After the City

by Lars Lerup

• ISBN13: 9780262621571
• ISBN10: 0262621576
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-10-01
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

The city's reign over our senses, our moods, our very ways of being is outmoded. The suburban metropolis has superseded the city. The new building materials are non-material: electricity, telephony, weather, time, and so forth. Consequently, according to Lars Lerup, architecture and architects must be rethought. Until now, architects have been trained to serve the elite few, as reflected in a belief in customization and the uniqueness of each project. Instead, Lerup holds, architectural educators should promote teamwork and the design of authorless objects, combined with an integration of design and practice. Before we can rethink the architectural curriculum, however, we must rethink the metropolis. And rethink the metropolis is just what Lerup does. In an intellectually far-ranging yet intensely personal manner, he moves from contemplation of the form and philosophical implications of the Pantheon to a discussion of how Levittown residents seek and create community. The result is an exhilarating work with profound practical implications. Unlike the many who view suburbia with paranoid dismay, Lerup takes an optimistic view of the new, open metropolis -- for him not the site of unavoidable uniformity and mediocrity, but an exciting new frontier.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	viii
The Metropolis: A Portfolio of Images	3	(17)
I Introduction	20	(26)
Tafuri's Smile	21	(8)
The Wanderer, Authority, and Doublespace	29	(17)
The Straying Gaze	29	(1)
Stones at Rest	30	(2)
The Eye in the Center	32	(2)
The Face of Power	34	(3)
The Doublespace	37	(6)
A New Map	43	(3)
II The Suburban Metropolis	46	(38)
Stim and Dross: Rethinking the Metropolis	47	(17)
Houston, 28th Floor. At the Window	47	(2)
Megashape	49	(1)
Intention	50	(1)
The Plane, the Riders, and Air Space	50	(1)
Fields	51	(2)
Sprawl	53	(1)
Oceanic Grammar	54	(2)
Entortung	56	(2)
Stim and Dross	58	(2)
Stimulators	60	(1)
stimdross	61	(3)
Sparta's Revenge	64	(20)
The Other City	64	(2)
Virgin Fields	66	(5)
A Certain Distance	71	(2)
The Protean Field	73	(3)
Radical Mobility	76	(1)
Voids and Vapors	77	(7)
III Architecture Reconsidered	84	(72)
The End of the Architectural Promenade: A Portfolio of Images	85	(31)
Distraction versus Concentration	86	(11)
Planned Assaults	97	(13)
Ambiguity and Action	110	(6)
The Metropolitan Architect	116	(13)
Architects' Hands	116	(3)
The Architect's House	119	(1)
The Architect in the Metropolis	120	(9)
Vehicular Behavior: A Portfolio of Images	129	(10)
Design Machines	139	(17)
Mechanisms of Closeness	139	(4)
Household Vehicles	143	(5)
Toward Fusion	148	(2)
The Simple House	150	(6)
IV The Frontier	156	(20)
The Middle Landscape	157	(19)
Frontiers	157	(3)
Museum Geography	160	(6)
Frontier Ecology	166	(1)
Architecture and Biota	167	(9)
Notes	176	(14)
Bibliography	190	(5)
Illustration Credits	195	(2)
Index	197