Building on the Sea: Form and Meaning in Modern Ship Architecture - Hardcover

Quartermaine, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1854904469 ISBN 13: 9781854904461

Publisher: Wiley, 1996

Synopsis

A unique study revealing the similarities between the architecture of buildings and ships.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Building on the Sea Form and Meaning in Modern Ship Architecture Peter Quartermaine This is the first book to discuss twentieth-century merchant ship design in broad relation to developments in contemporary architecture and design. Uniquely, it also includes extensive discussion of cargo vessels, whereas writers have usually concentrated on passenger liners of various kinds. It also considers the role that the sea and ships play in twentieth-century culture, and examines the iconography of the ship in contemporary society, especially in the context of the growth in popularity of holiday cruising. Writing on ships often stresses history and heritage while neglecting modern innovations in ship design, as well as the continuing centrality of shipping enterprise in national and international trade. By contrast, this is a book for all those interested in the modern built environment, whose every aspect consciously or unconsciously reflects our own priorities and aspirations. In the maritime context, however, this environment is both mobile and transitory: that it leaves few monuments makes informed understanding especially important. Shipping today is more international than ever before in construction, operation and management, and ship designs reflect a constantly-evolving balance of well-tried principles and experiment. This book discusses the essential practicalities of ship design and explores its contemporary cultural significance; in seeking to reclaim the modern ship as architecture it also celebrates the commercial enterprise that shapes this uniquely-neglected dimension of contemporary design.

About the Author:

PETER QUARTERMAINE Dr Peter Quartermaine was born in 1942 and is Director of the Centre for American & Commonwealth Arts and Studies (AmCAS) at the University of Exeter. He has lived in several countries, including India and Australia, and has lectured and published extensively on contemporary visual arts and literature throughout Europe, in the States and in Australia. He is a Caird Associate Fellow of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1988. His research takes him to Australia regularly, and he travels widely throughout Europe with his ltalian wife Luisa. His scholarly works include standard studies of Australia's leading writer, Thomas Keneally (1991) and painter, Jeffrey Smart (1983); he is a major contributor to the new Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Literature in English. His interest in merchant shipping dates from childhood, and was quickened by coastal and deepsea voyages on cargo vessels in the 1960s. Previously the author of two brief histories of British shipping companies, as well as several studies in contemporary literature and visual art, this is his first exploration of a topic he believes will command increasing attention from scholars and industry in the future. In the meantime, he has bought a mooring on the River Exe and is seeking a suitably architectural boat.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 1854904469
• ISBN 13: 9781854904461
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 129