Town Spaces: Contemporary Interpretations in Traditional Urbanism

by Krier, Rob

• ISBN13: 9783764369422
• ISBN10: 3764369426
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-05-01
• Publisher: Chronicle Books Llc

Summary

In response to the sense of crisis in many of today s towns the proponents of new traditionalism offer a form of urban planning which looks back to more traditional styles whilst firmly integrating the requirements of modern life. Their designs are easily accessible and characterized by a sense of public spirit, identification and order. The contributions in this book reveal how these principles relate to the specific European city in the 20th century as well as to the writings of theoreticians from Camillo Sitte up to Rem Koolhaas. The authors reveal why the provocatively conservative approach has enjoyed so much success in the avant-garde Netherlands. They draw comparisons with the New Urbanism found in the USA and above all develop a systematic approach to town planning. New towns, the rebuilding of town areas, the restructuring of city centres and the extension of towns and urban areas are investigated in the chapters on urban composition. All examples in this part are from the Krier Kohl office and demonstrate in details the design process up to the realized buildings in particular the architectural realization by a wide range of architects, including Michael Graves, Cesar Pelli and others, shows that new traditionalism in urban planning can fruitfully work together with a wide range of architectural approaches.

Author Biography

Rob Krier and Christoph Kohl practice an urbanism orientated towards traditional architecture. They respect the specific history of a town and aim to reanimate it by drawing on up-to-date resources. By emphasizing the spatial context, they prove themselves to be anti-modernist, without being antiinnovative. Rob Krier and Christoph Kohl readily apply the terms "normal" building and "normal" house, by which they mean the observation of human proportions in architecture. For them, the future of the city lies in a social "down-scaling" of architecture, and in reanimating sections of the city that unify different facets of social life. Hans Ibelings, born in 1963, is an art historian and independent architecture critic Philipp Meuser, born in 1969, Dipl.-Ing. Architekt BDA, is a member of the Association of German Architects and a freelance journalist. He studied architecture in Berlin and Zurich, specializing in history and theory. From 1996 to 2002 he was coordinator of the Berliner Stadtforum and editor in chief of the journal Foyer. Since 2003 he has been editor in chief of the international architectural journal area (German edition). He is the author of a variety of books Harald Bodenschatz, born in 1946, is professor of the sociology of planning and architecture at the Berlin Technical University. He has published numerous books

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Figural City	p. 6
Composition of Urban Spaces	p. 8
New Towns	p. 19
New City Districts	p. 59
Reshaping Urban Centres	p. 101
Restructuring Towns and Cities	p. 163
Anti-Modernist Megastructures: The Architecture and Urbanism of Krier and Kohl in the Dutch Context	p. 236
Experiments with Convention: European Urban Planning from Camillo Sitte to New Urbanism	p. 248
New Urbanism and the European Perspective: Presumption, Rivalry or Challenge?	p. 266
Illustration Credits	p. 281
Biographies	p. 282
Project Staff	p. 283
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