Postmodern architecture - with its return to ornamentality, historical quotation, and low-culture kitsch - has been seen as a critical and popular anodyne to the worst aspects of modernist architecture. This book examines a range of architectural phenomena such as theme parks, casinos, specific modernist and postmodernist buildings. A Yankee Book Peddler UK Core Title for 2013 'Brimming with fresh and insightful analyses of contemporary architecture, urban planning, literature, and film, Shelton Waldrep's The Dissolution of Place: Architecture, Identity and the Body brilliantly fulfills the promise of truly interdisciplinary cultural studies ... Turning a deep theoretical sophistication, a keen observational sensibility, and a razor-sharp intellect onto a breathtaking array of objects ... The Dissolution of Place transforms in significant ways our understanding and experiences of the spaces and places we must navigate in an ever more mediated post-contemporary present.' Phillip E. Wegner, University of Florida, USA '... those with an acquaintance with the canon of modernist and postmodernist literature will find this an insightful and rewarding read.' LSE Review of Books