On Arrows

192 pages

In the 1950s, the figure of the arrow had a strange kind of ubiquity in architectural drawings, publications, and advertisements, symbolizing everything from the circulation of cold and warm air in a kitchen fridge to the flow of traffic in assorted New Towns. Twenty-five years earlier there were barely any arrows within architectural publications, and 15 years later they had all but disappeared. In On Arrows, Laurent Stalder looks back at the near past to trace the idea of performance in architecture by following this pervasive yet relatively unnoticed figure within the history of British architecture.