The recently published Les années 1960, hic et nunc: architecture, urbanisme, paysage, edited by Daniels professor Georges Farhat, is now available at the Daniels library.

About Les années 1960, hic et nunc:

"The legacy of the 1960s has left a profound mark on our time. Beyond what is generally recognized, our current practices and social representations are shaped by this legacy, through either reproduction or rejection, more and more so over time.

In terms of theory and criticism, architectural, urban, and landscape designers are increasingly fascinated by this legacy while its historiography remains mainly under construction. Simultaneously, all material evidence of this recent and still palpable past are mistreated. They are vanishing day by day, with the social project from which they originate, and before their evolution is comprehended. These manifestations are fading away before we become aware of the fact that grasping their principles depends precisely on how we transform them, and that history is actualized through a perpetual present.

This is the paradox addressed, in a decisively retrospective approach, by AM:HAUS−one of the research teams in the LEAV, laboratory of the Ecole d'Architecture de Versailles−and presented here in three sections: Writings, Elements, Ensembles. In the first section, critical and theoretical stances of the 1960s are pinpointed in relation to, on the one hand, the context of the preceding period, and on the other, relative to their present reactivation. The second section deals with some “Natural Elements” of technology in architecture (oil, air, atom, light). Finally, Ensembles considers spatial organizations at the scales of urban landscape (housing estates, new towns). In all three parts our project investigates the dynamics of a biophysical and social continuum in history: then and now, here and there."

Georges Farhat (ed.), Les années 1960, hic et nunc : architecture, urbanisme, paysage, Versailles/Paris, ENSAV/Editions Recherches, 2010.

For book content and more information see publisher.