Best of
Architecture

1969

Design With Nature


Ian L. McHarg - 1969
    --LewisMumford. . . important to America and all the rest of the world in ourstruggle to design rational, wholesome, and productive landscapes.--Laurie Olin, Hanna Olin, Ltd.This century's most influential landscape architecture book.--Landscape Architecture. . . an enduring contribution to the technical literature oflandscape planning and to that unfortunately small collection ofwritings which speak with emotional eloquence of the importance ofecological principles in regional planning. --Landscape and UrbanPlanningIn the twenty-five years since it first took the academic world bystorm, Design With Nature has done much to redefine the fields oflandscape architecture, urban and regional planning, and ecologicaldesign. It has also left a permanent mark on the ongoing discussionof mankind's place in nature and nature's place in mankind withinthe physical sciences and humanities. Described by one enthusiasticreviewer as a user's manual for our world, Design With Natureoffers a practical blueprint for a new, healthier relationshipbetween the built environment and nature. In so doing, it providesnothing less than the scientific, technical, and philosophicalfoundations for a mature civilization that will, as Lewis Mumfordecstatically put it in his Introduction to the 1969 edition, replace the polluted, bulldozed, machine-dominated, dehumanized, explosion-threatened world that is even now disintegrating anddisappearing before our eyes.

Arcology: The City in the Image of Man


Paolo Soleri - 1969
    First published in 1969 by the MIT Press, Arcology: The City In The Image of Man has become legendary among scholars, architects, artists, and librarians around the world. It established Paolo Soleri as one of the most innovative minds of our time. The challenging concept of Arcology, Soleri's fusion of architecture and ecology, is illustrated with outstanding graphics.

Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago


Hans Wingler - 1969
    Now this definitive work on Bauhaus is available again in a boxed hardcover edition.Documents in Bauhaus are taken from a wide array of sources--public manifestos, private letters, internal memoranda, jotted-down conversations, minutes of board and faculty meetings, sketches and schemata, excerpts from speeches and books, newspaper and magazine articles, Nazi polemics, official German government documents, court proceedings, budgets, and curricula. The illustrations include architectural plans and realizations, craft and industrial model designs (furniture, ceramics, metalwork, textiles, stained glass, typography, wallpaper), sculpture, paintings, drawings, etchings, woodcuts, posters, programs, advertising brochures, stage settings, and formal portraits of such Bauhaus masters as Walter Gropius, Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, L�szl� Moholy-Nagy, Josef Albers, Hebert Bayer, Marcel Breuer, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Streets for People: A Primer for Americans


Bernard Rudofsky - 1969
    Although "environmental studies" are the rage of the day, planners have been unable to arrest the disintegration of urban America; architects have often speeded it. STREETS FOR PEOPLE helps the reader to understand where things went wrong. For Americans are stubbornly putting their faith in projects and budgets with never a thought of exercising their individual duties as city dwellers. It never occurs to them that a town is not the result of a design program but the reflection of the inhabitants' way of life.So far, the street, the very lifeline of urban civilization, has not even come in for scrutiny. People have let their cities' streets degenerate into highways, indifferent to the cost in human dignity and happiness which this entails. To make the reader realize the wretchedness of his native habitat, the author introduces him to the unexplored world of civilized streets by means of examples from a dozen countries. Italy yields the greatest variety; just as her towns have always counted among the glories of man's enterprise, her pedestrian street is the touchstone of urbanity. By discovering its amenities, the reader may feel he has been cheated out of pleasures he has never known or suspected.For instructions and entertainment the author throws in a short cultural history of the street. He discusses the fine art of walking and other performing arts; street theater and street concerts of the past and present; the prevalence of Italian street scenes in Shakespeare's plays; playgrounds in American cities; the covered street, a commodity desirable, indeed indispensable, in every kind of climate. Sidewalk cafes and outdoor restaurants are examined for their merits, and so are pubic fountains and urinals. A survey of the street's temporary attractions includes processions, parades, the inundation of streets and squares in Baroque Rome (for coolness and for the fun of it), American block parties, and the perennial charm of street decorations in Latin countries and in the Far East.Without proffering panaceas or theories, this admirably illustrated book opens new vistas to the reader that he will not be able to put out of his mind. STREETS FOR PEOPLE weighs his chances for a utopian U.S.A. where pedestrians will be safe from the hazards of traffic and from each other; where the street will be the great educator and entertainer; where everybody will enjoy privileges and pleasures that are taken for granted in most civilized countries.

Fantastic Architecture


Wolf Vostell - 1969
    In his introduction, Higgins argued that "architects ... have only just begun to escape from the drawing board mentality," and articulated the need for "creating space, which may or may not be functional, but which is at least relevant to the sensory environment in which we live. The economics of building has led to an aridity in our experience which is not consistent with the richness of our time." Against this, Higgins and Vostell advocate the approach of polymath artists such as Kurt Schwitters, Raoul Hausmann, Erich Buchholz, John Cage and Buckminster Fuller. From their contemporaries and friends, artists such as Carolee Schneemann, Ben Vautier, Richard Hamilton, Douglas Huebler, Lawrence Weiner, Dennis Oppenheim, Jan Dibbets, Jean Tinguely, Robert Filliou, Daniel Spoerri, Geoff and Bici Hendricks, Philip Corner, Joseph Beuys, Ay-o, Claes Oldenburg and others also made contributions, which range from the visionary to the absurd to the political, from the epistolary to the outright manifesto. Joseph Beuys submitted a recommendation to raise the height of the Berlin Wall; Claes Oldenburg's proposals included a colossal replacement for the Washington Obelisk and a monument for war heroes. Vostell and Higgins considered it the artist's responsibility to research and revolutionize structures in space, recognizing that artists could reconceive buildings without the bureaucracy of government and urban planning. The missives and artworks made for this book show how much visionary architecture was intertwined with all facets of culture and critique. Fantastic Architecture is a prime example of a 1960s Fluxus artist's book and of imaginative cross-media thinking.

World Furniture


Helena Hayward - 1969
    : ill. (some col.) ; 35 cm. Notes; Texts by Y. Brynhammer, L. Buffet-Challié and others. Includes bibliographical references (p. 312) and index. Subjects; Furniture - History. Furniture. History. Genres; Bibliography. Illustrated.

The Aesthetic Movement: Prelude To Art Nouveau


Elizabeth Aslin - 1969
    Have not located original dust jacket