A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain
Owen Hatherley (Author)
A Verso book
A darkly humorous architectural guide to the decrepit new
Britain that neoliberalism built.
Back in 1997, New Labour came to power amid much talk of regenerating the inner cities left to rot under successive Conservative governments. Over the next decade, British cities became the laboratories of the new enterprise economy: glowing monuments to finance, property speculation, and the service industry—until the crash.
In A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain, Owen Hatherley sets out to explore the wreckage—the buildings that epitomized an age of greed and aspiration. From Greenwich to Glasgow, Milton Keynes to Manchester, Hatherley maps the derelict Britain of the 2010s: from riverside apartment complexes, art galleries and amorphous interactive "centers," to shopping malls, call centers and factories turned into expensive lofts. In doing so, he provides a mordant commentary on the urban environment in which we live, work and consume. Scathing, forensic, bleakly humorous, A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain is a coruscating autopsy of a get-rich-quick, aspirational politics, a brilliant, architectural "state we're in."
Book Details
- Hardcover
- November 2010
-
ISBN 978-1-84467-651-4
- 6 × 8.5 in
/ 400 pages
- Territory Rights: USA and Dependencies and the Philippines.
Other Formats
-
Paperback
Endorsements & Reviews
“An exhilarating book. Owen Hatherley brings to bear a quizzing eye, venomous wit, supple prose, refusal to curry favor, rejection of received ideas, exhaustive knowledge and all-round bolshiness. He travels, self-consciously, in the famous footsteps of J. B. Priestley and Ian Nairn, and there can be no higher praise than to suggest that he proves himself their peer. This book is as much a marker for an era as English Journey and Outrage were.” — Jonathan Meades, author of Incest and Morris Dancing
“Angry, fiercely funny.... Essential reading for anyone who ever feels their blood start to boil when they hear the word 'regeneration'.” — Hari Kunzru, author of My Revolutions
Also by Owen Hatherley 
-
Hardcover
-
Paperback