Organized in the form of a user's manual, it juxtaposes speculative texts outlining Allen's general principles with specific projects created by his office. The book's title refers to this interplay of practice and theory, evoking not only the points of activity and the paths of movement found in a contemporary city but also the points of speculation and lines of argument in theoretical discourse.Projects include the Cardiff Bay Opera House, Wales; the Korean-American Museum of Art, Los Angeles; the Museo del Prado, Madrid; and White Columns Gallery, New York. Each project is accompanied by explanatory text as well as numerous drawings, models, photographs, and computer renderings. K. Michael Hays contributes an introductory essay; R. E. Somol writes the postscript.

    Lee considers it in the context of the art of the 1970s--particularly site-specific, conceptual, and minimalist practices--and its confrontation with issues of community, property, the alienation of urban space, the right to the city, and the ideologies of progress that have defined modern building programs.Although highly regarded during his short life--and honored by artists and architects today--the American artist Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-78) has been largely ignored within the history of art. Matta-Clark is best remembered for site-specific projects known as building cuts. Sculptural transformations of architecture produced through direct cuts into buildings scheduled for demolition, these works now exist only as sculptural fragments, photographs, and film and video documentations. Matta-Clark is also remembered as a catalytic force in the creation of SoHo in the early 1970s. Through loft activities, site projects at the exhibition space 112 Greene Street, and his work at the restaurant Food, he participated in the production of a new social and artistic space.Have art historians written so little about Matta-Clark's work because of its ephemerality, or, as Pamela M. Lee argues, because of its historiographic, political, and social dimensions? What did the activity of carving up a building-in anticipation of its destruction--suggest about the conditions of art making, architecture, and urbanism in the 1970s? What was one to make of the paradox attendant on its making--that the production of the object was contingent upon its ruination? How do these projects address the very writing of history, a history that imagines itself building toward an ideal work in the service of progress?In this first critical account of Matta-Clark's work, Lee considers it in the context of the art of the 1970s--particularly site-specific, conceptual, and minimalist practices--and its confrontation with issues of community, property, the alienation of urban space, the right to the city, and the ideologies of progress that have defined modern building programs.

    The authors make the case that the essential character of a city's land use results from how it manages its transportation, and that only by reducing our automobile dependence will we be able to successfully accomodate all elements of the sustainability agenda.The book begins with chapters that set forth the notion of sustainability and how it applies to cities and automobile dependence. The authors consider the changing urban economy in the information age, and describe the extent of automobile dependence worldwide. They provide an updated survey of global cities that examines a range of sustainability factors and indicators, and, using a series of case studies, demonstrate how cities around the world are overcoming the problem of automobile dependence. They also examine the connections among transportation and other issues—including water use and cycling, waste management, and greening the urban landscape—and explain how all elements of sustainability can be managed simultaneously.The authors end with a consideration of how professional planners can promote the sustainability agenda, and the ethical base needed to ensure that this critical set of issues is taken seriously in the world's cities.Sustainability and Cities will serve as a source of both learning and inspiration for those seeking to create more sustainable cities, and is an important book for practitioners, researchers, and students in the fields of planning, geography, and public policy.

    The Bauhaus Building, the Marseilles Unite d'Habitation and the Salk Institute are landmark buildings in the history of architecture -- each is the product of great social vision and humanism, and provides an continuing source of inspiration for students and fellow architects. By studying these pivotal buildings together, the student and architecture enthusiast can examine the approaches of three different architects to building for specific communities, and analyse the qualities which have produced such enduring structures.

    Human labor is rendered superfluous. Dwelling, work, recreation and transportation take a back seat to that which drives Homo Ludens, creativity. Constant was proposing an alternate society and along with it, an alternate architecture. Not just for those with architectural concerns, but for anyone who thinks.

    This well-researched biography, illustrated with archival and modern photographs, explores the life of the civil servant who masterminded the transformation of Paris from a disease-ridden Medieval city into the City of Light.

    X-Urbanism raises questions about the form of the city by examining various configurations of urban space, analyzing them in ways that blur the traditional opposition between figure and ground. This title serves as a visual lexicon of the formal properties of American urbanism-fabric, void, grid, wall-that reveal the hidden structure of the cities New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, New Haven, Des Moines, and Atlantic City. In the process, X-Urbanism confounds our expectations: it shows us the subtle order of chaotic Los Angeles, and the disruptions of New York's rigorous grid.X-Urbanism carefully reproduces Gandelsonas's drawings, which range from crisp, elegant pen-and-ink to colorful computer renderings and are as beautiful as they are instructive.

    For Keller Easterling these organizational formats are not merely the context of design efforts--they are the design. Bridging the gap between architecture and infrastructure, Easterling views architecture as part of an ecology of interrelationships and linkages, and she treats the expression of organizational character as part of the architectural endeavor.Easterling also makes the case that these organizational formats are improvisational and responsive to circumstantial change, to mistakes, anomalies, and seemingly illogical market forces. By treating these irregularities opportunistically, she offers architects working within the customary development protocols new sites for making and altering space.By showing the reciprocal relations between systems of thinking and modes of designing, Easterling establishes unexpected congruencies between natural and built environments, virtual and physical systems, highway and communication networks, and corporate and spatial organizations. She frames her unconventional notion of site not in terms of singular entities, but in terms of relationships between multiple sites that are both individually and collectively adjustable.

    Addressing the problems that plague the urban built environment, twelve innovative and fully illustrated essays by authors active in the world of architecture and urban design document and analyze in detail these urban locales. From inner-city neighborhoods to street-corner miniparks, idiosyncratic garden environments to middle-class trash alleys, vacant lots to sidewalks and front yards, temporary street performers to an auto-body repair lot that transforms into a drive-in restaurant during dinner hours, Everyday Urbanism illuminates the lived realities of the city.

    Many of these focal points of human activity face problems of economic inefficiency, environmental deterioration, and an unsatisfactory quality of life--problems that go far in determining whether a city is livable. A large share of these problems stems from the inefficiencies and other impacts of urban transportation systems.The era of projects aimed at maximizing vehicular travel is being replaced by the broader goal of achieving livable cities: economically efficient, socially sound, and environmentally friendly. This book explores the complex relationship between transportation and the character of cities and metropolitan regions. Vukan Vuchic applies his experience in urban transportation systems and policies to present a systematic review of transportation modes and their characteristics.Transportation for Livable Cities dispels the myths and emotional advocacies for or against freeways, rail transit, bicycles, and other modes of transportation. The author discusses the consequences of excessive automobile dependence and shows that the most livable cities worldwide have intermodal systems that balance highway and public transit modes while providing for pedestrians, bicyclists, and paratransit. Vuchic defines the policies necessary for achieving livable cities: the effective implementation of integrated intermodal transportation systems.