Architectural and Cultural Guide: Pyongyang (Two Volume Box Set)

Edited by Philipp Meuser

ISBN 10: 3869221879 / ISBN 13: 9783869221878

Editore: Dom publishers, Berlin, Germany, 2012

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Two volume box set. Take a look at the photos. Both books are in exceptional condition. They look pretty much new. The covers look terrific, very clean. The books are square and very solidly bound from cover to cover. The page edges are perfectly clean. I'm really not seeing any conspicuous wear. The interiors of both books are in excellent condition. I scrolled through the pages without finding any soiling or creasing. There are no markings or attachments. And no one has written their name or anything else anywhere in either book. The box slipcase is in excellent condition as well, very clean and pretty much free of wear. It is very solid. 'What's behind North Korea's strange architecture? Pyongyang's unique streetscape opens a window on a secretive regime. Pyongyang is one of the least accessible big cities in the world, but for visitors who manage to spend time there, it's not unusual to come away impressed--sort of. North Korea may be an economic basket case, but its capital manages a certain Washington-like splendor: It's a city of sweeping boulevards lined with multistory office and housing complexes, wide squares, and grassy river banks studded with monuments. But visitors also tend to develop a few questions. Why is most of the populace walking, with just a sprinkle of automotive traffic, on those vast boulevards? Why does so little light shine from the windows of the giant apartment buildings? Why does the tallest building in the city, the 105-story, pyramid-shaped Ryugyong Hotel erected in 1987, remain an uncompleted shell? An impulse to come to terms with one of the world's strangest cities animates Architectural and Cultural Guide: Pyongyang. In two volumes, this appropriately strange new book pairs a reprint of the North Korean government's own guide to its capital with a collection of essays by outsiders about what, exactly we're seeing here. The editor, Berlin architect Philipp Meuser, describes the work as "a paradoxical attempt to lend normalcy to the abnormal." A Western architecture guide to an Eastern city that receives few Western visitors is a curious thing to start with. Beyond that, some might find it almost indecent to think of Pyongyang as an aesthetic achievement. After all, the most towering fact about North Korea isn't its buildings but the dire circumstances of its people--a country of 24 million now entering the third generation of rule by a dynasty of dictators whose early run of economic policy successes sputtered to an end a half-century ago. But buildings are valuable aids to understanding any society, and perhaps even more so when it comes to one of world's most isolated and secretive regimes. The city's centrally planned skyline, its huge empty avenues and libraries and stadiums, reflect a very particular fusion of Korean culture with socialist ideology. And the streetscape of Pyongyang tells much of the story of North Korea: the gulf between the strange ambitions of the buildings and the often invisible citizens for whom they are notionally built. Pyongyang was originally a provincial seat--known around the turn of the 20th century as the Jerusalem of the Far East, thanks to the success of resident American Protestant missionaries in converting people and establishing churches. Its fortunes changed sharply in 1945, when Josef Stalin sent troops into the northern half of Korea to accept the Japanese surrender of the territory; he installed Kim Il Sung as its ruler and made Pyongyang the capital of the newly partitioned country. The city was nearly flattened by US aerial bombardment in the Korean War, presenting Kim an opportunity after the Armistice to "reconstruct the city from the ground up" as Ahn Chang-mo of South Korea's Kyonggi University notes in his history chapter in Meuser's book. What resulted, he writes, was something unique: "a new city with an architecture that approximates the ideals of socialism more closely than any other socialist city." '.

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Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Architectural and Cultural Guide: Pyongyang (Two Volume Box Set)
• Editore: Dom publishers, Berlin, Germany
• Data di pubblicazione: 2012
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 3869221879
• ISBN 13: 9783869221878
• Rilegatura: Soft cover
• Condizione: Near Fine
• Cataloghi dei venditori:
  • Architecture, Homes
  • Cities, Towns, States, Regions, Places

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

PYONGYANG ARCHITECTURAL AND CULTURAL GUIDE

two volumes in slipcase, edited by Philipp Meuser. DOM Publishers, Berlin, Germany; dom-publishers.com . 2012. Volume 1, 127 pages; Volume 2, 237 pages. $49.95 softcover, 2 volumes in slipcase, 5-1/4" x 0-1/2", ISBN 978-3-86922-187-8 color photographs, maps, bibliography, index.



The first volume is a photographic gallery of Pyongyang buildings divided into major architectural categories--urban planning, residential buildings, cultural venues, education and sport, hotels/department stores, transport infrastructure, and monuments. Buildings' exteriors are shown, with occasional photos of parts of interiors. Overall, the treatment is the gross architectural forms and styles--as limited as these are as constrained by the North Korean Communist ideology--not details of interior design, materials, individual artists, or features notable for artistic or other reasons. What is notable overall despite the broad-ranging perspective with the large number of buildings shown is the repetitiveness of architectural concept. Though categorized into major categories in terms of the buildings' kind or function, the North Korean architecture is basically either functional (e. g., apartment buildings, government buildings) or monumental (e. g., statues, commemorative or symbolic structures).



The concept "juche" discussed briefly in the second volume accounts for the architecture. The term meaning simply "self-reliant" has broader, significant historical and political connotations. In a 1991 work on architecture parts of which are excerpted, the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il (d. 2011) wrote, "Juche architecture regards the masses' aspirations and demands as the sole criterion for the evaluation of beauty." Although this is standard Communist ideology, for North Korean leaders since the end of World War II, "juche" was a principle intended to develop a distinctive national identity apart from Soviet Russia which had been Korea's ally in the War against Japan occupying the Korean peninsula.



The photographs of the many buildings in Volume I have brief captions or annotations containing facts about construction or features (e. g., capacity) or historical notes. Volume 2 contains illustrated essays on varied facets of the Pyongyang architecture. In this volume, one finds photographs of buildings under construction, photos of North Koreans in other social settings, pictures of leaders and government officials, and posters on the sides of urban buildings or monuments meant to work in conjunction with them in representing the strength of social unity, the relationship between leaders and the population, and other principles of the nation's ideology. One of the chapters of the second volume is "Learning from Pyongyang - On the Legibility of Spatial Production." The topics of urban architecture and Communist ideology are implicit or explicit in most of this volume essays.



Use of the two-volume set as a travel guide is noted by the editor. He also notes that all visitors to North Korea are monitored continually by the authorities, not that this interferes with viewing the architecture. But even if one does not plan travel to North Korea, the set works as a unique informative illustrated study of the architecture of this infamous, closed society. On this subject, it is encyclopedic.

Recensione

For armchair travelers, a new two-volume architectural guide to Pyongyang offers a fascinating look via photos and commentary. Architectural and Cultural Guide Pyongyang (DOM Publishers) pulls back the curtain to shed light on this very strange and isolated capital city. (Jayne Clark, USA TODAY Travel, 6th March 2012)