Ceilings and dreams : the architecture of levity / edited by Paul Emmons, Federica Goffi and Jodi La Coe.

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

From below upwards : an introduction to Ceilings and dreams / Paul Emmons -- Reverie. Cloud nine : a lover's guide / Don Kunze ; From the Igluvigaq to the Sila : ceilings in the Inuit imagination / �Em�elie Desrochers-Turgeon ; Hagia Sophia's dome : a mythopoeic dreamspace / Tugce Akinci ; Dreaming the body : Filarete's disegno / Berrin Terim ; Eleven angels in the ceiling of flames : architectural speculations in the Ducal Library of Urbino / Tracey Eve Winton ; Nightmares of broken ceilings : the shell, the god and the mold / Karima Benbih -- Suspense. Perplexing ceiling structures : dreaming the details of the broken beam in Chongming Temple / Qi Zhu ; The plafond as a place of transmutation : architecture of levity in the eighteenth century / Louise Pelletier ; Storywork : Henry Chapman Mercer's cast-in-place tile vaults and the invention of practice / Luc Phinney ; Ceilings of infinite extension : Konrad Wachsmann's mediating overhead / Ezgi �I�sbilen ; Under-standing counter-ceilings : the multiverse of gazing and listening in the ambiances by Carlo Scarpa and Luigi Nono / Federica Goffi ; Cracked but not broken : material and culture of the glass ceiling / Aki Ishida -- Inversion. The nightmare of condensation / Jonathan Foote and Carolina Dayer ; Dreaming the fourth dimension : L�aszl�o Moholy-Nagy's inversions / Jodi La Coe ; Life, superceiling / Kieran Connolly ; Three ghosts and a baldachin : boredom and (day)dreaming in two drawings by Saul Steinberg / Andreea Mihalache ; A theater of architectural monsters / Sam Ridgway ; The architect inside out : reading the barrel-vaulted ceiling of Balkrishna Doshi's studio -- Sangath / Pallavi Swaranjali ; Looking down to look up / Marcia F. Feuerstein.

Where is the space for dreaming in the twenty-first century? Lofty thoughts, like dreams, are born and live overhead, just as they have been represented in Renaissance paintings and modern cartoons. Ceilings are often repositories of stories, events and otherwise invisible oneiric narratives. Yet environments that inspire innovative thinking are dwindling as our world confronts enormous challenges, and almost all of our thinking, debating and decision-making takes place under endless ceiling grids. Quantitative research establishes that spaces with taller ceilings elicit broader, more creative thoughts. Today, ceilings are usually squat conduits of technology: they have become the blind spot of modern architecture. The twenty essays in this book look across cultures, places and ceilings over time to discover their potential to uplift the human spirit. Not just one building element among many, the ceiling is a key to unlock the architectural imagination. Ceilings and Dreams aims to correct this blind spot and encourages architects and designers, researchers and students, to look up through writings organized into three expansive categories: reveries, suspensions and inversions. The contributors contemplate the architecture of levity and the potential of the ceiling, once again, as a place for dreaming.