Bøker av Christopher Turner

Emerging in the death throes of colonial rule, the story of Tropical Modernism is one of politics and power, decolonization and defiance. Scrutinizing the colonial narratives, and foregrounding the experience of African and Indian practitioners, this book reassesses an architectural style which has increasing relevance in today's changing climate.

Countless New JestsReside InsideI must be a great layI heard someone say'With that huge thingHe's The Lie-On King'We call our electricity bill,Sadly unpaid,The chargeOf the lights brigadeThe wife trims our hedgeWith my nail scissors'Cutting hedge technology'Is her clipped apology

This book, a collaboration between the Victoria and Albert Museum and the University of Westminster, captures the British mosque at a pivotal moment in its history. There are 1,800 mosques in the UK today - mostly converted from terraced houses, libraries, cinemas and supermarkets. Now, these improvised spaces are beginning to disappear, as Muslim communities replace them with purpose-built structures. This timely exploration of the British mosque reveals how ad-hoc adaptations have evolved into a uniquely British-Islamic architecture, tracing its development through waves of twentieth-century migration, and further back to the Orientalist visions of Victorian collectors. Born out of two projects at the Venice Architecture Biennale and the V&A, British Mosques brings together perspectives from curators, architects and artists. Using approaches ranging from archival study to site-specific installations and 3D scanning, together they tell the story of a hybrid architecture that has quietly found its place in Britain's urban landscape. British Mosques is co-published by Foolscap Editions and the V&A.

The story of the sexual revolution that brought Freud's couch to the explosion of the 60s, and the left-field pioneer Wilhelm Reich who made it all happen.Adventures in the Orgasmatron is the untold story of the dawn of the sexual revolution in America - an illuminating, startling, at times bizarre story of sex and science, ecstasy and repression.In the middle of the 20th century, the United States became an adoptive home for dozens of expatriated European thinkers, who saw this rich, young country ripe for sexual liberation. One of the most left-field of them was the Viennese psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, a disciple of Freud's who had broken with the master. Reich's own approach was based on his theories of the orgasm and sexual energy, which he dubbed 'orgone energy'. Instead of the couch, he made use of a tall, slender construction of wood, metal, and steel wool, which he called the orgone box. A highly sexed man himself, Reich thought that a person who sat in the box could elevate their 'orgastic potential' ridding the body of repressive forces, improving sexual potency, and enhancing overall health.After World War Two, Reich's theories caught on among writers and artists, the early adopters of the counter-culture. Norman Mailer and Saul Bellow were amongst those for whom the orgone box represented a yearned-for synthesis of sexual and political liberation, and of physical science and psychology.Meanwhile, Reich himself faced one debacle after another. Albert Einstein heard him out before rebuffing him. The FBI investigated him as a Communist sympathizer: it turned out that they were hunting the wrong man. The federal government banned the orgone box and tagged Reich as a fraud. There were claims of sexual misdeeds, and bouts of Reich's own mental instability.This is the story of the blossoming of the 20th century's sexual revolution, and the unshackling of a repressed society, and sex before science.