Tracks: A Journey Through Metroland tells the story of Metroland and the development of suburbia that grew alongside the Metropolitan Railway. Originally the brainchild of eminent Victorians, the Metropolitan grew to become the queen of underground lines, eventually expanding to a point some fifty miles outside London. Author Kevin J. Last describes how the concept of Metroland was an aspiration for several levels of society, promising a better lifestyle well away from the deprivations of wartime. The idea that the working man could live comfortably outside the smoke in individually designed houses would mean that he could also thrive at work, largely due to the regular service offered by the new railway. This was quite exceptional in that, while nominally an underground line, most of the Mets route was above ground and, in length, went far beyond other similar lines, far out into the Buckinghamshire countryside. Not marked on any map, Metroland is as much a concept of the mind as a real place.
Building on the premise that landscapes provide a common ground where different kinds of knowledge may come together, this edited volume draws on a wide range of disciplines, including geology and geography, cultural anthropology and philosophy, architecture and art history. It suggests that the complex social and environmental crises of the 21st century cannot be understood independently of a historically constituted aesthetic approach to landscapes.Boulouki is a collective that deals with the traditional knowledge of building. Under the Landscape (Santorini and Therasia, 2021 2022), one of the collectives most important projects, comprised a participatory restoration, research into local materials, an exhibition and a symposium, and is the basis and starting point of this publication.
Throughout history, the force of gravity rendered the right angle sacrosanct in the world of architecture. However, as the 20th century dawned, the long-simmering diagonal motif finally arrived full force and upended the fields of architecture, design, and the fine arts. This book summarizes the authors 60-year study of this revolutionary geometric motif and highlights how it is tied to social upheavals and artistic movements. Once people understand the concept of Diagonality, they will begin to see its angled planes on street corners, in art museums, and possibly in everyday objects. Diagonality has been all around us but hidden in plain sight.