Urban Planning Today: A Harvard Design Magazine Reader

Urban Planning Today: 

A Harvard Design Magazine Reader

2006 | PDF | 160 pages | 11 mb

American cities' penchants for single-use zoning and free-market development in pursuit of economic growth have produced problems that have long been recognized: grueling commutes and dependency on automobiles, social isolation, expensive public infrastructure, needless destruction of countryside. Eminent domain disputes rage on, despite recent Supreme Court decisions. Outdated public housing and failed single-function projects litter the landscape. Addressing these urgent problems and debating the public's role in urban planning, the contributors to Urban Planning Today report on real projects in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, New York, Omaha, Portland, and Vancouver. They bring varying, and sometimes divergent, perspectives from backgrounds in urban design and development, city and regional planning, criticism, and law to bear on the mixed bag of results observed in these cities.

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Private Dwelling : Contemplating the use of housing

Private Dwelling : Contemplating the use of housing

 Housing is something that is deeply personal to us. It offers us privacy and security and allows us to be intimate with those we are close to. This book considers the nature of privacy but also how we choose to share our dwelling. The book discusses the manner in which we talk about our housing, how it manifests and assuages our anxieties and desires and how it helps us come to terms with loss.

Private Dwelling offers a deeply original take on housing. The book proceeds through a series of speculations, using philosophical analysis and critique, personal anecdote, film criticism, social and cultural theory and policy analysis to unpick the subjective nature of housing as a personal place where we can be sure of ourselves.

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Origins, Imitation, Conventions

Origins, Imitation, Conventions :

Representation in the Visual Arts.

342 pages | PDF | 17,1 MB

This collection contains studies written by art historian James Ackerman over the past decade.

The "origins" studied here include the earliest art history and criticism; the beginnings of architectural drawing in the Middle Ages and Renaissance; Leonardo Da Vinci's sketches for churches, the first in the Renaissance to propose supporting domes on sculpted walls and piers; and the first architectural photographs.

 "Imitation" refers to artistic achievements that in part depended on the imitation of forms established in practices outside the fine arts, such as ancient Roman rhetoric and print media.

 "Conventions," like language, facilitate communication between the artist and viewer, but are both more universal (understood across cultures) and more fixed (resisting variation that might diminish their clarity). The three categories are closely linked throughout the book, as most acts of representation partake to some degree of all three.

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Cities and Design

Cities and Design

296 pages | PDF | 4,5 MB

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Airspaces (Reaktion Books - Topographics)

Airspaces (Reaktion Books - Topographics)

 David Pascoe,

 304 pages | PDF | 4 MB

 Airspaces explores the physical and social infrastructure of the airport. Combining informal anecdote and speculation with discussions of contemporary cultural theory, architecture, social history, film, and literary criticism, this book is the first sustained attempt to consider the airport both as a site and as a cultural icon of the late twentieth century.

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