Direkt zum Inhalt

Warenkorb

  • Julia Bee, Irina Gradinari, Katrin…

    digital:gender – de:mapping affect. Eine spekulative…

  • Vladimir Safatle

    Zynismus und das Scheitern der Kritik

  • Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Nancy

    Der Nazi-Mythos

  • Boris Groys

    Zum Kunstwerk werden

  • Luise Rellensmann, Alexander Stumm (Hg.)

    Die Abrissfrage. Fundamente Ökologisches Bauen No 1

  • Marlon Miguel, Elena Vogman (eds.)

    Psychotherapy and Materialism. Essays by François…

  • Olya Kuzovkina

    Road Works (version 1.0)

  • Nadi Abusaada, Wesam Al Asali (eds.)

    Arab Modern. Architecture and the Project of Independence

  • Luc Boltanski, Arnaud Esquerre

    The Making of Public Space. News, Events and Opinions in…

  • Nick Couldry

    The Space of the World. Can Human Solidarity Survive Social…

  • Mark Stoll

    Profit. An Environmental History

  • Guillaume Paoli

    Etwas Besseres als der Optimismus

  • Barragán Foundation

    Barragán Outside Barragán

  • Leila Taylor

    Sick Houses. Haunted Homes and the Architecture of Dread

  • Christina Köchling (Hg.)

    Ästhetik der Technik. Drei Ökohäuser in den 1970-90er Jahre

  • Prof. Dr. Richard Woditsch (Hg.)

    Chronologie einer Ideologie. Architektur-Biografien im…

  • Wenke Seemann

    Wenke Seemann. Utopie auf Platte

  • Stefan Heidenreich

    Attraktion und Mitmacht. Wie Kunst dem Kult des Exklusiven…

  • Aylin Akyildiz, Karoline Fahl, Steffen…

    Einrichten in der Normalität – Wie Kinder und Jugendliche…

  • Henning Lundkvist

    Columns

  • Joseph Vogl

    Meteor. Versuch über das Schwebende

  • Sezgin Boynik, Tom Holert

    Engström/Farocki: About Narration (1975). Materials,…

  • Derek Jarman

    Derek Jarman. A Finger in the Fishes Mouth

  • Jean-Pierre Chupin

    Analogical Thinking in Architecture. Connecting Design and…

  • Scott Colman

    Ludwig Hilberseimer. Reanimating Architecture and the City

  • Ammar Azzouz

    Domicide. Architecture, War and the Destruction of Home in…

  • Marko Jobst, Naomi Stead (eds.)

    Queering Architecture. Methods, Practices, Spaces,…

  • Marina Tabassum

    Khudi Bari. A social project by Marina Tabassum Architects…

  • IDEA Magazine

    IDEA 408. Pixels Speak: Worlds of Tiny Dots and Design…

  • IDEA Magazine

    IDEA 407. Towards a Future Bound to Print Media: Those Who…

  • IDEA Magazine

    IDEA 406. Ikki Kobayashi - Life through Design Drawings

  • IDEA Magazine

    IDEA 405. Sneaking a Look. Cross Sections, Floor Plans…

  • Ludwig Heimbach (Hg.)

    Mäusebunker und Hygieneinstitut. Eine Berliner…

  • Pascal Gielen

    Trust. Building on the Cultural Commons

  • Irene Revell, Sarah Shin (eds.)

    Bodies of Sound. Becoming a Feminist Ear

  • Ilaria Marotta, Andrea Baccin &…

    The Uncanny House

  • Enzo Traverso

    Gaza Faces History

  • Irene V. Small

    The Organic Line

  • Sandra Schäfer

    Contested Landscapes

  • Nina Franz

    Militärische Bildtechniken. Von der frühen Neuzeit bis ins…

  • Volker Pantenburg

    Einfachheit ohne Vereinfachung. Zur Praxis Harun Farockis

  • Justin Barton, Steve Goodman, Maya B.…

    Sonic Faction. Audio Essay as Medium and Method

  • Torsten Andreasen, Emma Sofie Brogaard…

    Finance Aesthetics. A Critical Glossary

  • Lucas Ferraço Nassif

    Unconscious/Television

  • Terry Farrell, Adam Nathaniel Furman

    Postmodernism. Architecture That Changed Our World

  • Natasha Aruri, Katleen De Flander,…

    Critical Mapping for Municipalist Mobilization. Housing…

  • Nida Abdullah, Chris Lee, Xinyi Li (…

    Through Witnessing. Threading the critiquing, making,…

  • Cecilia Casabona, Ginevra Petrozzi (Eds…

    Death Design Data

  • Miriam Rasch, Jojanneke Gijsen, Harma…

    hands on research for artists, designers & educators

  • Rosi Braidotti

    Posthuman Knowledge and the Critical Posthumanities

  • Anna Colin

    Alternative Pedagogical Spaces: From Utopia to…

  • Annett Jahn, Ulrike Mönnig (Hg.)

    An den Rändern taumelt das Glück. Die späte DDR in der…

  • Silvia Franceschini, Nikolaus Hirsch,…

    Pre-Architectures

  • David Toop

    Two-Headed Doctor. Listening For Ghosts in Dr. John's…

  • Thordis Arrhenius, Ellen Braae, Guttorm…

    Architecture and Welfare. Scandinavian Perspectives

  • NIcole Schweitzer (Hg.)

    Uriel Orlow. Forest Times

  • Michael Schäfer

    Invasive Links

  • Daniel Berndt, Susanne Huber, Christian…

    ambivalent work*s. queer perspectives and art history

  • Jorge Silvetti, Hg. von Nicolás Delgado…

    Large, Lasting and Inevitable. Jorge Silvetti in Dialogues…

  • Giulio Bettini, Daniel Penzis

    Typostruktur. Sehnsucht nach architektonischer Relevanz

  • Laura U. Marks

    The Fold. From Your Body to the Cosmos

  • Emmanuele de Donno

    Construction of the Universe - Artists' Magazines and…

  • Julia Grosse, Jenny Schlenzka

    Rirkrit Tiravanija: On Making Less

  • Harry Vogt,  Martina Seeber (Hg.)

    Radio Cologne Sound. Das Studio für Elektronische Musik des…

  • Marion Hirte, Daniel Ott, Manos…

    Schnee von morgen. Statements zum Musiktheater der Zukunft

  • Oana Stănescu, Chase Galis (Hg)

    Cover me softly

  • Claire Bishop

    Merce Cunningham's Events: Key Concepts

  • Viyaleta Zhurava

    FIGUREN / SHAPES

  • Diskursiv (Hg.)

    Diskursiv No. 2, Colors

  • dérive

    dérive N° 98, Eigentum (Jan-Mar 2025)

  • Viktoria Schabert

    Eileen Gray's Museum

  • Arch+ Zeitschrift für Architektur und…

    Arch+ 258. Urbane Praxis

  • Oxana Gourinovitch

    Raising the Curtain. Operatic Modernism and the Soviet…

  • Alexander Eisenschmidt

    Felix Candela From Mexico City to Chicago. Rise and Fall of…

  • Lydia Kallipoliti

    Histories of Ecological Design. An Unfinished Cyclopedia

  • Anders Engberg-Pedersen

    Martialische Ästhetik

  • Matthias Ballestrem, Katharina Benjamin…

    Constructive Disobedience

  • Sofie De Caigny, Hülya Ertas, Bie…

    As Found. Experiments in Preservation

  • !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Janez Fakin Janša

    (un)real data ☁️ – (🧊)real effects

  • Docomomo International (Ed)

    Modernism in Africa

  • Daniela Hamaui (Ed.)

    Archivio Magazine N°10. The Design Issue

  • Derk Loorbach, Véronique Patteeuw, Léa-…

    It's About Time. The Architecture of Climate Change

  • Noemi Biasetton

    Superstorm

  • Steven Henry Madoff

    Why I Do What I Do - Global Curators Speak

  • Leopoldina Fortunati, Carla Lonzi

    Folio G: Gendered Labour and Clitoridean Revolt

  • Carlos Moreno

    Die 15-Minuten-Stadt. Ein Konzept für lebenswerte Städte

  • Julian Rose

    Building Culture

  • Sandro Mezzadra, Brett Neilson

    The Rest and the West. Capital and Power in a Multipolar…

  • Charlotte Malterre-Barthes (Ed.)

    On Architecture and the Greenfield

  • Ulrike Brückner, Bianca Herlo

    Design als Haltung. Handlungsfelder jenseits des…

  • Folke Köbberling

    WOLLBAU. Wolle - Eine unterschätzte Ressource.

  • Melanie Franke (Hg.)

    Selbsterzählungen und Umbruchspuren im Œuvre von Künstler:…

  • Stellan Gulde (Ed.)

    Banal Buildings. Anthology

  • Franz Liebl

    Steakholder Management. Bausteine eines Culinary Turn in…

  • Urszula Kozminska, Nacho Ruiz Allen

    Time Matters

  • Anja Kaiser, Rebecca Stephany

    Glossary of Undisciplined Design

  • Ursula K. Le Guin

    Steering the Craft. A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing…

  • Helmut Draxler

    Was tun? Was lassen? Politik als symbolische Form

The Sympathy of Things

The Sympathy of Things. Ruskin and the Ecology of Design
‘We have to find our way back to beauty,’ writes Lars Spuybroek in the introduction to The Sympathy of Things. In this book Spuybroek argues that we must ‘undo’ the twentieth century – the age of minimalism, abstraction and genocides. This leads him to the aesthetical insight of the nineteenth-century English art critic John Ruskin, from which he distils pointers for our time.
In Ruskin’s work, Lars Spuybroek has discovered a treasure trove of concepts in which the beauty of things is determined by a combination of variation, imperfection and fragility. Through these qualities, things once again earn our sympathy and friendship. A sympathy, Spuybroek argues, that not only occurs between human beings and things but also between things themselves: “Sympathy is what things feel when they shape each other.” Like Ruskin, Spuybroek seeks a world that is dedicated to composition and beauty, where things are governed by what Ruskin called the “law of help.”
Step by step, Spuybroek addresses Ruskin’s five central dual themes: the Gothic and work, ornament and matter, sympathy and abstraction, the picturesque and time, and ecology and design. He wrests these concepts from the Victorian context and compares them with ideas of later aestheticians and philosophers. The Sympathy of Things is the log of an exploratory journey into beauty. Spuybroek writes in a clear, accessible language that is by turns precise, elegant and moving, zooming in on the fascinating details of Gothic architecture, complex African textile patterns and the wallpaper designs of William Morris. The Sympathy of Things will leave no one unaffected. The book is not a mere critique but rather the first fully thought-out, positive aesthetics of a new generation who face the task of sustainably designing the 21st century.
Lars Spuybroek is Professor of Architectural Design and holder of the Thomas Ventulett Distinguished Chair of Architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. He is the author of The Architecture of Continuity (2008) and Research & Design: Textile Tectonics (2011).
"We are living through a change in paradigm, in the age of the flexible machine, where the concepts of matter, spirituality and design are under re-negotiation and we need such fearless thought to jolt complacency. If Spuybroek, like Ruskin, does not shake your design and aesthetic concepts, you haven’t understood him.” - Charles Jencks, author of The Language of Post-Modern Architecture
“The Sympathy of Things is a stirring call to action; an amazing reconstruction of the ideas of the Victorian sage John Ruskin; and, above all, a visionary look at the inner life of things. Lars Spuybroek makes the case that aesthetics is first philosophy, and proposes a radical new aesthetics for the digital age .” - Steven Shaviro, DeRoy Professor of English, Wayne State University, Detroit and author of Without Criteria


Lars Spuybroek
The Sympathy of Things
NAi, 2011, 978-90-5662-827-7