Isenstadt, Sandy (Author)
The MIT Press
Physical Details: 292
Language: English
In this book, Sandy Isenstadt examines electric light as a form of architecture-as a new, uniquely modern kind of building material. Electric light was more than just a novel way of brightening a room or illuminating a streetscape; it brought with it new ways of perceiving and experiencing space itself. If modernity can be characterized by rapid, incessant change, and modernism as the creative response to such change, Isenstadt argues, then electricity-instantaneous, malleable, ubiquitous, evanescent-is modernity's medium. Isenstadt shows how the introduction of electric lighting at the end of the nineteenth century created new architectural spaces that altered and sometimes eclipsed previously existing spaces. He constructs an architectural history of these new spaces through five examples, ranging from the tangible miracle of the light switch to the immaterial and borderless gloom of the wartime blackout. He describes what it means when an ordinary person can play God by flipping a switch; when the roving cone of automobile headlights places driver and passenger at the vertex of a luminous cavity; when lighting in factories is seen to enhance productivity; when Times Square became an emblem of illuminated commercial speech; and when the absence of electric light in a blackout produced a new type of space. In this book, the first sustained examination of the spatial effects of electric lighting, Isenstadt reconceives modernism in architecture to account for the new perceptual conditions and visual habits that followed widespread electrification.
...MoreReview Abigail Harrison Moore (January 2021) Review of "Electric Light: an architectural history". Technology and Culture (pp. 306-307).
Similar Citations
Article
Joel A. Tarr;
(2020)
Illuminating the Streets, Alleys, Parks and Suburbs of the American City: Non-Networked Technologies, 1870-1920
(/isis/citation/CBB234646411/)
Book
David H. 1927-(David Hodges) Stratton;
(2022)
Tucumcari tonite!: a story of railroads, Route 66, and the waning of a western town
(/isis/citation/CBB967373381/)
Book
Casey P. Cater;
(2019)
Regenerating Dixie: electric energy and the modern South
(/isis/citation/CBB592644863/)
Article
Hannah Reeves;
(December 2020)
The place of peripheral “railway towns” in transport history
(/isis/citation/CBB221872194/)
Article
Jafar Taheri;
(2021)
Celestial and mythical origins of the citadel of Bukhara
(/isis/citation/CBB927089378/)
Essay Review
Collins, Martin;
(2010)
Introduction
(/isis/citation/CBB001567117/)
Article
Moore, Abigail Harrison;
(May 2020)
Electric Lighting: The Housewive's Moral Challenge
(/isis/citation/CBB027780321/)
Book
Xiujie Wu;
(2009)
Ein Jahrhundert Licht: eine technikethnologische Studie zur Beleuchtung im chinesischen ländlichen Alltag
(/isis/citation/CBB147681841/)
Essay Review
Otter, Chris;
(2010)
Author Response: Between Liberty and Discipline
(/isis/citation/CBB001567122/)
Book
Joseph Siry;
(2021)
Air-conditioning in modern American architecture, 1890-1970
(/isis/citation/CBB085200999/)
Essay Review
Hård, Mikael;
(2010)
The Victorian Eye and Its Blind Spot: Toward a Cultural Assessment of Technology
(/isis/citation/CBB001567121/)
Essay Review
Morus, Iwan Rhys;
(2010)
Illuminating the Victorians
(/isis/citation/CBB001567119/)
Chapter
Gooday, Graeme;
(2011)
Electricity and the Sociable Circulation of Fear and Fearlessness
(/isis/citation/CBB001231561/)
Book
David E. Nye;
(2018)
American Illuminations: Urban Lighting, 1800-1920
(/isis/citation/CBB841912574/)
Book
Otter, Chris;
(2008)
The Victorian Eye: A Political History of Light and Vision in Britain, 1800--1910
(/isis/citation/CBB000953373/)
Essay Review
Gunn, Simon;
(2010)
Illuminating the Victorian City
(/isis/citation/CBB001567118/)
Book
Hashim Sarkis;
Barrio, Roi Salgueiro;
Gabriel Kozlowski;
(2019)
The world as an architectural project
(/isis/citation/CBB233843863/)
Article
Patrick M. Malone;
(1998)
Introduction to Green Engineering
(/isis/citation/CBB146735739/)
Article
ZAPICO, DANIEL PÉREZ;
(May 2020)
Aesthetics and the political apropriation of the electric light
(/isis/citation/CBB137990386/)
Book
Rebecca Retzlaff;
Ryan Reft;
Phillips de Lucas, Amanda K.,;
(2023)
Justice and the Interstates : The racist truth about urban highways
(/isis/citation/CBB151598469/)
Be the first to comment!