Sightlines
A series of books on architecture
MACK is pleased to announce Sightlines, a new series of essays looking at architecture from distinct points of view, each taking the perspective of a particular entity, history, discipline, or form of writing.
Authored by a range of writers and practitioners, these books will look to question and refresh settled understandings of architecture: who it concerns, how it is historicised, and the ways it reflects and determines our lives.
Join us for our launch party in London on February 18—RSVP here.
Andrea Bagnato, Terra Infecta: Disease and the Italian Landscape
Since the birth of tourism, the cities and landscapes of Italy have been bywords for beauty and grandeur. But, at home and abroad, the same places have also been haunted by associations with disease and uncleanliness. In this gripping study, Andrea Bagnato shows how the modern quest for sanitation transformed Italy’s urban and rural landscapes, from the draining of the Venetian wetlands to the replanning of Naples. Spanning Italian unification and the aftershocks of Covid-19, and drawing on medical and architectural records as well as his own travels, Bagnato pieces together revelatory histories of community, health, and resistance to offer a new perspective on the making of modern Europe. See more here.
Kwan Queenie Li, Weeds: A Germinating Theory
Weeds defy phenomena that are taken to be immovable: walls, borders, histories, uses, and prescribed identities. They are registers of the real lives of cities – of disuse and neglect, but also freedom and porousness. Out-of-place by definition, they offer a new perspective on place itself, and the ways it shapes and is shaped by its inhabitants. This essay in image and text by artist and theorist Kwan Queenie Li takes a weed’s eye view as it travels from Jerusalem to Shanghai, Varanasi to Berlin, Cairo to Singapore, learning from these unintended but ubiquitous urbanites to see cities as undefined, evolving, and replete with opportunity. See more here.
Future titles include an oral history of a collaborative housing project, a consideration of the ways buildings are used by animals, a lyrical reflection on walking and architecture, and a book on proportion.
For updates on Sightlines and more architecture books and events, sign up for MACK’s Architecture Briefing here.
Events
Sightlines Launch Party: February 18
The Horse Hospital, London (free rsvp)
Weeds book launch: February 17
Kwan Queenie Li & Kelly Ma in conversation at Head Hi, NYC (free rsvp)
Kingdom of the Sick, The Architecture and Topography of Disease: February 19
Andrea Bagnato & Oliver Basciano in conversation at Barbican Centre, London (tickets)
Weeds book launch: February 26
Kwan Queenie Li in conversation at AA Bookshop, London
Terra Infecta lecture: March 19
Andrea Bagnato, Danae Io & Joyce Joumaa in conversation at Sans Serriffe, Amsterdam
Terra Infecta book launch: March 26
Andrea Bagnato at Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal
Terra Infecta book launch: April 2
Andrea Bagnato at Center for Art, Research and Alliances, NYC
Further events to be announced in Chicago, Zurich, Milan, Venice, and Annandale-on-Hudson.
