Trans-Europe Express

Tours of a Lost Continent

Owen Hatherley

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English

Allen Lane
18 June 2018

Landscape art & architecture; Urban communities; Human geography; Regional geography; Travel & holiday; Travel writing

A searching, timely account of the condition of contemporary Europe, told through the landscapes of its cities.

Over the past twenty years European cities have become the envy of the world: a Kraftwerk Utopia of historic centres, supermodernist concert halls, imaginative public spaces and futuristic egalitarian housing estates which, interconnected by high-speed trains traversing open borders, have a combination of order and pleasure which is exceptionally unusual elsewhere.

In Trans-Europe Express, Owen Hatherley sets out to explore the European city across the entire continent, to see what exactly makes it so different to the Anglo-Saxon norm - the unplanned, car-centred, developer-oriented spaces common to the US, Ireland, UK and Australia. Attempting to define the European city, Hatherley finds a continent divided both within the EU and outside it.

By: Owen Hatherley
Imprint: Allen Lane
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 187mm, Width: 120mm, Spine: 39mm
Weight: 409g
ISBN: 9780141988320
ISBN 10: 0141988320
Pages: 432
Publication Date: 18 June 2018
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Out of Print

Owen Hatherley is the author of the acclaimed Militant Modernism, a defence of the modernist movement, and A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain. He writes regularly on the political aesthetics of architecture, urbanism and popular culture for a variety of publications, including Building Design, Frieze, the Guardian and the New Statesman.

Reviews for Trans-Europe Express: Tours of a Lost Continent

The best book I've read on Europe, blending history, architecture and contemporary politics and written in Owen Hatherley's trademark mixture of scepticism, erudition and humanity. He is a writer of lasting merit who will be read fifty years from now. -- Anna Minton The latest heir to Ruskin. -- Boyd Tonkin * Independent * Praise for Landscapes of Communism: 'A revelatory voyage into fantastical domains...It is an epic work' -- Rowan Moore * Observer * Hatherley is the most informed, opinionated and acerbic guide you could wish for. -- Hugh Pearman * Sunday Times * Can one talk yet of vintage Hatherley? Yes, one can. Here are all the properties that have made him one of the most distinctive writers in England - not just 'architectural writers', but writers full stop: acuity, contrariness, observational rigour, frankness and beautifully wrought prose. -- Jonathan Meades I loved it, and I'll go back to it again and again -- Philip Pullman