Verden For Noah

Noah's Ark

From Noah's Ark to Diller + Scofidio's “Blur” Building, a distinguished art historian maps new ways to think about architecture's origin and development. Trained as an art historian but viewing architecture from the perspective of a “displaced philosopher,” Hubert Damisch in these essays offers a meticulous parsing of language and structure to “think architecture in a different key,” as Anthony Vidler puts it in his introduction. Drawn to architecture because it provides “an open series of structural models,” Damisch examines the origin of architecture and then its structural development from the nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries. He leads the reader from Jean-François Blondel to Eugène Viollet-le-Duc to Mies van der Rohe to Diller + Scofidio, with stops along the way at the Temple of Jerusalem, Vitruvius's De Architectura, and the Louvre. In the title essay, Damisch moves easily from Diderot's Encylopédie to Noah's Ark (discussing the provisioning, access, floor plan) to the Pan American Building to Le Corbusier to Ground Zero. Noah's Ark marks the origin of construction, and thus of architecture itself. Diderot's Encylopédie entry on architecture followed his entry on Noah's Ark; architecture could only find its way after the Flood. In these thirteen essays, written over a span of forty years, Damisch takes on other histories and theories of architecture to trace a unique trajectory of architectural structure and thought. The essays are, as Vidler says, “a set of exercises” in thinking about architecture.

Noah ofte de historie der diluvie ofte zundvloedt ten tijden Noae; ...

Odysséen om mennesket

Denne bog handler om de historier, mennesket igennem tiderne har fortalt om sig selv, og om de fantastiske forskningspræstationer, der ligger bag historierne. Bogen kommer tæt på forholdet mellem religion og videnskab. Den kommer også ind på de drabelige kampe, lærde gennem tiderne har udkæmpet om, hvordan mennesket kan være opstået og har udviklet sig. En af de mest spektakulære og langvarige kampe fandt sted om det såkaldte Piltdownfund og kostede mange deres karriere og videnskaben sit fremskridt i mange, mange år derefter. Endelig stiller bogen skarpt på, hvordan en bestemt opfattelse af menneskets oprindelse førte både til slavehandel og nazisme.