| | Guide to Ecstacity by Nigel Coates.
Ecstacity is a fictional city pieced
together from sections of Tokyo, Cairo, London, New York,
Rome, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro, and British architect
Nigel Coates' metaphor for his beliefs on architecture and
the urban condition for the 21st century. The book, a guide
to this multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, all-embracing city,
is described to the reader through six chapters: Tuning
In, Locking On, Undressing, Letting Go, Cranking Up, Flipping
Out. While the author believes the book does not need to
be read in order cover to cover, these chapters more accurately
describe the linear nature of the book, as one takes a voyage
of discovery through the city. Graphically the book is as
eclectic as the city it describes, text layered upon images
layered upon images, with the ever-common dictionary of
terms on almost every page (in a twist the terms are listed
from Z-A). Coates' projects are sprinkled throughout the
book, but Ecstacity does not read as a monograph, more as
a theory of cities. What's important in Coates' book is
not understanding Ecstacity as a place but as a set of ideas
that embrace change, diversity, tolerance, complexity, experience
and the hybridization of city spaces and events.
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