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Taking on the key issues in urban design, Shaping the City examines the critical ideas that have driven these themes and debates through a study of particular cities at important periods in their development. As well as retaining crucial discussions about cities such as Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Brasilia at particular moments in their history that exemplified the problems and themes at hand like the mega-city, the post-colonial city and New Urbanism, in this new edition the editors have introduced new case studies critical to any study of contemporary urbanism – China, Dubai, Tijuana and the wider issues of informal cities in the Global South. The book serves as both a textbook for classes in urban design, planning and theory and is also attractive to the increasing interest in urbanism by scholars in other fields. Shaping the City provides an essential overview of the range and variety of urbanisms and urban issues that are critical to an understanding of contemporary urbanism.
Claude-Nicolas Ledoux's engraving Coup d'oeil du théâtre Besançon in which the architect's building is seen reflected in the eye of a viewer, is the center piece in this intellectual archaeology. Rodolphe el-Khoury's close reading of Ledoux's celebrated icon uses it to excavate the foundations of architectural transparency, Modernism's most potent and lasting "invention," which is here traced back to an intellectual milieu that precedes the industrial revolution's glass and steel building technology. The image becomes a site of entry into the culture of the eighteenth century - debates in public health, the political ideas of Rousseau, the philosophy of Condillac, the project of the Encyclopaedie - yielding insights into important philosophical, and architectural issues. The book includes a translation of Ledoux's chapter on the theater from his magnum opus, Considarae Sous le Rapport de l'art, des Moers, et de la Legislation ILLUSTRATIONS: 5 colour & 60 b/w photographs
We see so many mediocre office building designs that it is easy to forget just how complex and innovative a well-made one can be. Such is the case with the headquarters for the Belgian financial firm CNP (Compagnie Nationale a Portefeuille) in Charleroi, Belgium. Designed by the office of Belgian architect Philippe Samyn, the CNP Headquarters is a masterwork of ecologically oriented construction and refined aesthetics. In this monograph el-Khoury and Pasnik document the rich and dramatic architectural vocabulary of this project.
"A brilliant account of the politics of shit. It will leave you speechless." Written in Paris after the heady days of student revolt in May 1968 and before the devastation of the AIDS epidemic, History of Shit is emblematic of a wild and adventurous strain of 1970s' theoretical writing that attempted to marry theory, politics, sexuality, pleasure, experimentation, and humor. Radically redefining dialectical thought and post-Marxist politics, it takes an important—and irreverent—position alongside the works of such postmodern thinkers as Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari, and Lyotard. Laporte's eccentric style and ironic sensibility combine in an inquiry that is provocative, humorous, and intel...
One of the more exciting realities of 21st-century life is that objects are now able with the help of embedded technology to sense, think, act and communicate. Very soon, every building, city and landscape component will be equipped with communicative and computational capacities: we shall be surrounded by sentient architecture. This book documents the role of architecture in shaping this new reality in multiple research trajectories launched and guided by the authors at The University of Toronto, MIT, Harvard Graduate School of Design and the University of Hong Kong. The projects establish an interdisciplinary platform involving artists, designers, scientists and engineers spanning different institutions and continents in a technological approach to spatial problems that is attuned to the dynamics of living systems.
Looking closely at several buildings in Europe, Japan and America, this book sets out to define monolithic architecture in its larger context, searching for its physical and conceptual roots in earlier times and proposing reasons why such structures provoke emphatic public response.
A monograph on SF-based architects Kuth/Ranieri. The book is organized into three distinct sections. Ila Berman introduces the monograph with her essay, 'Paradoxical Matters', and provides additional text insertions that appear on selected projects throughout the volume.
The essays consider the contemporary architectural scene from a variety of perspectives in theory and practice. They include seminal pieces that framed important debates in the eld, such as the introduction to the exhibition catalogue Monolithic Architecture, as well as observations on buildings and practices from around the world, from Santiago, to Beirut and Beijing. Together, the polemical provocations and interpretive insights construct a critical panorama of a global architectural landscape in rapid transformation since the 1990s. The book is divided into there parts. Polemics" addresses broad issues and trends with essays that claim a position in current debates. "Agents" examines the oeuvres of particular architects, with pieces that situate their work in relation to such debates. "Artifacts" takes on single buildings, instances where ideas are sedimented into form to situate current architectural discussions in concrete objects.
Exemplary of an 18th-century literary genre that combined fictional narrative with didactic observations on art and architecture, The Little House tells the tale of a seduction in a maison de plaisance outside of Paris. The house itself - its architecture, gardens, artwork, and furnishings - is the central element of a story in which an impressionable woman mistakes good taste for good intentions, with unforseen results. The Little House, long an underground classic among architectural historians and theorists, has never before been published in English. Anthony Vidler's insightful preface and Rodolphe el-Khoury's informative introduction, notes, and careful translation make the novella more accessible to the contemporary reader.
Responsive architecture promises buildings that can interact with various physical contexts, as well as learn and adapt to user needs. In this book, there is an attempt to go beyond describing the technologies to explore their formal possibilities. The book features 51 projects, either designed by the editors or by students under their supervision at the University of Toronto, MIT and the University of Hong Kong.