The Secret Life and Death of Ornament in Berlin

ENDORSEMENTS

“Stonecipher transforms Berlin’s stripped façades into a gripping detective story, revealing ornament as history, politics, poetry, and pleasure. Erudite, intimate, and wonderfully alert, this book changes how we see cities.”
—Antoine Picon, author of The Materiality of Architecture

“Quite the best and most passionate modern defense of architectural ornament, enfolded within a compelling, previously untold story of its effacement. As a meditation on contemporary Berlin, it beautifully complements Kirsty Bell’s The Undercurrents and Chloe Aridjis’s novel Book of Clouds.”
—Adrian Forty, author of Concrete and Culture: A Material History

“A spirited journey through the streets of Berlin reveals itself to be a profound meditation on urban aesthetics. The battered façades of the storied city offer Donna Stonecipher a canvas for reflections on architectural ornament that add up to an original take on the logic, and failures, of modern architecture. This is a book I didn’t know I was waiting for.”
—Brian Ladd, author of The Ghosts of Berlin

Donna Stonecipher is the author of six books of poetry, most recently The Ruins of Nostalgia, which was named a best book of 2023 by NPR, and Transaction Histories, which was listed by The New York Times as one of the ten best poetry books of 2018. She has also published one book of criticism, Prose Poetry and the City. Her poems have been translated into seven languages, and her translation of Austrian poet Friederike Mayr cker received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship.

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