THE STORY: Capturing the full character of architectural discourse, PRIVATE JOKES, PUBLIC PLACES offers a disturbing and humorous glimpse inside the contemporary world of architecture. Margaret, a young Korean-American student, presents her thesis

Safdie is one of the greatest and most energetic architectural thinkers of our time. This book features essays on his work, illustrated in color photographs.

There are many ways to approach the subject of public space: the threats posed to it by surveillance and visual pollution; the joys it offers of stimulation and excitement, of anonymity and transformation; its importance to urban variety or democratic politics. But public space remains an evanescent and multidimensional concept that too often escapes scrutiny. The essays in Rites of Way: The Politics and Poetics of Public Space open up multiple dimensions of the concept from architectural, political, philosophical, and technological points of view. There is some historical analysis here, but the contributors are more focused on the future of public space under conditions of growing urbanization and democratic confusion. The added interest offered by non-academic work—visual art, fiction, poetry, and drama—is in part an admission that this is a topic too important to be left only to theorists. It also makes an implicit argument for the crucial role that art, not just public art, plays in a thriving public realm. Throughout this work contributors are guided by the conviction, not pious but steely, that healthy public space is one of the best, living parts of a just society. The paths of desire we follow in public trace and speak our convictions and needs, our interests and foibles. They are the vectors and walkways of the social, the public dimension of life lying at the heart of all politics.

(Theatre World). Celebrating its 60th year, this Theatre World remains the authoritative and pictorial record of the Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off Broadway seasons and touring companies. Volume 60 features the winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for 2004 and the Tony Award-winning Best Play, Douglas Wright's I Am My Own Wife , which also earned star Jefferson Mays the Best Leading Actor in a Play Tony Award. Avenue Q , the human-plus-puppet Tony Award winner for Best Musical, made news announcing that it will only play on Broadway and in Las Vegas. Other highlights of the season include the six-time Drama Desk Award-winning blockbuster musical Wicked ; two of Off-Broadway's most successful and acclaimed shows, Bug and Sarah Jone's bridge and tunnel ; and the world premieres of August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean , at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, and Imaginery Friends with Cherry Jones and Swoozie Kurtz, at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. As always, Theatre World 's outstanding features include: An expanded highlights section of professional regional productions from across the U.S.; A listing of all the major theatrical awards; The longest running shows on and Off-Broadway; Biographical data, obituaries, and a comprehensive index.

Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design brings together the best of designer Michael Bierut's critical writing—serious or humorous, flattering or biting, but always on the mark. Bierut is widely considered the finest observer on design writing today. Covering topics as diverse as Twyla Tharp and ITC Garamond, Bierut's intelligent and accessible texts pull design culture into crisp focus. He touches on classics, like Massimo Vignelli and the cover of The Catcher in the Rye, as well as newcomers, like McSweeney's Quarterly Concern and color-coded terrorism alert levels. Along the way Nabakov's Pale Fire; Eero Saarinen; the paper clip; Celebration, Florida; the planet Saturn; the ClearRx pill bottle; and paper architecture all fall under his pen. His experience as a design practitioner informs his writing and gives it truth. In Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design, designers and nondesigners alike can share and revel in his insights.

306090 05: Teaching + Building focuses on emerging trends in design-build curricula through the work of young educators throughout the world, with essays on the effects of practice on education and vice versa. It features the built work of design instructors alongside the studio projects of their students, among other revealing juxtapositions. Students and professors profiled include Yvan-pier Cazabon, Margot Krasojevic, Aleksandr Mergold, emerymcclure Architects, Jose Salinas, SYSTEMarchitects, M1, and others.

THE STORY: The Bilbao Effect became a popular term after Frank Gehry built the Guggenheim Museum in Spain, transforming the poor industrial port city of Bilbao into a must-see tourist destination. Its success spurred other cities into hiring famo

The problem of "lost space," or the inadequate use of space, afflicts most urban centers today. The automobile, the effects of the Modern Movement in architectural design, urban-renewal and zoning policies, the dominance of private over public interests, as well as changes in land use in the inner city have resulted in the loss of values and meanings that were traditionally associated with urban open space. This text offers a comprehensive and systematic examination of the crisis of the contemporary city and the means by which this crisis can be addressed. Finding Lost Space traces leading urban spatial design theories that have emerged over the past eighty years: the principles of Sitte and Howard; the impact of and reactions to the Functionalist movement; and designs developed by Team 10, Robert Venturi, the Krier brothers, and Fumihiko Maki, to name a few. In addition to discussions of historic precedents, contemporary approaches to urban spatial design are explored. Detailed case studies of Boston, Massachusetts; Washington, D.C.; Goteborg, Sweden; and the Byker area of Newcastle, England demonstrate the need for an integrated design approach--one that considers figure-ground, linkage, and place theories of urban spatial design. These theories and their individual strengths and weaknesses are defined and applied in the case studies, demonstrating how well they operate in different contexts. This text will prove invaluable for students and professionals in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, and city planning. Finding Lost Space is going to be a primary text for the urban designers of the next generation. It is the first book in the field to absorb the lessons of the postmodern reaction, including the work of the Krier brothers and many others, and to integrate these into a coherent theory and set of design guidelines. Without polemics, Roger Trancik addresses the biggest issue in architecture and urbanism today: how can we regain in our shattered cities a public realm that is made of firmly shaped, coherently linked, humanly meaningful urban spaces? Robert Campbell, AIA Architect and architecture critic Boston Globe

(Theatre World). Highlights of this new Theatre World , now in its 59th year, include the 8-Tony winning Hairspray with award winners Harvey Firestein and Marissa Jaret Winokur; the Tony-winning Best Play Take Me Out ; hot director David Leveaux's reimagining of Nine: The Musical , featuring the sensational Antonio Banderas and Jane Krakowski; the star-studded revival of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night with Vanessa Redgrave, Brian Dennehy, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Robert Sean Leonard; and the groundbreaking Russell Simmons' Def Poetry Jam . Notable Off-Broadway and touring productions include the anti-death penalty play The Exonerated ; Kate Mulgrew as Katharine Hepburn in Tea at Five ; Dinner at Eight with the late John Ritter; Talking Heads with Lynn Redgrave, Christine Ebersole and Kathleen Chalfant; and the highly regarded Stephen Adly Guirgis' Our Lady of 121st St. Theatre World, the statistical and pictorial record of the Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway seasons, touring companies, and professional regional companies throughout the United States, is a classic in its field. The book is complete with cast listings, replacements, producers, directors, authors, composers, opening and closing dates, and song titles. There are special sections with biographical data, obituary information, a longest-runs listing, an expanded theatrical awards section, and much more. Now featuring 16 pages of color photos! Over 600 photos in all. "Nothing brings back a theatrical season better, or holds on to it more lovingly, than John Willis' Theatre World an addiction for theatre buffs." Playbill "If you're looking for an elaborate visual record of a theatrical season, you'll want to opt for Theatre World ... It's a keeper." Back Stage