Alternative Visions of Post-War Reconstruction: Creating the Modern Townscape

Eamonn Canniffe has contributed the last chapter, entitled

NEO-REALISM: URBAN FORM AND LA DOLCE VITA IN POST-WAR ITALY 1945-75

to the new book 'Alternative Visions of Post-War Reconstruction
Creating the Modern Townscape' edited by John Pendlebury, Erdem Erten and Peter J. Larkham


The history of post Second World War reconstruction has recently become an important field of research around the world; Alternative Visions of Post-War Reconstruction is a provocative work that questions the orthodoxies of twentieth century design history.

This book provides a key critical statement on mid-twentieth century urban design and city planning, focused principally upon the period between the start of the Second World War to the mid-sixties. The various figures and currents covered here represent a largely overlooked field within the history of 20th century urbanism.

In this period while certain modernist practices assumed an institutional role for post-war reconstruction and flourished into the mainstream, such practices also faced opposition and criticism leading to the production of alternative visions and strategies. Spanning from a historically-informed modernism to the increasing presence of urban conservation the contributors examine these alternative approaches to the city and its architecture.


The book will be published by Routledge in August 2014

MANUFACTURING UTOPIA: The Movie

The documentary of the MA A+U 2014 Symposium MANUFACTURING UTOPIA: Happiness in Emerging Environments is now available to watch at the symposium website

http://utopiamcr.wix.com/utopiamcr#!video/cusu

CITIES IN TRANSFORMATION

Eamonn Canniffe's chapter 'Publoid Space in the Microcosmopolis: Two new business districts of Manchester and Salford' has been published in

CITIES IN TRANSFORMATION: RESEARCH & DESIGN
ideas, methods, techniques, tools, case studies

edited by Marco Bovati, Michele Caja, Giancarlo Floridi and Martina Landsberger

The two volume set is published by Il Poligrafo, Padua

Architecture schools are fundamental deposits of knowledge and abilities, which have contributed productively for a long time to the growth of studies on architecture and the city. The aim of this book is to share the results of research work carried out under the patronage of EAAE and ARCC in the main European and American architecture schools on the issue of the city and its recent transformations. Through the comparison of different points of view, the goal is to hi-ghlight the need for a broad and open discussion, appropriate to the vastness and complexity of the problems faced. The well known sentence by Leon Battista Alberti, “The house is like a small city and the city is like a large house”, is a brief indication of the subjects of the volume: the widespread phenomena of urbanization of large parts of the world, the problems of diametrically opposed socalled shrinking cities and the severity of the effects of climate change and energy issue. Architectural and urban contents are also main themes in EU policy where the crucial role of Architecture has been stressed in many documents concerning the development of European cities. These arguments are developed in a thematic interweaving that goes from architecture and city's analytical and design techniques to those connected with organization, construction, security, planning, conservation and practice of a profession whose role has taken on ever greater responsibility within the human destiny.

Architecture + Urbanism recommends 'Louis Kahn: The Power of Architecture'

LOUIS KAHN: THE POWER OF ARCHITECTURE

Design Museum, London

09 July 2014 – 12 October 2014

The American architect LOUIS KAHN (1901-1974) is regarded as one of the great master builders of the Twentieth Century. Kahn created buildings of monumental beauty with powerful universal symbolism.

This exhibition encompasses an unprecedented and diverse range of architectural models, original drawings, travel sketches, photographs and films. Highlights of the exhibition include a four-metre-high model of the spectacular City Tower designed for Philadelphia (1952-57). Each project is fully represented in this timely exhibition, which seeks to bring one of the twentieth century’s greatest master builders to a new audience.

Architecture + Urbanism recommends 'Architecture to Scale: Stanley Tigerman and Zago Architecture'

ARCHITECTURE TO SCALE: STANLEY TIGERMAN AND ZAGO ARCHITECTURE

Art Institute of Chicago


Thursday, June 26, 2014–Sunday, September 14, 2014



As concepts are developed and represented across a range of scales, an architect's work requires a variety of approaches, media, and outputs. ARCHITECTURE TO SCALE demonstrates the complex architectural processes from research to production through the work of two groundbreaking architects in adjacent installations: a selection of architectural models by Stanley Tigerman and Zago Architecture’s series of monumental films, XYT: Detroit Streets.

Since founding his architectural practice in 1962, Stanley Tigerman has been a major figure in Chicago’s postmodern architecture movement. Tigerman has covered vast territory while developing a multifaceted critique of history, the architectural profession, and even his own personal narrative. The diverse array of models in this exhibition—from single-family homes to religious institutions—illustrates his formal sophistication and conceptual rigor while showing how his ideas about irony, religion, and humor manifest themselves in architectural form.

Taking a much different and exponentially larger form is Zago Architecture’s film series XYT: Detroit Streets, created as a research project in 2008. Founded by Andrew Zago in 1991, Zago Architecture employs a rigorous practice of research and experimentation in parallel to its architecture projects. With XYT: Detroit Streets, the mechanics of representation have been expanded and exaggerated in order to capture the essence of the contemporary urban condition as seen in Detroit. This exhibition also highlights how the firm’s research on representation has influenced the development of its architecture projects.

From the micro to the macro, architects rely on scale in order to articulate and present their projects, and this exhibition demonstrates unique architectural approaches through the contrasting scales of Stanley Tigerman and Zago Architecture.