Book recommendation; Olympic Architecture: Beijing 2008

Olympic Architecture Beijing 2008 2

 

From the publisher:

Without a doubt the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games will not only attract worldwide attention for the sporting contests, but also for the architectural settings and arenas. The exemplary and prestigious stadiums will remain of interest long after the games are over. Olympic Architecture, Beijing 2008 is a comprehensive survey of all the venues for the 29th Olympic Games. It provides detailed insights into the specialized stadium architecture with an abundance of visual material such as bird’s-eye views, illustrations of details, plans/elevations/sections, and rendering drawings. Part One of the volume is an overview written by Ma Guoxin, architectural master and member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Part Two gives descriptions of the individual Olympic venues, including 15 newly-built ones (e.g. the Main Olympic Project – Bird’s Nest by Herzog & De Meuron, and the National Aquatics Center – Water Cube by the China Construction Design International (Shenzhen) of CSCEC, PTW Architects, Australia, and Arup Australasia), 14 reconstructed buildings (e.g. Olympic Sports Center Stadium, Olympic Sports Center Gymnasium, Workers’ Stadium) and 6 temporary structures (e.g. Olympic Green Hockey Field, Wukesong Baseball Field).

Product details

Olympic Architecture
Beijing 2008
Birkhäuser
314 p.
325 color, 132 b/w ills, 132 drawings and plans
22,0 x 30,5 cm
Hardcover
EUR 39.90 / GBP 29.90 net, excl. local VAT
ISBN 978-3-7643-8834-8
English

 

Read more: Designboom

Book recommendation; Spectacular Mexico – Design, Propaganda, and the 1968 Olympics

Spectacular Mexico
From the publisher:

In the wake of its early twentieth-century civil wars, Mexico strove to present itself to the world as unified and prosperous. The preparation in Mexico City for the 1968 Summer Olympics was arguably the most ambitious of a sequence of design projects that aimed to signal Mexico’s arrival in the developed world. In Spectacular Mexico, Luis M. Castañeda demonstrates how these projects were used to create a spectacle of social harmony and ultimately to guide the nation’s capital into becoming the powerful megacity we know today.

Not only the first Latin American country to host the Olympics but also the first Spanish-speaking country, Mexico’s architectural transformation was put on international display. From traveling exhibitions of indigenous archaeological artifacts to the construction of the Mexico City subway, Spectacular Mexico details how these key projects placed the nation on the stage of global capitalism and revamped its status as a modernized country. Surveying works of major architects such as Félix Candela, Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, Ricardo Legorreta, and graphic designer Lance Wyman, Castañeda illustrates the use of architecture and design as instruments of propaganda and nation branding.

Forming a kind of “image economy,” Mexico’s architectural projects and artifacts were at the heart of the nation’s economic growth and cultivated a new mass audience at an international level. Through an examination of one of the most important cosmopolitan moments in Mexico’s history, Spectacular Mexico positions architecture as central to the negotiation of social, economic, and political relations.

Luis M. Castañeda is assistant professor of art history at Syracuse University.

 

Contents

Abbreviations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Exhibitionist State

1. Diplomatic Spectacles: Mexico Displays Itself at World’s Fairs
2. Archaeologies of Power: Assembling the Museo Nacional de Antropología
3. Image Machines: Mexico ’68’s “Old” and “New” Sports Facilities
4. Total Design of an Olympic Metropolis
5. Subterranean Scenographies: Time Travel at the Mexico City Metro

Epilogue: Olympic Afterlives

Notes
Bibliography
Index

 

$35.00 paper ISBN 978-0-8166-9079-4
$105.00 cloth ISBN 978-0-8166-9076-3
344 pages, 94 b&w photos, 10 color plates, 7 x 9, November 2014

 

 

https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/spectacular-mexico