Building/Object addresses the space in between the conventional objects of design and the conventional objects of architecture, probing and reassessing the differences between the disciplines of design history and architectural history Each of the 13 chapters in this book examine things which are neither object-like nor building-like, but somewhere in between - air conditioning; bookshelves; partition walls; table-monuments; TVs; convenience stores; cars - exposing particular political configurations and resonances that otherwise might be occluded. In doing so, they reveal that the definitions we make of objects in opposition to buildings, and of architecture in opposition to design, are not as fundamental as they seem. This book brings new aspects of the creative and experiential into our understanding of the human environment.

AcknowledgmentsList of ContributorsForeword, Adrian Forty (University College London, UK)Introduction, Mark Crinson and Charlotte Ashby (Birkbeck, University of London, UK)Part 1: Grey Zones1. A Good Shelf: The Material Culture of Reading in Colonial India, Swati Chattopadhyay (University of California-Santa Barbara, USA) 2. Power of Television in Modern Turkish Homes, Meltem Ö. Gürel (Yasar University, Turkey) 3. Bin, Bag, Box: The Architecture of Convenience, Louisa Iarocci (University of Washington, USA) 4. Atmospheric Exchanges: Air-conditioning, Thermal Material Culture, and Public Housing in Singapore, Jiat-Hwee Chang (National University of Singapore) 5. Beyond Buildings and Objects: Reyner Banham's Freeway Ecology, Richard J. Williams (University of Edinburgh, UK) Part 2: Dissolved Distinctions 6. Designing for a Nocturnal Banquet, Versailles 1674, Panagiotis Doudesis (University of Cambridge, UK) 7. Printed Objects and Ready-Mades in the Architectural Magazine (1834-38), Anne Hultzsch (ETH Zurich, Switzerland) 8. Entangled Histories of Buildings and Furniture: Knoll International and the Production and Mediation of Modern Architecture in Post-war Belgium, Fredie Floré (KU Leuven, Belgium) 9. Disaster Relief and 'Universal Shelters': Humanitarian Imaginaries and Design Interventions at Oxfam, 1971-1976, Tania Messell (University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern, Switzerland) and Lilian Sanchez-Moreno (University for the Creative Arts, UK) Part 3: Uneasy Difference10. Regulation by Design: Reification and Building Regulations, Alistair Cartwright (Independent Scholar, UK) 11. The Relational Object: Haus-Rucker-Co.'s Designs for Re-Shaping the Environment, Ross K. Elfline (Carleton College, USA) 12. The Stylistic End-games of Modernism: High Tech Design in Criticism and History, Jane Pavitt (Kingston University, UK) 13. Shared and not Contested: Modern Erasures in Design and Architecture: History, Practice and Education in Brazil, Livia Rezende (University of New South Wales, Australia) and Tatiana Pinto (Independent Scholar, Sweden) Afterword, Ben Highmore (University of Sussex, UK) Index