$21.95
(available to order)
Summary:
This edition of Perspecta, the oldest and most distinguished student-edited architectural journal in America, investigates the transformation of capital cities in the era of globalization. This redevelopment, renewal, and recycling of the urban landscape--termed by the editors as "Re_Urbanism"--takes place as capital cities try both to cater to an influx of global capital(...)
Perspecta 39 Re_urbanism : Transforming capitals
Actions:
Price:
$21.95
(available to order)
Summary:
This edition of Perspecta, the oldest and most distinguished student-edited architectural journal in America, investigates the transformation of capital cities in the era of globalization. This redevelopment, renewal, and recycling of the urban landscape--termed by the editors as "Re_Urbanism"--takes place as capital cities try both to cater to an influx of global capital and to reassert their roles as symbols of national sovereignty. Re_Urbanism investigates this process from an architectural perspective. The contributors explore the various ways capital cities struggle to assert their vitality and continuing relevance, examining capitals that compete internally with their own global counterparts (Abu Dhabi vs. Dubai), capitals that must be rebuilt after periods of destruction (Belgrade and Baghdad), and capital cities that are responding to hyperbolic development (Beijing, New Delhi, Kuwait City). Some cities are examined for their impact on border politics (Washington D.C.) while others reveal mythologies parallel to their modernist origins (Brasilia).
Magazines
books
$42.95
(available in store)
Summary:
Sluminsider is a choral narrative that attempts to reveal the complexity of the slum of Mathare, one of the biggest shantytowns in Nairobi. The project of expansion of a street school, the Why Not Junior Academy, and the process of environmental improvement of the surrounding area, where a community agriculture initiative has been set up to replace an unauthorized dump,(...)
Sluminsider: Mathare, Nairobi
Actions:
Price:
$42.95
(available in store)
Summary:
Sluminsider is a choral narrative that attempts to reveal the complexity of the slum of Mathare, one of the biggest shantytowns in Nairobi. The project of expansion of a street school, the Why Not Junior Academy, and the process of environmental improvement of the surrounding area, where a community agriculture initiative has been set up to replace an unauthorized dump, is the starting point from which to combine experiences and identities from very different disciplines, including architecture,design, agriculture, photography and video. This project is one of the case studies used for comparison and dialogue with the city of São Paulo and the São Paulo Calling research project, which examined the informal settlements of Rome, Nairobi, Medellin, Mumbai, Moscow and Baghdad. For six months, an exhibition analyzed the characteristics, differences and causes of informal settlements, developing six workshops in the field in different favelas of São Paulo and organizing size encounters that made São Paulo the world capital of the debate on transformation of contemporary cities.
books
August 2013
Architecture since 1900, Africa
$24.95
(available to order)
Summary:
During the two hundred millennia we've been on the planet, nothing has shaped us more profoundly than the city. In a fascinating narrative that ranges through cities famous and forgotten, acclaimed historian Ben Wilson tells the glorious story of how urban living has allowed human culture to flourish. Beginning with Uruk, the world's first city, he shows that cities(...)
Metropolis: a history of the city, mankind's greatest invention
Actions:
Price:
$24.95
(available to order)
Summary:
During the two hundred millennia we've been on the planet, nothing has shaped us more profoundly than the city. In a fascinating narrative that ranges through cities famous and forgotten, acclaimed historian Ben Wilson tells the glorious story of how urban living has allowed human culture to flourish. Beginning with Uruk, the world's first city, he shows that cities created such a blossoming of human endeavor--new professions, new forms of art, worship, and trade--that they kick-started civilization itself. Despite outbreaks of plague and war, and outlasting empires, the city endured and new cities sprang up to capture the inimitable energy of human beings together. Wilson reveals the innovations nurturned amid the density of urban centers over the centuries: civics in the agora of Athens, global trade in ninth-century Baghdad, finance in the coffeehouses of London, domestic comforts in the heart of Amsterdam, peacocking in Belle Epoque Paris. In the modern age, the skyscrapers of New York City inspired utopian visions of community design, while the trees of twenty-first-century Seattle and Shanghai point to a sustainable future in the age of climate change. Page turning and irresistible, ''Metropolis'' is a history of cities that is also a history of how humanity lives.
Urban Theory
$36.95
(available to order)
Summary:
By United Nations estimates, 60 percent of the world's population will be urban by 2030. With the increasing speed of urbanization, especially in the developing world, scholars are now rethinking standard concepts and histories of modern cities. "The Spaces of the Modern City" historicizes the contemporary discussion of urbanism, highlighting the local and global breadth(...)
Urban Theory
February 2008, Princeton, Oxford
The Spaces of the Modern city : imaginaries, politics, and everyday life
Actions:
Price:
$36.95
(available to order)
Summary:
By United Nations estimates, 60 percent of the world's population will be urban by 2030. With the increasing speed of urbanization, especially in the developing world, scholars are now rethinking standard concepts and histories of modern cities. "The Spaces of the Modern City" historicizes the contemporary discussion of urbanism, highlighting the local and global breadth of the city landscape. This interdisciplinary collection examines how the city develops in the interactions of space and imagination. The essays focus on issues such as street design in Vienna, the motion picture industry in Los Angeles, architecture in Marseilles and Algiers, and the kaleidoscopic paradox of post-apartheid Johannesburg. They explore the nature of spatial politics, examining the disparate worlds of eighteenth-century Baghdad, nineteenth-century Morelia, Cold War-era West Berlin, and postwar Los Angeles. They also show the meaning of everyday spaces to urban life, illuminating issues such as crime in metropolitan London, youth culture in Dakar, "memory projects" in Tokyo, and Bombay cinema. Informed by a range of theoretical writings, this collection offers a fresh and truly global perspective on the nature of the modern city. The contributors are Sheila Crane, Belinda Davis, Mamadou Diouf, Philip J. Ethington, David Frisby, Christina M. Jiménez, Dina Rizk Khoury, Ranjani Mazumdar, Frank Mort, Martin Murray, Jordan Sand, and Sarah Schrank.
Urban Theory
$22.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Cities participate in the production of meaning by providing places populated with objects for words to refer to. Inscriptions on these objects (labels, billboards, newspapers, graffiti) provide another layer of meaning. And today, the flow of digital information - from one device to another in the urban scene - creates a digital network that also exists in physical(...)
Architectural Theory
January 1900, Cambridge, Mass.
Placing words : symbols, space and the city
Actions:
Price:
$22.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Cities participate in the production of meaning by providing places populated with objects for words to refer to. Inscriptions on these objects (labels, billboards, newspapers, graffiti) provide another layer of meaning. And today, the flow of digital information - from one device to another in the urban scene - creates a digital network that also exists in physical space. "Placing Words" examines this emerging system of spaces, flows, and practices in a series of short essays - snapshots of the city in the twenty-first century. Mitchell questions the necessity of flashy downtown office towers in an age of corporate web sites. He casts the shocked-and-awed Baghdad as a contemporary Guernica. He describes architectural makeovers throughout history, listing Le Corbusier's Fab Five Points of difference between new and old architecture, and he discusses the architecture of Manolo Blahniks. He pens an open letter to the Secretary of Defense recommending architectural features to include in torture chambers. He compares Baudelaire, the Parisian flaneur, to Spiderman, the Manhattan traceur. He describes the iPod-like galleries of the renovated MoMA and he recognizes the camera phone as the latest step in a process of image mobilization that began when artists stopped painting on walls and began making pictures on small pieces of wood, canvas, or paper. The endless flow of information, he makes clear, is not only more pervasive and efficient than ever, it is also generating new cultural complexities.
Architectural Theory
$37.50
(available to order)
Summary:
Although the seemingly apocalyptic scale of the World Trade Center disaster continues to haunt people across the globe, it is only the most recent example of a city tragically wounded. Cities are, in fact, perpetually caught up in cycles of degeneration and renewal. As with the WTC, from time to time these cycles are severely ruptured by a sudden, unpredictable event.(...)
Wounded cities : destruction and reconstruction in a globalized world
Actions:
Price:
$37.50
(available to order)
Summary:
Although the seemingly apocalyptic scale of the World Trade Center disaster continues to haunt people across the globe, it is only the most recent example of a city tragically wounded. Cities are, in fact, perpetually caught up in cycles of degeneration and renewal. As with the WTC, from time to time these cycles are severely ruptured by a sudden, unpredictable event. In the wake of recent terrorist activities, this timely book explores how urban populations are affected by "wounds" inflicted through violence, civil wars, overbuilding, drug trafficking, and the collapse of infrastructures, as well as "natural" disasters such as earthquakes. Mexico City, New York, Beirut, Belfast, Bangkok and Baghdad are just a few examples of cities riddled with problems that undermine, on a daily basis, the quality of urban life. What does it mean for urban dwellers when the infrastructure of a city collapses – transport, communication grids, heat, light, roads, water, and sanitation? What are the effects of foreign investment and huge construction projects on urban populations and how does this change the "look" and character of a city? How does drug trafficking intersect with class, race, and gender, and what impact does it have on vulnerable urban communities? How do political corruption and mafia networks distort the built environment? Drawing on in-depth case studies from across the globe, this book answers these intriguing questions through its rigorous consideration of changing global and national contexts, social movements, and corrosive urban events. Adopting a "grass roots up" approach, it places emphasis on people’s experiences of uneven development and inequality, their engagement with memory in the face of continual change, and the relevance of political activism to bettering their lives. It is especially attentive to the historical interaction of particular cities with wider political and economic forces, as these interactions have shaped local governance over time. Imagining each city as a "body politic", the authors consider its capacity both to mediate local conflict and to broach the healing of wounds.
Urban Theory