Corridors : Passages of Modernity.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

We spend our lives moving through passages, hallways, corridors, and gangways, yet these channeling spaces do not feature in architectural histories, monographs, or guidebooks. They are overlooked, undervalued, and unregarded, seen as unlovely parts of a building's infrastructure rather than architecture.



This book is the first definitive history of the corridor, from its origins in country houses and utopian communities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, through reformist Victorian prisons, hospitals, and asylums, to the "corridors of power," bureaucratic labyrinths, and housing estates of the twentieth century. Taking in a wide range of sources, from architectural history to fiction, film, and TV, Corridors explores how the corridor went from a utopian ideal to a place of unease: the archetypal stuff of nightmares.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction (p. 7)
• 1 Origins (p. 17)
• 2 The Utopia of Corridors, I: Charles Fourier's Phalanstery (p. 43)
• 3 The Utopia of Corridors, II: Social Housing from Petrograd to the Barbican (p. 70)
• 4 Corridors of Commerce: The Arcade, the Exhibition Hall, the Mall (p. 103)
• 5 The Ecstasy of Communication: The Hotel Corridor (p. 127)
• 6 Corridors of Reform: Prison, Workhouse, Asylum, Hospital, School and University (p. 157)
• 7 Passages to Privacy: The English Gentleman's House (p. 211)
• 8 The Dystopia of Corridors, I: Bureaucracy (p. 233)
• 9 The Dystopia of Corridors, II: Dread and the Gothic (p. 261)
• Conclusion: At the End of the Passage (p. 287)
• References (p. 293)
• Select Bibliography (p. 319)
• Acknowledgements (p. 325)
• Photo Acknowledgements (p. 327)
• Index (p. 329)

Author notes provided by Syndetics