Urban Interventions: Personal Projects in Public Places

by Robert Klanten (Editor), Sven Ehmann (Editor), M. Hubner (Editor)

Evolving from graffiti and street art, the next quantum leap in artistic work is now hitting public spaces. This is the first book to document the new movement as well as its interplay with art, architecture,

performance, installation, and activism.

Evolving from graffiti and street art, urban interventions are the next generation of

artwork to hit public space. Using any and all of the components that make up urban

and rural landscapes, these mostly spatial interventions bring art to the masses.

They turn the street into a studio, laboratory, club, and gallery. Modified traffic signs,

swings at bus stops, and images created out of sand or snow challenge us to rediscover

our environment and interact with it in new ways. The work is an intelligent and

critical commentary on the planning, use, and commercialization of public space.

With a rich visual selection of projects and methods, Urban Interventions documents

this new artistic approach to urban art that is currently making a profound

mark on our contemporary visual language. The book shows the growing connections

and interplay of this scene with art, architecture, performance, and installation.

Propagators of urban intervention surprise and provoke with work in cities

including New York and London, but also in countries such as China, Columbia,

and Turkey. Everywhere the work appears it turns public spaces into individual

experiences.

Urban Interventions is the first book to document these very current, personal art

projects in a comprehensive way.

Genres: Design, Art, Nonfiction

287 pages, Hardcover

First published March 29, 2010

About the author

Robert Klanten has been a key figure in the global creative industry for more than a quarter of a century, helping to reimagine the way we approach publishing. He has driven over 800 publications and commercial projects.
Robert is the CEO of gestalten, the company he founded in 1995. Under his leadership, gestalten has established itself as a pillar in the field of contemporary visual culture, design and architecture, by immersing its readers in creative landscapes, cultures, people and art. gestalten regularly collaborates with the biggest names in the creative world and is known and loved by millions around the globe for its iconic books.
He has shown how creativity has no limits in the digital age: through inspiration, inclusivity and promoting understanding; and by connecting the global and the local through storytelling.

Reviews

[Luana · Rating 4 out of 5]

The focus of Urban Interventions is on making public spaces personal.
It does this through an international gallery of public space projects and by presenting these in a thematic format that encourages the reader to take their own explorative approach to reading this book. Unconstrained by standard introductions or a prescriptive linear format, the reader is free to dip in at any point within the book.

The book is further enhanced if you go to it's link (posted below) on the publishers website as there you get to enjoy related video clips of public art projects :)

http://shop.gestalten.com/urban-inter...

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was fun to flip through. It's a picture book, and I had already seen many of the photos online, so I would have really appreciated more background info about each of the projects. (Some of them included little blurbs about the artist's approach, but most did not.)

[Kate Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

My fav book ever - loads of photos, info, and ideas. Third borrow from the library in a year!