Bangkok Utopia: Modern Architecture and Buddhist Felicities, 1910-1973 by Chua, Lawrence

Bangkok Utopia: Modern Architecture and Buddhist Felicities, 1910-1973

"Utopia" is a word not often associated with the city of Bangkok, which is better known for...
€157,49 EUR
€157,49 EUR
SKU: 9780824884604
Product Type: Books
Please hurry! Only 0 left in stock
Author: Lawrence Chua
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Subtotal: €157,49
10 customers are viewing this product
Bangkok Utopia: Modern Architecture and Buddhist Felicities, 1910-1973 by Chua, Lawrence

Bangkok Utopia: Modern Architecture and Buddhist Felicities, 1910-1973

€157,49

Bangkok Utopia: Modern Architecture and Buddhist Felicities, 1910-1973

€157,49
Author: Lawrence Chua
Format: Hardcover
Language: English

"Utopia" is a word not often associated with the city of Bangkok, which is better known for its disorderly sprawl, overburdened roads, and stifling levels of pollution. Yet as early as 1782, when the city was officially founded on the banks of the Chao Phraya river as the home of the Chakri dynasty, its orientation was based on material and rhetorical considerations that alluded to ideal times and spaces. The construction of palaces, monastic complexes, walls, forts, and canals created a defensive network while symbolically locating the terrestrial realm of the king within the Theravada Buddhist cosmos. Into the twentieth century, pictorial, narrative, and built representations of utopia were critical to Bangkok's transformation into a national capital and commercial entrep t. But as older representations of the universe encountered modern architecture, building technologies, and urban planning, new images of an ideal society attempted to reconcile urban-based understandings of Buddhist liberation and felicitous states like nirvana with worldly models of political community like the nation-state.

Bangkok Utopia outlines an alternative genealogy of both utopia and modernism in a part of the world that has often been overlooked by researchers of both. It examines representations of utopia that developed in the city--as expressed in built forms as well as architectural drawings, building manuals, novels, poetry, and ecclesiastical murals--from its first general strike of migrant laborers in 1910 to the overthrow of the military dictatorship in 1973. Using Thai- and Chinese-language archival sources, the book demonstrates how the new spaces of the city became arenas for modern subject formation, utopian desires, political hegemony, and social unrest, arguing that the modern city was a space of antinomy--one able not only to sustain heterogeneous temporalities, but also to support conflicting world views within the urban landscape.

By underscoring the paradoxical character of utopias and their formal narrative expressions of both hope and hegemony, Bangkok Utopia provides an innovative way to conceptualize the uneven economic development and fractured political conditions of contemporary global cities.

Author: Lawrence Chua
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Published: 02/28/2021
Pages: 296
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 2.10lbs
Size: 10.10h x 6.90w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780824884604

About the Author
Lawrence Chua is associate professor in the School of Architecture, Syracuse University.


This title is only available via back order

Returns Policy

You may return most new, unopened items within 30 days of delivery for a full refund. We'll also pay the return shipping costs if the return is a result of our error (you received an incorrect or defective item, etc.).

You should expect to receive your refund within four weeks of giving your package to the return shipper, however, in many cases you will receive a refund more quickly. This time period includes the transit time for us to receive your return from the shipper (5 to 10 business days), the time it takes us to process your return once we receive it (3 to 5 business days), and the time it takes your bank to process our refund request (5 to 10 business days).

If you need to return an item, simply login to your account, view the order using the "Complete Orders" link under the My Account menu and click the Return Item(s) button. We'll notify you via e-mail of your refund once we've received and processed the returned item.

Shipping

We can ship to virtually any address in the world. Note that there are restrictions on some products, and some products cannot be shipped to international destinations.

When you place an order, we will estimate shipping and delivery dates for you based on the availability of your items and the shipping options you choose. Depending on the shipping provider you choose, shipping date estimates may appear on the shipping quotes page.

Please also note that the shipping rates for many items we sell are weight-based. The weight of any such item can be found on its detail page. To reflect the policies of the shipping companies we use, all weights will be rounded up to the next full pound.

Related Products

Recently Viewed Products