Awards
- Winner of 2018 PROSE Award Honorable Mention, Architecture and Urban Planning 2018
- Winner of 2018 PROSE Award Honorable Mention, Architecture and Urban Planning</PrizeName> 2018
- Winner of <PrizeName>2018 PROSE Award Honorable Mention, Architecture and Urban Planning</PrizeName> 2018
Overview
Why urban design is larger than architecture- the foundational qualities of urban design, examples and practitionersUrban design in practice is incremental, but architects imagine it as scaled-up architecture-large, ready-to-build pop-up cities. This paradox of urban design is rarely addressed; indeed, urban design as a discipline lacks a theoretical foundation. In The Largest Art, Brent Ryan argues that urban design encompasses more than architecture, and he provides a foundational theory of urban design beyond the architectural scale. In a ""declaration of independence"" for urban design, Ryan describes urban design as the largest of the building arts, with qualities of its own. Ryan distinguishes urban design from its sister arts by its pluralism- plural scale, ranging from an alleyway to a region; plural time, because it is deeply enmeshed in both history and the present; plural property, with many owners; plural agents, with many makers; and plural form, with a distributed quality that allows it to coexist with diverse elements of the city. Ryan looks at three well-known urban design projects through the lens of pluralism- a Brancusi sculptural ensemble in Romania, a Bronx housing project, and a formally and spatially diverse grouping of projects in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He revisits the thought of three plural urbanists working between 1960 and 1980- David Crane, Edmund Bacon, and Kevin Lynch. And he tells three design stories for the future, imaginary scenarios of plural urbanism in locations around the world. Ryan concludes his manifesto with three signal considerations urban designers must acknowledge- eternal change, inevitable incompletion, and flexible fidelity. Cities are ceaselessly active, perpetually changing. It is the urban designer's task to make art with aesthetic qualities that can survive perpetual change.
Full Product Details
Author: Brent D. Ryan (Associate Professor of Urban Design and Public Policy and Head of the City Design and Development Gr, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Publisher: MIT Press Ltd
Imprint: MIT Press
Dimensions:
Width: 20.30cm
, Height: 2.10cm
, Length: 22.90cm
ISBN: 9780262036672
ISBN 10: 0262036673
Pages: 384
Publication Date: 27 October 2017
Recommended Age: From 18 years
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Reviews
A strong, timely book that puts forth a clearly articulated argument. -Spacing
