
Foundations of Urban Design
Marcel Smets(Author)
Actar Publishers
Published on 30. September 2022
Book
Hardback
144 pages
978-1-63840-033-2 (ISBN)
Description
"The book is structured into twenty-nine essays, each dedicated to a pair of urbanistic concepts. Discussing historical and contemporary, interpretive and designerly approaches to urbanity, the notions composing the 29 pairs relate dialectically, as theses-and-antitheses. Still, we are warned, 'the presented antagonisms are not a priori in opposition, but rather complementary'. Smets' fundaments may be likened to emblems. A Renaissance genre, proliferating before the Industrial Age, emblems are complex knowledge repositories, their meaning emerging at the intersection - but not as 'sum' of - a title, a text and an image. The paired titles, the written analysis, alternating abstractions and historic references, together with Heinrich Altenmèuller's pairs of essentialized computer graphics, neither completely 'explain', nor exhaust each other's suggestive capacities. Some of the pairs, such as Ribbon - Cluster, Ladder - Star, Fabric - Citadel, wide-span the history of the city, denoting quasi ubiquitous morphologies. Others, such as Monument - Icon, Street - Road, Hole - Void, address (the long) modernity, the second notion illuminating more recent developments. Flow - Shelter, Castle - Palace, tackle the city scale proper, while others, such as Network - Polynuclear Territory, Island - Archipelago, address the scale of the region, characterizing recent planning approaches, such as Landscape Urbanism or Infrastructure Urbanism. Finally, Destination - Morphology, Creator - Curator, Growth - Improvement, question processes and paradigms of making." Cristina Purcar, Planning Perspectives, 2021, 36,6"--
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 225 mm
Width: 154 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
368 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-63840-033-2 (9781638400332)
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Person
Marcel SMETS has been engaged in all sides of urbanism. He taught urban design at the KU. Leuven in Belgium and Harvard’s GSD, he is a respected author and a distinguished urban designer. His books explore the origin of ideas and development of concepts in urbanism and infrastructure design. His projects investigate the urban reappropriation of former industrial sites and infrastructural amenities, notably in Leuven, Brussels and Antwerp (B), Rouen and Nantes (F), Genua and Conegliano (I).