From one of today’s most inspired architects and urban advocates, a manifesto for architecture as a force for addressing our biggest social challenges The world is facing unprecedented challenges, from climate change and population growth, to political division and technological dislocation, to declining mental health and fraying cultural fabric. With most of the planet’s population now living in urban environments, cities are the spaces where we have the greatest potential to confront and address these problems. In this visionary book, Vishaan Chakrabarti argues for an “architecture of urbanity,” showing how the design of our communities can create a more equitable, sustainable, and joyous future for us all. Taking readers from the great cities of antiquity to the worldwide exurban sprawl of our postindustrial age, Chakrabarti examines architecture’s relationship to history’s greatest social, technological, and environmental dilemmas. He then presents a rich selection of work by a global array of practicing architects, demonstrating how innovative design can dramatically improve life in big cities and small settlements around the world, from campuses and refugee camps to mega-cities like São Paulo, Lima, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, and Tokyo. Lavishly illustrated with a wealth of original graphics, data visualizations, photographs, and drawings, The Architecture of Urbanity eloquently explains why cities are the last, best hope for humanity, and why designers must, alongside political, business, community, and cultural leaders, steward the healing of our planet.

Cross-cultural relations are spatial relations. Enclave to Urbanity is the first book in English that examines how the architecture and the urban landscape of Guangzhou framed the relations between the Western mercantile and missionary communities and the city’s predominantly Chinese population. The book takes readers through three phases: the Thirteen Factories era from the eighteenth century to the 1850s; the Shamian enclave up to the early twentieth century; and the adoption of Western building techniques throughout the city as its architecture modernized in the early Republic. The discussion of architecture goes beyond stylistic trends to embrace the history of shared and disputed spaces, using a broadly chronological approach that combines social history with architectural and spatial analysis. With nearly a hundred carefully chosen images, this book illustrates how the foreign architectural footprints of the past form the modern Guangzhou. “Enclave to Urbanity is a study of one of China’s most important cities at the most exciting time in its history. This carefully researched work not only offers an in-depth look at Canton (Guangzhou), it narrates history through anecdotes and personalities associated with the city. The superior illustrations combined with the excellent choice of quotes will be appreciated by audiences who are familiar with the city as well as those who have never been there.” —Nancy S. Steinhardt, Professor of East Asian Art and Curator of Chinese Art, University of Pennsylvania “Cross-cultural exchanges draw a lot of attention across various disciplines today. Painting a fascinating picture of the multiple ways in which Western traders and their families transformed Guangzhou/Canton together with local Chinese people from the late eighteenth to the twentieth century, Farris provides a finely illustrated, close reading of life and building in a global context.” —Carola Hein, Professor and Head of History of Architecture and Urban Planning, Delft University of Technology

This is the first book devoted to Frank Lloyd Wright's designs for remaking the modern city. Stunningly comprehensive, The Urbanism of Frank Lloyd Wright presents a radically new interpretation of the architect’s work and offers new and important perspectives on the history of modernism. Neil Levine places Wright’s projects, produced over more than fifty years, within their historical, cultural, and physical contexts, while relating them to the theory and practice of urbanism as it evolved over the twentieth century. Levine overturns the conventional view of Wright as an architect who deplored the city and whose urban vision was limited to a utopian plan for a network of agrarian communities he called Broadacre City. Rather, Levine reveals Wright’s larger, more varied, interesting, and complex urbanism, demonstrated across the span of his lengthy career. Beginning with Wright’s plans from the late 1890s through the early 1910s for reforming residential urban neighborhoods, mainly in Chicago, and continuing through projects from the 1920s through the 1950s for commercial, mixed-use, civic, and cultural centers for Chicago, Madison, Washington, Pittsburgh, and Baghdad, Levine demonstrates Wright’s place among the leading contributors to the creation of the modern city. Wright’s often spectacular designs are shown to be those of an innovative precursor and creative participant in the world of ideas that shaped the modern metropolis. Lavishly illustrated with drawings, plans, maps, and photographs, this book features the first extensive new photography of materials from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives. The Urbanism of Frank Lloyd Wright will serve as one of the most important books on the architect for years to come.

This book on “New Architecture and Urbanism: Development of Indian Traditions” builds on the contributions from various architects, planners, educationists, decision-makers & others from across the world who gathered together to create a forum for the promotion of traditional processes and techniques for the creation of the built environment. This forum was initiated by INTBAU India, The International Network for Traditional Building, Architecture and Urbanism in India, and supported by The Nabha Foundation. This book presents the arguments, axioms and case studies related to Traditional Architecture and Urbanism in a sequential format. Firstly it examines the “New ways of looking at Heritage” by separating it from pure history into a living and evolving process. The book looks at what defines traditional methods and their relevance to the contemporary context. It also examines the aspects of Continuity and Contextual frameworks in the built environment. The section on “Sustainable Buildings, Places and Communities” explores the many facets of locally driven processes from the viewpoint of tradition and sustainability. These include many community based planning methods and their applications in shaping the built environment, aspects of environmental sustainability and on how appropriateness could be ingrained into current architectural education. Lastly, the book delves into a number of executed examples in architecture seeking to learn from tradition and examples in “place-making urbanism” which in turn promotes humane, walkable and connected neighbourhoods.

Open City: Existential Urbanity is an anthology of architecture created and advocated by the students of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union in studios conducted by the Architect Diane Lewis, Professor, with a team of notable colleagues from 2001-2014. The drawings and models are accompanied by project descriptions that regard any contemporary intervention into the city as an integral work of architecture, art, and sustainable infrastructure. This volume extends the legacy of Cooper Union's seminal Education of an Architect: A Point of View (1972) and Education of an Architect (1988). This compendium of 14 years of architectural education is published in part with the gift of the Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation's Young Kiesler Award. This grant is in the recognition of a philosophical bond between the work of Frederick Kiesler and the spirit of these studio endeavors. Essays by Anthony Vidler, Peter Schubert, Francois de Menil, Karen Wong, Monika Pessler, Mary Stieber, David Gersten, Calvin Tsao, Samuel Anderson, Catherine Ann Somerville Venart, Roger Duffy, Mack Scogin, Merrill Elam, Daniel Sherer, David Turnbull, Guido Zuliani, Francesco Pellizzi, Diane Lewis and others.

Documents the myriad ways that urban dwellers respond to the space crunch. Four hundred color photos take you inside the habitations of artists, students, young professionals, and families. -- Back cover.

This book is an effort towards an in-depth understanding of the architectural discourse in Egypt developed over more than eight decades. It offers a distinctive theoretical interpretation of the forces shaping the kaleidoscopic shifts in Egyptian architecture through the analysis of the micro space of architectural representation of twentieth century Egyptian architecture. Predicated on historical contextualization, theoretical integration, and global conceptualization, Edward Said’s analytical method of contrapuntal reading and the spatial discourse analysis posited by C. Greig Crysler are lucidly assimilated to generate insights into various voices within the architectural discourse in Egypt. The analysis and critique of two important professional magazines, al-‘Imarah (1939–1959) and ‘Alam al-Bena’a (1980–2000), which shaped the collective psyche of both the academic and professional communities in Egypt and the wider region, coupled with the exploration of two other short-lived magazines, M‘imaryah (1982–1989) Medina (1998–2002), and other less-influential professional magazines, discloses the structure of attitude and reference or the exclusions and inclusions that defined the boundaries of the space of the discourse. Influence and Resistance in Post-Independence Egyptian Architecture paves the way to genuinely debate a yet to mature twenty-first century’s architectural discourse in Egypt. This book is a key resource for architects, architectural historians, and critical theorists and will appeal to academics and to both graduate and advanced undergraduate students in architectural history and theory and Middle East and Global South studies.

In the writing of urban design history of the twentieth century, functionalist and avant-garde models of the dissolution of the city are dominating. In contrast this book presents projects whose goal is the ideal of a dense and urbane city. Drawing on plans, built examples and theories of dense and urban cities and city districts in the twentieth century, modern examples of urban design are analyzed and highlighted, which until now have been evaluated more as fringe phenomena. These include examples characterized by functional mixture, social openness, spatially defined public spaces, urbanarchitecture, historical reference and a cultural understanding of the city. The book's new evaluation of modern urbandesign history creates opportunities for current planning by offering bestpractice models, which better reflect the striving for urbanity and density.

The spread of newly 'invented' places, such as theme parks, shopping malls and revamped historic areas, necessitates a redefinition of the concept of 'place' from an architectural perspective. In this interdisciplinary work, these invented places are categorized according to the different phenomenological experiences they are able to provide. The book explores how such 'cloning spaces' use placemaking and placemarketing in attempt to replicate the characteristics found in urban spaces traditionally viewed as successful, and how these places can affect society's environmental perception. A range of international empirical studies illustrates how such invented places can be perceived as legitimate urban spaces, and contribute towards the quality of life in today's cities.

Existing histories of modern architecturetypically give their highest praise to private houses and their most severecondemnation to architect-authored urban plans, often neglecting the builtworks that are no smaller than a single building and possibly as large as anurban block, the middle or institutional scale, where culturally significanturban transformation actually takes place. Urban architecture is a timely topic as todaycities worldwide are suffering accelerated urbanisation, which is oftendehumanising and destructive, especially to the unbuilt environment, airs,waters and soils. The middle or institutional scale is shown to activate andactualise latent potentials for cultural experience and environmentalintelligence, allowing the city to surprise itself and delight in itsdiscoveries. In ProjectingUrbanity, David Leatherbarrow, via author-architect texts by his formerdoctorate students, lays out the basis for a revision of modern architecture'scontribution to cities and their culture. Presenting a series of textsfeaturing buildings or their parts of various scales - from the constructiondetail, to the room or garden, to ensembles within a neighborhood - thecontributors introduce concepts for contemporary and future urbanarchitecture, together with richly indicative examples from the past severaldecades. While architecture cannot "solve" today'surban problems, it certainly has a role to play in their productivetransformation, articulating opportunities for life and culture that are morehumane, less wasteful, and more beautiful.