Author: Deyan Sudjic Publisher: Penguin UK ISBN: 0241188059 Category : Architecture Languages : en Pages : 225
Book Description
The director of the Design Museum defines the greatest artefact of all time: the city We live in a world that is now predominantly urban. So how do we define the city as it evolves in the twenty-first century? Drawing examples from across the globe, Deyan Sudjic decodes the underlying forces that shape our cities, such as resources and land, to the ideas that shape conscious elements of design, whether of buildings or of space. Erudite and entertaining, he considers the differences between capital cities and the rest to understand why it is that we often feel more comfortable in our identities as Londoners, Muscovites, or Mumbaikars than in our national identities.
Author: Sherry Simon Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1136629890 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 262
Book Description
All cities are multilingual, but there are some where language relations have a special importance. These are cities where more than one historically rooted language community lays claim to the territory of the city. This book focuses on four such linguistically divided cities: Calcutta, Trieste, Barcelona, and Montreal. Though living with the ever-present threat of conflict, these cities offer the possibility of creative interaction across competing languages and this book examines the dynamics of translation in its many forms. By focusing on a category of cities which has received little attention, this study contributes to our understanding of the kinds of language relations that sustain the diversity of urban life. Illustrated with photos and maps, Cities in Translation is both an engaging read for a wide-ranging audience and an important text in advancing theory and methodology in translation studies.
Author: Daniel A. Bell Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 0691159696 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 368
Book Description
A lively and personal book that returns the city to political thought Cities shape the lives and outlooks of billions of people, yet they have been overshadowed in contemporary political thought by nation-states, identity groups, and concepts like justice and freedom. The Spirit of Cities revives the classical idea that a city expresses its own distinctive ethos or values. In the ancient world, Athens was synonymous with democracy and Sparta represented military discipline. In this original and engaging book, Daniel Bell and Avner de-Shalit explore how this classical idea can be applied to today's cities, and they explain why philosophy and the social sciences need to rediscover the spirit of cities. Bell and de-Shalit look at nine modern cities and the prevailing ethos that distinguishes each one. The cities are Jerusalem (religion), Montreal (language), Singapore (nation building), Hong Kong (materialism), Beijing (political power), Oxford (learning), Berlin (tolerance and intolerance), Paris (romance), and New York (ambition). Bell and de-Shalit draw upon the richly varied histories of each city, as well as novels, poems, biographies, tourist guides, architectural landmarks, and the authors' own personal reflections and insights. They show how the ethos of each city is expressed in political, cultural, and economic life, and also how pride in a city's ethos can oppose the homogenizing tendencies of globalization and curb the excesses of nationalism. The Spirit of Cities is unreservedly impressionistic. Combining strolling and storytelling with cutting-edge theory, the book encourages debate and opens up new avenues of inquiry in philosophy and the social sciences. It is a must-read for lovers of cities everywhere. In a new preface, Bell and de-Shalit further develop their idea of "civicism," the pride city dwellers feel for their city and its ethos over that of others.
Author: Philip Steele Publisher: Big Picture Press ISBN: 1536203106 Category : Juvenile Nonfiction Languages : en Pages : 64
Book Description
The world's most famous cities through the ages! Walk around any famous city and layers of history start to emerge. In London, Roman walls are dwarfed by office blocks. In Rome, ancient treasures like the Colosseum stand shoulder to shoulder with buildings from the Renaissance. In New York, skyscrapers from the 1920s and 1930s predate enormous glass towers. In Cities in Layers: Six Famous Cities Through Time, six major world cities are shown at different stages throughout history. A clever die-cut element allows readers to really peel back layers of time.
Author: Alexandra Lange Publisher: Chronicle Books ISBN: 1616890533 Category : Architecture Languages : en Pages : 194
Book Description
Extraordinary architecture addresses so much more than mere practical considerations. It inspires and provokes while creating a seamless experience of the physical world for its users. It is the rare writer that can frame the discussion of a building in a way that allows the reader to see it with new eyes. Writing About Architecture is a handbook on writing effectively and critically about buildings and cities. Each chapter opens with a reprint of a significant essay written by a renowned architecture critic, followed by a close reading and discussion of the writer's strategies. Lange offers her own analysis using contemporary examples as well as a checklist of questions at the end of each chapter to help guide the writer. This important addition to the Architecture Briefs series is based on the author's design writing courses at New York University and the School of Visual Arts. Lange also writes a popular online column for Design Observer and has written for Dwell, Metropolis, New York magazine, and The New York Times. Writing About Architecture includes analysis of critical writings by Ada Louise Huxtable, Lewis Mumford, Herbert Muschamp, Michael Sorkin, Charles Moore, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Jane Jacobs. Architects covered include Marcel Breuer, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Field Operations, Norman Foster, Frank Gehry, Frederick Law Olmsted, SOM, Louis Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright.
Author: Deyan Sudjic Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company ISBN: 0393240924 Category : Architecture Languages : en Pages : 209
Book Description
A brilliant exposé of the interaction between art, design, and commerce. In The Language of Things, the director of London's Design Museum charts our relationship with all things designed. With scintillating wit and an eye for the pleasures and dangers of rampant consumerism, Deyan Sudjic takes us from luxury car commercials to glossy advertisements for seasonal variations of the Prada purse to the hype surrounding the latest version of the iPhone, exploring how we are manipulated and seduced by our possessions. Who would've thought that it's the subtle visual similarity between the Volkswagen Golf GTI and the barrel of an automatic pistol that makes people want to get behind the wheel? And why is it that digital cameras in cell phones "click" even though they don't have a shutter? Sudjic's illuminating argument will resound with anyone who has ever been affected by how things look—lured, in other words, by the powerful siren call of design.
Author: Jan Gehl Publisher: Island Press ISBN: 1597269840 Category : Architecture Languages : en Pages : 284
Book Description
For more than forty years Jan Gehl has helped to transform urban environments around the world based on his research into the ways people actually use—or could use—the spaces where they live and work. In this revolutionary book, Gehl presents his latest work creating (or recreating) cityscapes on a human scale. He clearly explains the methods and tools he uses to reconfigure unworkable cityscapes into the landscapes he believes they should be: cities for people. Taking into account changing demographics and changing lifestyles, Gehl emphasizes four human issues that he sees as essential to successful city planning. He explains how to develop cities that are Lively, Safe, Sustainable, and Healthy. Focusing on these issues leads Gehl to think of even the largest city on a very small scale. For Gehl, the urban landscape must be considered through the five human senses and experienced at the speed of walking rather than at the speed of riding in a car or bus or train. This small-scale view, he argues, is too frequently neglected in contemporary projects. In a final chapter, Gehl makes a plea for city planning on a human scale in the fast- growing cities of developing countries. A “Toolbox,” presenting key principles, overviews of methods, and keyword lists, concludes the book. The book is extensively illustrated with over 700 photos and drawings of examples from Gehl’s work around the globe.
Author: Christopher Alexander Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0190050357 Category : Architecture Languages : en Pages : 1216
Book Description
You can use this book to design a house for yourself with your family; you can use it to work with your neighbors to improve your town and neighborhood; you can use it to design an office, or a workshop, or a public building. And you can use it to guide you in the actual process of construction. After a ten-year silence, Christopher Alexander and his colleagues at the Center for Environmental Structure are now publishing a major statement in the form of three books which will, in their words, "lay the basis for an entirely new approach to architecture, building and planning, which will we hope replace existing ideas and practices entirely." The three books are The Timeless Way of Building, The Oregon Experiment, and this book, A Pattern Language. At the core of these books is the idea that people should design for themselves their own houses, streets, and communities. This idea may be radical (it implies a radical transformation of the architectural profession) but it comes simply from the observation that most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by architects but by the people. At the core of the books, too, is the point that in designing their environments people always rely on certain "languages," which, like the languages we speak, allow them to articulate and communicate an infinite variety of designs within a forma system which gives them coherence. This book provides a language of this kind. It will enable a person to make a design for almost any kind of building, or any part of the built environment. "Patterns," the units of this language, are answers to design problems (How high should a window sill be? How many stories should a building have? How much space in a neighborhood should be devoted to grass and trees?). More than 250 of the patterns in this pattern language are given: each consists of a problem statement, a discussion of the problem with an illustration, and a solution. As the authors say in their introduction, many of the patterns are archetypal, so deeply rooted in the nature of things that it seemly likely that they will be a part of human nature, and human action, as much in five hundred years as they are today.
Author: Stephen Inwood Publisher: Pan Macmillan ISBN: 033054067X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 783
Book Description
By 1880, London, capital of the largest empire ever known, was the richest, most populous city in the world. And yet it remained an overcrowded, undergoverned city with huge slums gripped by poverty and disease. Over the next three decades, London began its transformation into a new kind of city - one of unprecedented size, dynamism and technological advance. In this highly evocative account, Stephen Iinwood defines an era of unique character and importance by delving into the lives and textures of the booming city. He takes us - by hansom cab, bicycle, electric tram or motor bus - from the glittering new department stores of Oxford Street to the synagogues and sweat shops of the East End, from bohemian bars and gaudy mushc halls to the well-kept gardens of Edwardian surburbia. 'Essential reading for the scholar, the historian and the lover of London. ..He is equally at home with the grand sweep and the human detail, always supported by immaculate research...Inwood can throw off with elegant ease a concise explanation of technicalities that the reader was vaguely aware of not understanding and perhaps meant to look up sometime.' Liza Picard Financial Times Magazine
Author: Steve Belmont Publisher: American Planning Association ISBN: Category : Architecture Languages : en Pages : 558
Book Description
Three decades ago, urban America was troubled by escalating crime rates and a fleeing middle class, but conditions in many cities were enviable then compared to now. Some are so damaged that to restore them to their 1970 condition seems an insurmountable task, and true revitalization may seem unimaginable to those who control their fate. Yet, all is not lost. Cities in Full explores the great potential of the American city and outlines essential elements necessary for its revitalization. Steve Belmont embraces Jane Jacobs' much acclaimed prescription for urban vitality-high densities, mixed land uses, small blocks, and variously aged buildings. This book examines neighborhoods that adhere to precepts and those that do not and compares the results. He examines the destructive forces of decentralization and shows how and why they must be turned into forces of renewal. The author outlines an agenda for recentralizing commerce, housing, and transportation infrastructure and discusses how recentralization is affected by poor social and economic conditions. The author analyzes the deficiencies of current low-income housing policy and offers a strategy more favorable to cities and their metropolitan areas. Belmont exposes neighborhood political forces that sometimes thwart a city's best interests and offers an ambitious blueprint for renewal that includes creating middle and upper income housing at moderate and high densities; revitalizing neighborhood commercial streets with an urban spirit; building new centralized infrastructure; and transforming the public realm to attract the middle class. Exhaustively researched and well illustrated, this book is an invaluable resource for planners dedicated to reviving American cities.
Proudly powered by WordPress |
Theme: Rits Blog by Crimson Themes.
Author: Deyan Sudjic
Author: Sherry Simon
Author: Daniel A. Bell
Author: Philip Steele
Author: Alexandra Lange
Author: Deyan Sudjic
Author: Jan Gehl
Author: Christopher Alexander
Author: Stephen Inwood
Author: Steve Belmont