Overview

The Monumental is an interdisciplinary collection of original, cutting-edge contributions by international researchers pursuing the epistemology and ontology of monuments over time and geography. The contributors are specialists in geography, architectural theory and history, prehistoric, Greek and Roman archaeology, modern art, Byzantine studies, landscape theory, and heritage reception. Against the global climate of flux and uncertainty in the present turbulent world, the durability of monuments as “urban permanences” emerges as one of the few remaining spatial and mental anchorages. As such it is needed, maintained, enhanced, imitated, landscaped, and even invented. In particular, the monumental, a spatial and aesthetic phenomenon of perpetual importance, has recently acquired major new meanings. It now emerges as a key political, spatial, aesthetic, symbolic, architectural, and archaeological manifestation or entity, open to constantly new, even contradictory forms and expressions. This collection addresses the urgent need for relevant research on the monumental. It breaks new ground by posing fresh questions on the ontology, temporality, purpose, politics, scale, place, contestations, and aesthetics of and around the monumental, from prehistoric time to the present, as well as in both Eastern and Western geographies. Monuments are explored as bearers of the urban majestic, extraordinary and sublime. The Monumental poses questions about changing perceptions, the evocative power of representation, identity construction, ideology and symbolism, the vital necessity for a communicative and active public space around monuments, imitation processes across geographical space-time, as well as the powers that construct, deconstruct, or identify the monumental but also the anti-monumental as such. Geographies of reference are the European space, the United States, and Asia. Wide-ranging theorizations alternate with in-depth analyses of paradigmatic cases. Conventional as well as alternative forms of the monumental in the present shifting world are also pursued. The Monumental is of great value and interest to scholars, students, and professionals in the fields of architectural theory, history and design, archaeology, art theory and history, Byzantine studies, restoration, urban design and planning, human, urban and cultural geography, cultural studies, social anthropology, Asian studies, as well as those in wider subdisciplines.

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9781032857497

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Argyro Loukaki is Professor Emerita at the Hellenic Open University (HOU). She has a DPhil from Oxford University, an MSc in Architectural Engineering from NTUA, an MA from Sussex University, and an MSc from Panteion University. She has obtained doctoral/postdoctoral fellowships and prizes from the Greek State Scholarship Foundation and universities including Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, NTUA, and the universities of Oxford and Princeton. Loukaki created the Master’s Program “Art-Cultural Heritage-Development Policies” and launched bi-annual international conferences on art and/in space held at the Acropolis Museum. Earlier, she accomplished urban planning, architectural design and monuments’ preservation projects as a functionary of the Greek state, including archaeological landscaping and restoration, and was Planning Advisor to the City of Piraeus. She has authored 11 books plus many articles and monographs in English and Greek on art, architecture and space, cultural heritage, restoration and its aesthetics, Mediterranean cultural geography and the geographical unconscious, tourism, landscape, and the spatialities of Classical Greek tragedy. The Monumental is the fourth by Routledge. Previous books by Routledge include: Living Ruins, Value Conflicts; The Geographical Unconscious; Urban Art and the City: Creating, Destroying, and Reclaiming the Sublime.

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