5 comments about Architecture and Disjunction.

1. This book was required for our studio (third year), and I am very glad that it was. I found it to be thought-provoking and helpful to my studio project.



2. If the architecture of Frank Gehry, has been described as a movie composed entirely of special effects, then Tschumi's is like special effects that don't quite come off. Herbert Muschamp, the modernist cheerleader who is the architecture critic for the NY Times, began his review of Tschumi's Lerner Student Center at Columbia University by saying "By now, everyone knows that Bernard Tschumi's new Lerner Hall is a dud." And City Journal described his work as ""an agitated, irrational mix of limestone, brick, metal, and glass... giving the impression of a building on the edge of a nervous breakdown." Journalist Robert Locke has written, ""Tschumi's theoretical writings, the basis of his reputation, are a tangled mess that alternately induces dizziness and puzzlement as to whether the author actually knows what philosophy is, or merely heard it described by someone in a bar once ...... The worst of this stuff is so self-evidently empty as to defy attack". - It only remains for you to ask yourself whether you are one of those fools who will be taken in by this confidence trickster who has ruined the cities we live in, or whether you will move on to more intelligent reading. [Hint: Try Louis Kahn. It's a good start!]



3. Disjuntion indeed. More BS pontification than valuable commentary. The arguments are poorly considered, heavily flawed and bear no tangible relationship to the projects they are supposed to describe. Tschumis is just one of the many theoretical architects who make great claims about the buildings and cities they design for, but in practice produce the same tired cliched sculptural rubbish that has ruined Paris and other great places. But worse, Tschumi's buildings are poorly built and look even worse after a few years. - Check out his work at Columbia Campus in New York. The loading dock of any warehouse looks better than the entry ramp that he designed. - Time to wake up from the rubbish Tshumi and his ilk have been getting away with for years.



4. Tschumi states more-or-less obvious truths about the failure of modern architecture to create meaningful places. The arguments are clear, if simply stated. - My big regret is that the writer never heeds his own message. Tschumi himself is one of the worst practitioners of the very ideologies he criticizes. [Anyone who has looked at the Columbia building by Tschumi will know how poor, cold, puerile, vacuous and dumb (that's right DUMB) a building it is.] Tschumi has fallen into the trap so common in architecture these days, of believing that writing ("theorizing") is more important than observing and building for a true reality. Pragmatics and real life issues are not his bag. - In the end, Tschumi is just another architectural hypocrite. He sort of knows the real stuff, but is too much of a wanker (ask your British friends if you don't know what a wanker is), to care about real architectural problems enough to solve them. - A few diagrams here, a few poorly assembled details there ... who cares if it falls apart three days after he photographs it. - It's just such a pity this flaky poof is allowed to teach. - If you read it, (and I don;t recommend you waste your time doing so), just ask yourself if the doctor seems to use his own medicine.



5. In an amazing collection of essays, Tschumi criticizes both modernism objectivity and post-modern nostalgia. His most important proposition -- that there is no cause and effect relationship between function and space -- is a kick in the teeth of functionalist thinkers. Instead of "form and function", he proposes an architecture based on "space, event and movement", in which the conflit and contradictions between the terms of the equation is its most relevant aspect. "Architecture and disjunction" is a Pandora's Box -- some of the questions it proposes are painful and disturbing (like "what is space?", for instance), but have been overlooked long enough. To paraphrase Morpheus in the movie "The Matrix", "you can take the blue pill, and believe whatever you like, or you can 'read the little red book', stay in Wonderland, and I'll show how deep the rabbit hole goes..."

1 comments about Green Infrastructure: Linking Landscapes and Communities.

1. This is an excellent resource for physical planning in relationship to environmental sustainability. If you buy this book , buy also Skinny streets and green neighborhoods.

5 comments about Community By Design: New Urbanism for Suburbs and Small Communities.

1. I like this book because it suggests ways to make our communities better. I really like books that talk about how we can improve the status quo and/or better alternatives to the status quo.



2. This is an excellent introduction to how the philosophy of New Urbanism can be applied to suburbs. It would be very helpful to people serving on Zoning & Planning Commissions or City Councils.



3. The suburban landscape of the United States is the subject of this book, advertised as "the first practical guide to creating communities that truly are communities-not merely enclaves near off-ramps." Guided by the principles of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), the book uses excerpts from that organization's Charter to illuminate its advocacy of more connected development patterns. The book's scope extends beyond the commercial strip to include the major building blocks of towns and suburbs, such as apartment complexes, schools, parks and office campuses.
   
   Hall and Porterfield includes passages of fist-thumping suburbia-bashing similar to James Howard Kunstler's Home From Nowhere (1998, Touchstone Books) or Jane Holtz Kay's Asphalt Nation (1997, Crown). They also include graphic material, much of it adapted their earlier book, A Concise Guide to Community Planning (1994, McGraw-Hill).
   
   Readers knowledgeable about New Urbanism will find few surprises here, other than a few glaring factual errors, like a reference to "Tyson's Corners, Virginia, one of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States" (p. 7) and a claim that Edge Cities and urban villages are "two names for essentially the same thing" (p. 210). Good points crop up here and there, but recommendations are so limited in scope that it can be difficult to discern whether the sample site designs are intended to be good or bad examples, which limits the book's usefulness pedagogically. The lack of dimensions on most of the drawings also severely limits the book's utility as a practical reference. Hall and Porterfield contrast "conventional suburban development" and "Traditional Neighborhood Development" options for site plans, but the comparisons sometimes seem forced and nearly always ignore the larger regional issues so critical to the debate.
   
   One ideal audience for this book might suburban planning commissioners, who need guidance from designers in order to understand the differences between conventional suburban development pods and walkable, human-scaled neighborhoods.



4. Community by Design is an introduction to the basics of community design and New Urbanism. It's useful if that's what you're after, but not an interesting read if you're anything but a novice on the the topic. It reads like a texbook for a freshman-level course in urban design. Used for that purpose, I'm certain it would be more than successful. As a source of new, insightful commentary on the subject of New Urbanism it falls more than a little short.



5. I wanted to take the opportunity to recommend this book to anyone who has wondered why every place in America looks like everywhere else. There's a funny line in the Rocky and Bullwinkle movie where "our heros" are traveling by car across America in a race against time to foil the plan of the arch villan. As they pass the same gas station and fast food franchise again and again Bullwinkle says, "Haven't we been here before?" That was the same reaction my seven-year old had this summer when we were on our family vacation. We were in Richmond, Virginia and he said we've been here before because I remember that place over there. I had to explain to him what franchise architecture was and how just about every town in America has one of those types of buildings. This is a sad commentary on the American landscape that we as consumers expect the to see the familiar sign of our favorite business. This is one reason why I wrote this book; to let folks know that there's a better way. In fact, we used to do it better. The types of places that capture our attention and long to live are the places that were built prior to World War II. The small towns that so many families idealize as the place they'd rather raise their kids are the same places that couldn't be built today because of "modern" zoning ordinances. And the sad thing is today's generation is the first to be raised totally in a suburban environment that requires owning an automobile just to survive. If you're intersted in how this could change and what the alternatives are Community by Design is your book! There's 250 illustrations and photos that show you what's possible right now. The book helps you understand why community can and should be designed and lets you see some places where it has been. If you ask me this is a great book. ...

No comments about The New Transit Town: Best Practices In Transit-Oriented Development.

No comments about Pamphlet Architecture 26: Thirteen Projects for the Sheridan Expressway.

2 comments about Urban Design: A typology of Procedures and Products. Illustrated with over 50 Case Studies.

1. This is not a comprehensive book on the field of Urban Design. Although this is obvious from the subtitle one is left with dissapointment. Aside from an interesting collection of cases studies you really don't get the complexity and timeless cross-section of this field that is having a renaissance now. None of the current trends are mentioned nor do they get any strong coverage (new urbanism/trasnurbanism/reurbanism/everyday urbanism/splintered urbanism/complexity urbanism) nor does the historical element comes through. Generaly good written book but too much of a sallad bowl without a proper structure and philosophy. Not a good tool for teaching. If you want top of the pops book in this field go to D.Grahame Shane's Recombinant Urbanism. For me it was astonishing how little space was given to new urbanism, the leading urban design theory and practice today.



2. A spectacular book. Lang explains all the design process of the urban environment within USA in this century. What had going wrong and why. See also how a close relationship between designers and its clients can improve design quality and what sort of human needs can be fulfilled by the built environment. A book not only for urban designers but for all people related with the designing process from interiors designers to landscape architects.

No comments about Urban Spaces: Squares & Plazas.

No comments about Landscape Design: Promenades.

3 comments about The City Reader (Routledge Urban Reader Series,).

1. This book is a very interesting collection of essays from prominent intellectuals who have shown concern over the development of cities in various aspects, whether it be economics, sociology, or other fields.
   
   Excellent for anyone interested in urbanism, it's problems, it's development, it's future.
   
   The book focuses heavily on U.S. cities, particularly Los Angeles and New York. It would have been nice if the book would had included articles on other large cities in the world.
   
   Despite this, the book is an excellent read which encourages the reader to rethink the way he/she sees the city.



2. As a first year Urban Planner, this book was on the required readings list for our course. This book gave me the edge to all my fellow students because it provided a detailed sample through a historical and progressive manner. It provides the fundamentals of the great thinkers in Urban Planning. It also covered and introduced me to further research on areas such as design and sociology, promoting further personal research.

   As a second year student, this book can always be seen in my bibliography, and is always the first thing I head towards for a brief history on any concepts that are raised in my lecturers.

   This book can be seen as THE general summary of Urban Planning.




3. Legates and Stout do an excellent job of compiling and briefly explaining many seminal writings on cities. There is a lot to read here and I'm not yet finished. But this heavy book is full of informative, interesting and fun writings and provides an excellent introduction to the study of cities. This is essential reading for students of Urban Form, Architecture, and the Social Sciences. Includes Le Corbusier, Patrick Geddes, Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford, J.B. Jackson, Witold Rybczynski and many others.

5 comments about The New York Apartment Houses of Rosario Candela and James Carpenter.

1. Alpern continues with the format used in his "New York's Fabulous Luxury Apartments", which serves the subject matter well. This new volume is also a worthwhile extension of the earlier work for those interested in New York apartment buildings, with very little overlap. However, considering the fairly high price of this book, it would have been nice to see included current photos of at least some of the apartment buildings as they appear today. This would also have provided another level of the always fascinating "then and now" element already included in the book, where illustrations were included depicting what some of the apartment buildings replaced. This was an excellent opportunity missed, perhaps, to provide an amazing encapsulation of the ever-changing and yet at the same time remarkably un-changing landscape of New York City, without detracting from the intended subject of the book. Overall, though, a very agreeable and interesting reference work.



2. An exquisite book! There are stories about each apartment house and how it came to be. I found the two architects, Candela and Carpenter, to be very interesting characters. The homes they designed are ahead of their time. The floor plans are fascinating. The book also shows, by the floor plans, how people lived and what their needs were. The authors even quote costs of building and tell of the people who lived there. If you like real estate you will find this fascinating.



3. Let me first say that I loved the period black and white photos of the buildings, I also appreciated the fact that all of the buildings mentioned came with requisite photos, that is a must in book of this sort. I really didn't know that much about these buildings nor the architects so this book gave me a real education, I came away more knowledged and very impressed. The attention to detail the architects employed in these buildings is amazing and the fact that so many are still extant is a tribute to the artistry and talent that went into designing and building them and obviously contempory wealthy apartment seekers appreciate these attributes or else we all know these buildings would have been pulled down long ago, just like so many of the Gilded Age mansions they replaced. This publishing house puts out such finely crafted books and this one does not disappoint, I highly recommend it.



4. Candela and Carpenter were two of New York's most noted architects of the inter-war era, specializing in luxury apartment buildings. Architectural historian Andrew Alpern has assembled a reference text of their buildings, organized in geographic sequence. In this book, a typical building has two pages dedicated to it. One page consists of a floor plan, and the facing page has a photo or rendering of the exterior, combined with a one-to-six sentence description. Also, there are several brief essays at the beginning of the book.

   I enjoyed this volume, which Alpern has directed at a very narrow segment of readers, but it's not for everyone. This is a volume for architectural enthusiasts who are intrigued by room arrangements. Others might be better served by a book broader in scope (including some by this same author).




5. Alpern has written several books about New York apartment buildings and this is his best. This time he focuses exclusively on the genius of two ground-breaking designers, James Carpenter and Rosario Candela. If you are not adept at reading floor plans (of which there are many), it might not be immediately obvious what defines the genius of these two architects. It is the innovation of their layouts and the graciousness of their spaces that made apartment house living so desireable, allowing for the migration from town house to apartment building. Regardless, everyone will still enjoy the exterior and interior views of these great New York buildings and get a sense of how the rich really live. Alpern raises our awareness of the apartment house type in the City to a higher level, just as others had focused on the greatness of NYC's commercial structures.
   Each building is described in detail and there is some chatty material about who lived where, who bought what, and maybe a little more of that would have added fun to the book. There is a chronology of all the buildings and I would have liked to have seen thumbnail pictures of the buildings next to the timeline, since the book is organized geographically. It is otherwise an excellent and elegant study of the complete apartment house works of these two great designers.