Publicación de la semana: “Design of Cities”
Design of Cities. A superbly illustrated account of the development of urban form, from ancient Athens to modern Brasilia.
(Revised Edition)
Autor: Edmund N. Bacon
Editorial: Penguin Books
Idioma: inglés
ISBN: 0 14 00 42369
Año: 1974
Dónde comprarlo: En este link de Amazon
Sobre el libro: Bajo la premisa de que la forma de una ciudad es un indicador del grado de civilización de sus habitantes, el autor articula este libro como un recorrido histórico, desde la antigua polis griega hasta el análisis de ciudades de la modernidad, como Brasilia o la Londres de los años 90.
Además, si las ciudades muestran el cómo son sus habitantes, el levantamiento de un núcleo urbano no es otra cosa que un acto de voluntad, una articulación de decisiones, especialmente en la modernidad occidental, en donde la democracia se convierte en el principio de la relación y expresión social. Si la ciudad es una suma de voluntades, éstas encarnan, ponen en la práctica, una idea de diseño determinada. Así, el libro comienza tratando de delimitar lo que esta “idea de diseño” significa, comenzando de los constitutivos básicos de la arquitectura y el diseño urbano: la forma, el espacio, el movimiento, el tiempo y la articulación de las formas.
Índice:
– Acknowledgments
– Foreword – Revised Edition
– Foreword
– The city as an act of will
– Awareness of space as experience
– The nature of design
– Ways of perceiving ones’s self
– The growth of greek cities
– Design order of ancient rome
– Medieval design
– Upsurge of the Renaissance
– Design structure of Baroque Rome
– Dutch interlude
– 18th and 19th century European design
– Development of Paris
– Evolution of Sanit Petersburg
– John Nash and London
– Vitruvius comes to the new world
– Le Corbusier and the new vision
– The great effort – Brasilia
– Peking
– Simultaneous movement systems
– Decision making
– Putting the ideas to work – Philadelphia
– Griffin and Canberra
– City for humanity – Stockholm
– Looking into the future
– Appendix
– Notes on Illustrations
– Bibliography
– Index
Extracto: (The city as an act of will) “The building of cities is one of the man’s greatest achievments. The form of his city always has been and always will be a pitiless indicator of the state of civilization. This form determined by the multiplicity of decisions made by the people who live in it. In certain circumstances these decisions have interacter to produce a force of such clarity and form that a noble city has been born. It is my premise that a deeper understanding of the interactions of these decisions can give us the insight necessary to create noble cities in our own day.
[…]
My hope is to dispel the idea, so widely and uncritically held, that cities are a kind of grand accident, beyond the control of the human will, an that they respond only to some inmutable law. I contend that human will can be exercised effectively on our cities now, so that the form that they take will be a true expression of the highest aspirations of our civilization.”
