is a British writer and journalist based in London who writes primarily on architecture, politics and culture.
Hatherley was born in Southampton in 1981, growing up in a 1930s suburban estate. He describes his parents as "trots" who were members of Militant. [2] [3] At the age of 12, he moved to the Flowers Estate in Bassett Green, which he disliked, later saying: "I couldn't wait to get out of the sodding place, and the pitched roofs and front gardens didn’t exactly relieve the unpleasantness." [3] When he was 16, he read England’s Dreaming by Jon Savage, which inspired him to move to London to study. [4] He studied at Goldsmiths, University of London, graduating in 2001. [5] He then received a PhD from Birkbeck, University of London in 2011. [6] His supervisor was Esther Leslie. [7]
Hatherley started a blog, The Measures Taken, [8] in 2005. [9] He would go on to publish pieces elsewhere, including articles for Socialist Worker from 2006 to 2008, articles for New Humanist since 2007, [10] and articles for Building Design from 2008 to 2014. [11]
Hatherley's first book, Militant Modernism, was published by Zero Books in 2009. The Guardian described the book as an "intelligent and passionately argued attempt to 'excavate utopia' from the ruins of modernism" and an "exhilarating manifesto for a reborn socialist modernism". [12] Icon described the book as "sparky, polemical and ferociously learned" although it "falters a little towards the end"; [13] while Jonathan Meades in the New Statesman described the book as a "deflected Bildungsroman of a very clever, velvet-gloved provocateur nostalgic for yesterday's tomorrow, for a world made before he was born, a distant, preposterously optimistic world which, even though it still exists in scattered fragments, has had its meaning erased, its possibilities defiled" and Hatherley "as a commentator on architecture...in a school of one". [14] The journal Planning Perspectives suggested that the book "nicely explores the irony of the potential status of the remains of future-oriented architecture and urban design as ‘modern heritage'". [15]
His book A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain , which was based on a series of articles he wrote for Building Design , was published by Verso in 2010. [16] Landscapes of Communism: A History Through Buildings, a history of communism in Europe told through the built environments of former socialist states, was published by Allen Lane in June 2015. [17] In 2018, he released two books, Trans-Europe Express with Allen Lane, and The Adventures of Owen Hatherley in the Post-Soviet Space with Repeater Books. [18]
Hatherley has written for Dezeen , Building Design , The Guardian , Icon , the London Review of Books , New Humanist , the New Statesman , Socialist Review , Socialist Worker , Dissent and Jacobin Magazine . He has maintained three blogs, Sit down man, you're a bloody tragedy, The Measures Taken and Kino Fist.
In January 2019, Hatherley joined Tribune magazine as the editor for its new Culture section. [19]
Hatherley has described himself as a communist "at least in the sense in which the word was used in The Communist Manifesto ". He wrote that "revolution might be a rather exciting thing, one that would transform the world, and transform space, for the better. Worth doing. Why not try it." [20]
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Charles Alexander Jencks was an American cultural theorist, landscape designer, architectural historian, and co-founder of the Maggie's Cancer Care Centres. He published over thirty books and became famous in the 1980s as a theorist of Postmodernism. Jencks devoted time to landform architecture, especially in Scotland. These landscapes include the Garden of Cosmic Speculation and earthworks at Jupiter Artland outside Edinburgh. His continuing project Crawick Multiverse, commissioned by the Duke of Buccleuch, opened in 2015 near Sanquhar.
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A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain is a book by the British writer Owen Hatherley, published by Verso Books in November 2010. The book is a critique of the architecture and urbanism of postmodern Britain, taking the form of a tour of British cities.
The Holyrood estate is a housing estate in Southampton, England. It was constructed as a new city district to replace a slum bombed in World War II, and designed by Lyons Israel Ellis, who later designed Wyndham Court. Owen Hatherley describes the estate as a "straightforward scattering of low and medium-rise Modernist blocks, using the soft-Brutalist vernacular of stock-brick and concrete." Hatherley praises the estate's layout over its aesthetic. The estate is situated between Queensway to the west and Threefield Lane to the east, and Bernard Street to the south and Lime Street to the north.
Wyndham Court is a block of social housing in Southampton, England. It was designed by Lyons Israel Ellis for Southampton City Council in 1966, and is located near Southampton Central station and the Mayflower Theatre. Wyndham Court includes 184 flats, three cafes or restaurants and 13 shops, and was completed in 1969.
The Moore Street electricity substation is an electrical substation in Sheffield, England, designed by Jefferson Sheard in 1968. The substation is an example of Brutalist architecture. Owen Hatherley describes it as "a shocking paroxysm of a building, an explosion in reinforced concrete, a bunker built with an aesthete's attention to detail, a building which is genuinely Brutalist in both senses of the term."
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According to the political theorist Alan Johnson, there has been a revival of serious interest in communism in the 21st century led by Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou.
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Mark Fisher, also known under his blogging alias k-punk, was an English writer, music critic, political and cultural theorist, philosopher, and teacher based in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. He initially achieved acclaim for his blogging as k-punk in the early 2000s, and was known for his writing on radical politics, music, and popular culture.
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The House for the Future, sometimes called House of the Future and more recently renamed Ty Gwyrdd, is a modern house located in the St Fagans National History Museum on the western edge of Cardiff, Wales. Completed in 2000, it was originally a showcase of the latest green building technologies, but was later transformed into an education centre. It was described by architectural writer Owen Hatherley as "a rather ambitiuous gesture for a place devoted to reconstructing the past".
Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work is a 2015 monograph by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, published by Verso Books.
Repeater Books is a publishing imprint based in London, founded in 2014 by Tariq Goddard and Mark Fisher, formerly the founders of radical publishers Zero Books, along with Etan Ilfeld, Tamar Shlaim, Alex Niven and Matteo Mandarini.
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