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New Capital

Building Cities From Scratch

Dorina Pojani author Nick Hannes author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Lannoo Publishers

Published:17th Apr '24

Should be back in stock very soon

New Capital cover

"Award-winning Belgian photojournalist Nick Hannes casts a critical eye on six newly built capital cities around the world, from Korea to Kazakhstan, and questions whether they are really serving the people who live in them." — Elle Decoration UK
What does the ideal capital look like? Photographer Nick Hannes travelled to six countries – Egypt, Korea, Nigeria, Kazakhstan, Indonesia and Brazil – that have recently built a new capital or are in the process of doing so. Each and every one of them is a typical example of what Rem Koolhaas calls the Generic City: a planned city without historical layers, local identity, or its own character. As a visual sociologist with a sharp eye for detail, Hannes searches for the human dimension in a setting full of spectacular architecture and pompous prestige projects. New Capital is a critical reflection on unbridled neoliberal urban development and its social and ecological consequences, but is also peppered with subtle humour and surprising coincidences. Meandering between pride and sadness, New Capital shows how utopia and dystopia are sometimes surprisingly close.

"Award-winning Belgian photojournalist Nick Hannes casts a critical eye on six newly built capital cities around the world, from Korea to Kazakhstan, and questions whether they are really serving the people who live in them." - Elle Decoration UK
"When nations decide to build a new capital city from scratch, they have high hopes—to ease overcrowding, heal geographical divisions or create a tourist hot spot. But old urban problems have a way of coming back, as photographer Nick Hannes shows in “New Capital,” which will be published next month by Lannoo Publishers. The book documents six purpose-built capital projects, none of them utopias." - Wall Street Journal

ISBN: 9789401403764

Dimensions: 280mm x 230mm x 22mm

Weight: 1302g

208 pages