Boredom, Architecture, and Spatial Experience

Christian Parreno is Assistant Professor of History and Theory of Architecture at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador.

• List of IllustrationsPrefaceForeword by Iain BordenAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Boredom as Architecture 1. A Component of Modernity Differential Distances2. Fascination and Aversion 3. Søren Kierkegaard’s Babylonian Tower 4. Catherine Gore and Charles Dickens: Idle Restlessness/Restless Idleness 5. Blunting and Jading6. Coney Island, Misleading Structures Circular Trajectories7. A Unity of Disarray 8. Martin Heidegger’s Urge to Be at Home9. Oran, the Capital of Boredom 10. International Style Confusions: Sigfried Giedion 11. Los Angeles, Flat Enough Extended Thresholds12. Potential Architectures13. Andrew Benjamin’s Antithesis to Boredom14. Boredom in Domus15. Servitude and Liberalism: Russell Kirk 16. Charles Jencks, Rem Koolhaas, and the Generic17. Jorge Silvetti and Sylvia Lavin: Unamused Muses and Lying Fallow Epilogue: Architectures of Boredom BibliographyIndex

What if architectural creativity is not only grounded in knowledge and skill but equally in a state of mind, a mood? Improbable though the suggestion may be, this original and marvelously well-studied book shows that from the 19th century onward boredom became a force that focused concentration and compelled experimentation.