Ornament as Crisis

Download or read book Ornament as Crisis written by Sarah McGaughey and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-11 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ornament as Crisis explores the ways in which the novels of Hermann Broch’s Sleepwalkers (Schlafwandler) trilogy participate in and employ the history of architecture and architectural theory. Beginning with the visual and architectural experiences of the figures in each novel, Sarah McGaughey analyzes the role of architecture in the trilogy as a whole, while discussing work by Broch’s contemporaries on architecture. She argues that The Sleepwalkers allows us to better understand how literature responds and contributes to social, theoretical, and spatial concepts of architecture. Ornament as Crisis guides readers through the spaces of Broch’s mdernist masterpiece and the architectural debates of his time.