american architecture urban

Softcover. Chicago, American Planning Association, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, oblong format, 210 pages. Color illustrations. Above and Beyond takes an aerial view to conclusively demonstrate how suburban sprawl is forever changing the look of America -- and how that can be avoided. Alex MacLean's photographs -- many of them combined with computer simulations to illustrate how landscapes are transformed over time -- show how traditional development patterns produce more compact cities and towns. In conjunction, the authors introduce communities that have successfully fought sprawl, invigorated their town areas, and overcome the car-culture mentality of sprawl development. The case they make, and the examples they offer, will inspire planners, officials, and concerned citizens everywhere. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Kehrer, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 120 pages. All across the world a uniform, homogeneous model of development, inspired by Los Angeles style urban sprawl--consisting of massive freeways, parking lots, shopping malls, and large-scale master-planned communities with golf courses--is being stamped onto the earth's topography. This globalized model of architecture does not respect or adapt itself to the natural or cultural environment onto which it is implanted. German American photographer Robert Harding Pittman began working on this project in Los Angeles ten years ago. Since then he has been photographing the spread of "L.A. style development" in Las Vegas, Spain, France, Germany, Greece, Dubai, and South Korea.

Hardcover. NY, Russell Sage Foundation, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 400 pages, b&w illustrations. Little over a century ago, New York and Budapest were both flourishing cities engaging in spectacular modernization. By 1930, New York had emerged as an innovating cosmopolitan metropolis, while Budapest languished under the conditions that would foster fascism. Budapest and New York explores the increasingly divergent trajectories of these once-similar cities through the perspectives of both Hungarian and American experts in the fields of political, cultural, social and art history. Their original essays illuminate key aspects of urban life that most reveal the turn-of-the-century evolution of New York and Budapest: democratic participation, use of public space, neighborhood ethnicity, and culture high and low. What comes across most strikingly in these essays is New York's cultivation of social and political pluralism, a trend not found in Budapest. Nationalist ideology exerted tremendous pressure on Budapest's ethnic groups to assimilate to a single Hungarian language and culture. In contrast, New York's ethnic diversity was transmitted through a mass culture that celebrated ethnicity while muting distinct ethnic traditions, making them accessible to a national audience. Mild fade to spine of dust jacket, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 304 pages. Nineteen essays, by a diverse group of historians and others who experience and study Gilbert's buildings in their professional lives, detail the intricate relationship between Gilbert's work and the long-standing tradition of public architecture in America.This volume examines Gilbert's work in five unique categories: the building of a national practice, an evaluation of his Minnesota State Capitol as "a defining moment" in American civic architecture, his New York career, his response to civic ideals in his plans for towns and universities, and his work in the public domain. Illustrations, some in color.

Softcover. Munich, Prestel/Art Institute of Chicago, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 480 pages, b&w and color illustrations. Published in association with the Art Institute of Chicago and in conjunction with an exhibition presented there in the summer of 1988, as well as in Paris and Frankfurt-am-Main in 1987-88. Contributors to the text include Robert Bruegmann, Sally Chappell, Meredith L. Clausen, Joan E. Draper and others.

Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 160 pages. A tribute to the barn by the master documentarian of our time. As an elemental part of our landscape and our history, barns evoke childhood memories for many of us, recollections of a simpler way of life. Regardless of their size or shape, their forms follow their functions. They are honest. They are beautiful. And they are rapidly vanishing. Across the land we see abandoned farms with barns falling down, being torn down, and only occasionally being converted to other uses. As urban sprawl eats up the countryside and food-producing Goliaths put small farmers out of business, the need for old barns has diminished. For most of his life as a photographer, David Plowden has admired and photographed barns. In recent years, as their disappearance accelerated, he made it his mission to document these beautiful structures, before they too are lost. The result is this beautiful book, his hymn to the American barn. 130 duotone photographs.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 320 pages. From the 1920s through the 1950s, two individuals, Joseph Urban and Norman Bel Geddes, did more, by far, to create the image of "America" and make it synonymous with modernity than any of their contemporaries. Urban and Bel Geddes were leading Broadway stage designers and directors who turned their prodigious talents to other projects, becoming mavericks first in industrial design and then in commercial design, fashion, architecture, and more. The two men gave shape to the most quintessential symbols of the modern American lifestyle, including movies, cars, department stores, and nightclubs, along with private homes, kitchens, stoves, fridges, magazines, and numerous household furnishings.Illustrated with more than 130 photographs of their influential designs, this book tells the engrossing story of Urban and Bel Geddes. Christopher Innes shows how these two men with a background in theater lent dramatic flair to everything they designed and how this theatricality gave the distinctive modernity they created such wide appeal. If the American lifestyle has been much imitated across the globe over the past fifty years, says Innes, it is due in large measure to the designs of Urban and Bel Geddes. Together they were responsible for creating what has been called the "Golden Age" of American culture.

Softcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. 314 pages, b&w illustrations. In 1930 the Olmsted Brothers and Harland Bartholomew & Associates submitted a report, "Parks, Playgrounds, and Beaches for the Los Angeles Region," to the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. After a day or two of coverage in the newspapers, the report dropped from sight. The plan set out a system of parks and parkways, children's playgrounds, and public beaches. It is a model of ambitious, intelligent, sensitive planning commissioned at a time when land was available, if only the city planners had had the fortitude and vision to act on its recommendations. "Parks, Playgrounds, and Beaches" has become a highly valued but difficult-to-find document. In this book, Greg Hise and William Deverell examine the reasons it was called for, analyze why it failed, and open a discussion about the future of urban public space. In addition to their introduction and a facsimile reproduction of the report, Eden by Design includes a dialogue between Hise, Deverell, and widely admired landscape architect Laurie Olin that illuminates the significance of the Olmsted-Bartholomew report and situates it in the history of American landscape planning. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Pantheon, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Grand Avenues tells the riveting story of Pierre Charles L'Enfant and the creation of Washington D.C.--from the seeds of his inspiration to the fulfillment of his extraordinary vision.L'Enfant's story is one of consuming passion, high emotion, artistic genius, and human frailty. As a boy he studied drawing at the most prestigious art institute in the world. As a young man he left his home in Paris to volunteer in the army of the American colonies, where he served under George Washington. There he would also meet many of the people who would have a profound impact on his life, including Alexander Hamilton and James Monroe. And it was Washington himself who, in 1791, entrusted L'Enfant with the planning of the nation's capital--and reluctantly allowed him to be dismissed from the project eleven months later. The plan for the city was published under another name, and for the remainder of his life L'Enfant fought for recognition of his achievement. But he would not live to see that day, and a century would pass before L'Enfant would be given credit for his brilliant design. Scott W. Berg recounts this tale, richly evocative of time and place, with the narrative verve of a novel and with a cast of characters that ranges from Thomas Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers to the surveyor who took credit for L'Enfant's plans, the assistant who spent a week in jail for his loyalty to L'Enfant, and the men who finally restored L'Enfant's reputation at the beginning of the twentienth century.

Softcover. Durham NC, Duke University Press, 5th pr., 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 250 pages, b&w illustrations. This entertaining and playful book views Disney World as much more than the site of an ideal family vacation. Blending personal meditations, interviews, photographs, and cultural analysis, Inside the Mouse looks at Disney World's architecture and design, its consumer practices, and its use of Disney characters and themes. This book takes the reader on an alternative ride through "the happiest place on earth" while asking "What makes this forty-three-square-mile theme park the quintessential embodiment of American leisure?" Turning away from the programmed entertainment that Disney presents, the authors take a peek behind the scenes of everyday experience at Disney World. In their consideration of the park as both private corporate enterprise and public urban environment, the authors focus on questions concerning the production and consumption of leisure. Featuring over fifty photographs and interviews with workers that strip "cast members" of their cartoon costumes, this captivating work illustrates the high-pressure dynamics of the typical family vacation as well as a tour of Disney World that looks beyond the controlled facade of themed attractions. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Ontario CA, Vanwell Publishing St. Catherines, Ontario, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 344 pages, illustrated throughout in color and b&w. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

Softcover. Washington and Lee University, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 100 pages. The 2005 issue, Volume 12, of Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture: The Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum contains the articles: "Selling Domestic Space: The Boarding House in the Southern Mountains" by Michael Ann Williams; "La Casa Alamense: The Mexican Hacienda as Urban Dwelling" by John Messina; "Unraveling the Benjamin Deyerle Legend: An Analysis of Mid-Nineteenth-Century Brickwork in the Roanoke Valley of Virginia" by Michael J. Pulice; "Orson S. Fowler and a Home for All: The Octagon House in the Midwest" by Rebecca Lawin McCarley; and "Roadside Shrines and Granite Sketches: Diversifying the Vernacular Landscape of Memory" by David Charles Sloane.

Hardcover. Chicago, American Planning Association, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 441 pages. Illustrated in b&w and color. Conventional planning techniques just aren't working in many rural and suburbanizing areas. Developments where people merely exist have replaced neighborhoods where people once thrived. Strip malls and checkerboard subdivisions prevail. Randall Arendt argues convincingly that this scenario is not inevitable. In Rural by Design he advocates creative, practical land-use planning techniques to preserve open space and community character. He shows how developments all across America have used these techniques successfully. This book examines a broad spectrum of nitty-gritty design topics in a lively, readable style. Topics range from sewage disposal and farmland preservation to greenway planning for interconnected open space and the design of rural subdivision streets. The book includes numerous case examples of residential, commercial, and mixed-use projects that have used these innovative design techniques. And it takes an in-depth look at the design elements of the traditional town--and how to reinvent those elements in today's communities. Names on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Softcover. Flammarion, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Softcover, 223 pages, illustrated in color and b&w. Tracing the origins of Americanism back to the late nineteenth century, Scenes of the World to Come focuses on the European discovery of the American city--with its grand hotels, skyscrapers, and massive industrial plants, its new-found sense of efficiency and mobility, and its infatuation with domestic appliances and mechanization. The book analyzes the global structures and thematic strategies according to which American architectural forms and urban models migrated to Europe, bringing the promise of a new architecture and, along with it, the threat of a dissolution of European identity. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 303 pages. Eighty percent of everything ever built in America has been built since the end of World War II. This tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside is not simply an expression of our economic predicament, but in large part a cause. It is the everyday environment where most Americans live and work, and it represents a gathering calamity whose effects we have hardly begun to measure. In The Geography of Nowhere, James Howard Kunstler traces America's evolution from a nation of Main Streets and coherent communities to a land where everyplace is like noplace in particular, where the city is a dead zone and the countryside a wasteland of cars and blacktop. Now that the great suburban build-out is over, Kunstler argues, we are stuck with the consequences: a national living arrangement that destroys civic life while imposing enormous social costs and economic burdens. Kunstler explains how our present zoning laws impoverish the life of our communities, and how all our efforts to make automobiles happy have resulted in making human beings miserable. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise like new.

Softcover. Barcelona/NY, Actar, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover with pictorial wrappers, 251 pages, illustrated in color and b&w. Once the greatest American example of a modern city served by infrastructure, Los Angeles is now in crisis. Infrastructure has ceased to support architecture's plans for the city. This provocative collection looks at infrastructure as a way of mapping residents' place in the city, remaining optimistic about the role of architecture to affect change. Clean copy.

Softcover. Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 1st pbk, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, yellow card wraps with b&w designs and black lettering. 287 pages with 55 b/w line drawings and 96 b/w plates. The first publication in English that gives a general survey of the development of the inner structure of the town from a dual point of view: that of the function of the square in the life of the community and that of its conception in purely aesthetic terms. Zucker shows a continuous development from Greece and Rome, through the Middle Ages and Renaissance, to the creative heights of the 17th and 18th centuries, periods which he considers the culmination of this development. The concluding chapter surveys the role of the square in early American life. Clean copy.

Softcover. Cambridge MA, The MIT Press, 1st, 1997, Book: N, Softcover, 119 pages. Ultimately, Viewing Olmsted is a savvy and thought-provoking, yet diminutive picture book. The collaboration of three brilliant photographers under the sponsorship of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, it guides the reader down three highly personal, present day tours of legendary parks designed by Olmsted, the patron saint of American landscape architecture. Happily, though, its readers are left to intellectually fend for themselves as to meanings or implications of Frederick Olmsted's work, genius, and lasting influence as the man who designed such famous spaces as Central Park. Academics and artists will appreciate the fresh visual perspectives offered on the man's legacy, the sometimes soothing, sometimes haunting nature-by-design retreats for the urban soul. Those with more than a passing interest in the ways in which man interacts with his `natural' surroundings will appreciate vistas evocative of place rather than time. To the authors' credit, the book raises more questions than it answers, and is of a scale to fit neatly into a travel case. Far from definitive, the book is, nevertheless, a must have for architects, landscape architects, photographers, and Olmsted aficionados.