Toby Altman’s Discipline Park documents the demolition of
Prentice Women's Hospital in Chicago, a landmark of architectural
brutalism designed by Bertrand Goldberg in the 1970s. Altman was born
in the building, and years later, was employed by Northwestern
University when they tore it down. His personal proximity to the site
leads to a wider critical evaluation of the cruelty of a
neoliberalism that asks us to draw sustenance from the very
institutions that poison and erase our bodies, habitats, and
histories. But, as it indicts the present and its claustrophobic,
ruinous politics, Discipline Park also recovers or reinvents
utopian vistas through an extended engagement with Goldberg's
architectural practices.
Toby Altman's
Discipline Park is the 2020 Open Reading Period Editors’
Pick.
