Architecture

A design monograph on the 'Dante of architecture', Antoni Gaudí.

A design monograph series on the most remarkable architects, designers, brands and design movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, each book contains a historical-critical essay discussing the life and work of the subject, followed by an illustrated appreciation of groundbreaking work.

The 'Dante of architecture', Antoni Gaudí crafted extraordinary constructions out of minute and mesmerizing details, transforming fantastical visions into realities on the city streets of Barcelona. His work merged the influences of Orientalism, natural forms, new materials and religious faith into a unique aesthetic. From the furnishings of the Güell Palace to his masterpiece, the still-incomplete Sagrada Família, his imaginative creations are celebrated in this curated selection of images, accompanied by an essay of his life and work.

A design monograph on architect Frank Gehry.

A design monograph series on the most remarkable architects, designers, brands and design movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, each book contains a historical-critical essay discussing the life and work of the subject, followed by an illustrated appreciation of groundbreaking work.

Frank Gehry transformed contemporary architecture with his innovative use, and range, of materials and forms, from mass-produced items to titanium and 3D computer modelling. Remarkable, surprising, and revealing a sense of flow and movement, his buildings curve, bend and collapse in unexpected ways. From his most famous masterpiece, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, to his Dancing House in Prague and the twisting Luma Arles Tower, his experimental shapes inspire awe and wonder.

For Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, Cairo has always been a place of special resonance. As the place in which he was born and has lived his whole life, it is a city he loves passionately and has visited and revisited in his writing. It is the setting for nearly all his novels and short stories, not merely as a backdrop but as an integral part of his fiction, playing its own role in the dramas. The old streets of the Cairo Trilogy and the microcosmic cul-de-sac of Midaq Alley become fictional characters as fascinating as the human ones for Naguib Mahfouz.
A longtime admirer of the novels of Naguib Mahfouz, photographer Britta Le Va discovered old Cairo through his works. Here, she guides us through his pages, and treads his streets and alleys, to produce a collection of outstanding visual images of the historic city. Each complements a verbal image selected from Mahfouz’s writings.
In his introduction, novelist Gamal al-Ghitani describes a walking tour with the great man around the streets of Gamaliya, that historic heart of the old city where both of them—more than thirty years apart—were born and grew up. Along the way, Mahfouz reminisces and remarks on what had changed and what had not in eight decades.

The Arab–Islamic city has been always a glamorous urban dream in human cultural memory. This is manifested in Cairo, the world’s largest medieval urban system where traditional lifestyles are still implemented. Nevertheless, despite the extensive efforts to preserve Historic Cairo, it is sadly vulnerable.
Ahmed Sedky investigates the reasons behind this condition, exploring and comparing regional and international case studies. Questions such as how and what to conserve are raised and elaborated through the perspectives of different stakeholders.
A resulting evaluative framework is accumulated that underpins the criteria for assessing area conservation in the Arab–Islamic context and that can be used to delineate the causes responsible for the present condition of Historic Cairo.

This book argues that the historic city we know as Medieval Cairo was created in the nineteenth century by both Egyptians and Europeans against a background of four overlapping political and cultural contexts: the local Egyptian, Anglo-Egyptian, Anglo-Indian, and Ottoman imperial milieux. Addressing the interrelated topics of empire, local history, religion, and transnational heritage, historian Paula Sanders shows how Cairo’s architectural heritage became canonized in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The book also explains why and how the city assumed its characteristically Mamluk appearance and situates the activities of the European-dominated architectural preservation committee (known as the Comité) within the history of religious life in nineteenth-century Cairo. Offering fresh perspectives and keen historical analysis, this volume examines the unacknowledged colonial legacy that continues to inform the practice of and debates over preservation in Cairo.

This fascinating book describes the excavation and preservation of three early Roman villas in Egypt’s ancient port city of Alexandria. Chronicling the work of the Polish Archaeological Mission in Alexandria, Villa of the Birds is an engaging and informative account of how these ancient dwellings were unearthed, and how the famous mosaic floors were brought to light two thousand years after they were laid.
With the expert guidance of the archaeologists responsible for the excavation, the reader is led through layers of clues reaching ten meters below today’s street level, and to an in-depth appreciation of this extraordinary site’s rich history.
Drawing directly on their work with the Polish Archeological Mission, the authors describe in detail the excavation of the housing areas, as well as the baths, the gymnasia, and the theater that comprise the villa complex.
Villa of the Birds reconstructs not only the villas themselves, with their magnificent mosaics, but also the history of how they were built and used, and ultimately how they were destroyed by fire. The book is richly illustrated with detailed floor plans as well as spectacular color photographs of the mosaics themselves.

American Research Center in Egypt Conservation Series 3

With full color throughout and over 350 photographs, plans, and sketches, this is the first comprehensive volume on Egyptian architect Ramses Wissa Wassef's extensive and hugely influential body of work and its legacy in Egyptian heritage.

The pioneering Egyptian architect and teacher Ramses Wissa Wassef (1911–74) is best known for his founding in 1951 of the Ramses Wissa Wassef Art Centre in Harraniya, a small village near the Giza Pyramids in Greater Cairo. The center, internationally acclaimed for its tapestries and sculptures, began partly as an art school for young villagers, reflecting Wissa Wassef’s aim of reviving traditional Egyptian architecture and crafts, and his belief in the innate creative power and potential of children.

Less well known are Wissa Wassef’s prolific architectural output and his efforts and influence beyond the confines of the Harraniya center to promote artistic expression among Egyptian youth. This generously illustrated volume is the first comprehensive survey of Wissa Wassef’s architectural works, both extant and non-extant, shedding light on his legacy and significant engagement with vernacular and contemporary Egyptian architecture. Wissa Wassef renounced self-promotion and monetary reward in his work, placing human physical and psychological well-being at the center of his architectural philosophy. An astute observer and modest personality, he saw himself as part of the people and began experimenting with participatory design and people-centered architecture before they became popular.

The Architecture of Ramses Wissa Wassef reveals Wissa Wassef’s profuse architectural oeuvre, which spanned private villas and rural houses, as well as public buildings, such as churches, schools, and museums, highlighting his rich contribution to Egypt’s architectural heritage at a moment when that heritage is at risk of being lost.

 Since 1945, the globalization of education and the professionalization of architects and engineers, as well as the conceptualization and production of space, can be seen as a product of battles of legitimacy that were played out in the context of the Cold War and what followed. In this book James Steele provides an informative and compelling analysis of one of Egypt’s foremost contemporary architects, Abdelhalim Ibrahim Abdelhalim, and his work during a period of Egypt’s attempts at constructing an identity and cultural legitimacy within the post–Second World War world order.

Born in 1941 in the small town of Sornaga just south of Cairo, Abdelhalim received his architectural training in Egypt and the United States, and is the designer of over one hundred cultural, institutional, and rehabilitation projects, including the Cultural Park for Children in Cairo, the American University in Cairo campus in New Cairo, the Egyptian Embassy in Amman, and the Uthman Ibn Affan Mosque in Qatar. The first comprehensive study of the work and career of Abdelhalim and his office, the Community Design Collaborative (CDC), which he established in Cairo in 1978.

Abdelhalim Ibrahim Abdelhalim: An Architecture of Collective Memory is inspired by Abdelhalim’s deep belief in the power of rituals as a guiding force behind various human behaviors and the spaces in which they are enacted and designed to play out. Each chapter is consequently dedicated to one of these rituals and the ways in which some of Abdelhalim’s primary commissions have, at all levels of scale, revealed and expressed that ritual. In the sequence presented these are: the rituals of possession, reverence, order, the transmission of knowledge, procession, human institutions, geometry, light, the sense of place, materiality, and finally, the ritual of color.

This fully illustrated volume represents the most comprehensive examination yet of the life and work of the great Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy (1900–89), and the regional and international significance of his contribution to the lived environment. Eleven Egyptian and international scholars reveal the man, his milieu, his goals and his passions, his concept of social living and his fight for a humane model for affordable housing in tune with the environment, the application of these concepts in his numerous plans and buildings, his relations with the establishment, the extent of his influence, and the lasting legacy of his completed projects. Generously illustrated with archival and color photographs and the architect’s own distinctive and beautifully decorated gouache plans and elevations, many never previously published.

Contributors: Leila el-Wakil, Camille Abele, Jo Abram, Rémi Baudou, Ahmad Hamid, Nadia Radwan, Samir Radwan, Ola Seif, Jessica Stevens-Campos, Mercedes Volait, Nicholas Warner.

Less than ten years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, the new religion of Islam arrived in Egypt with the army of Amr ibn al-As in AD 639. Amr immediately established his capital at al-Fustat, just south of modern Cairo, and there he built Africa’s first mosque, one still in regular use today. Since then, governors, caliphs, sultans, amirs, beys, pashas, among others, have built mosques, madrasas, and mausoleums throughout Egypt in a changing sequence of Fatimid, Ayyubid, Mamluk, Ottoman, and modern styles.
In this fully color-illustrated, large-format volume, a leading historian of Islamic art and culture celebrates the great variety of Egypt’s mosques and related religious buildings, from the early congregational mosques, through the medieval mausoleum–madrasas, to the neighborhood mosques of the Ottoman and modern periods. With outstanding architectural photography and authoritative analytical texts, this book will be valued as the finest on the subject by scholars and general readers alike.
Covers more than 80 of the country’s most historic mosques, with more than 500 color photographs, in 400 pages.

The Creswell photographic archive at the American University in Cairo is an invaluable resource of over 12,000 printed images of Islamic architecture, mainly in Cairo, but also including buildings in other important cities such as Córdoba and Baghdad. Creswell’s own photographs constitute the majority of the collection, but he also assembled work by photographers active in the decades before he began his systematic recording in the 1920s. This volume of collected studies seeks to highlight the value of this collection for scholars, who can examine the visual evidence of architecture now destroyed or altered in order to better understand various aspects of these significant buildings. Contributors discuss such issues as epigraphy in domestic and religious architecture, the use of early photographs as guides for modern restoration, and military architecture.

Contributors: Tarek Galal Abdel-Hamid, Noha Abou-Khatwa, Conchita Añorve-Tschirgi, Dina Ishak Bakhoum, Nairy Hampikian, May al-Ibrashy, Hani Hamza, Chahinda Karim, Dina Montasser, Bernard O’Kane, Seif El-Rashidi, Ola Seif, Nicholas Warner.

In this wide-ranging study of architecture and cultural evolution, the author argues that underlying the global environmental crisis is a general resistance to changing personal and social identities shaped by a technology-based culture and its energy-hungry products. The book traces the roots of that culture to the coevolution of Homo sapiens and technology, from the first use of tools as artificial extensions of the human body, to the motorised cities spreading around the world, whose uncontrolled effects are changing the planet itself.

Advancing a new concept of the meme, called the ‘technical meme’, as the primary agent of cognitive extension and technical embodiment, the author proposes a theory of the ‘extended self’ encompassing material and spatial as well as psychological and social elements.

Drawing upon research from philosophy, psychology and the neurosciences, the book presents a new approach to environmental and cultural studies that will appeal to a broad readership searching for insights into the crisis.

This book charts the building of 1 Angel Square, the remarkable new head office for The Co-operative Group in Manchester’s new NOMA district.

Combining text and photographs to illustrate the building from commissioning to completion, Len Grant has interviewed the whole project team – clients, architects, engineers, project managers and builders – and has had unreserved access to document the creation of this already award-winning structure. The design of 1 Angel Square by the architects 3DReid, is currently the UK’s highest BREEAM (Building Research Establishment’s Environmental Assessment Method) rated office building to date, and it is set to be one of the most sustainable buildings in Europe.

1 Angel Square, the book, is an intimate record of this fascinating building. Some of the impressive facts include: 3,157 internal and external window panels make up the façade; there are 10,500 data and power outlets; it sits on 539 foundation piles, with an average depth of 18 metres below ground; and there are approximately 22km of power cables.

This book will be required reading for students of architecture and construction, sustainability studies and urban planning, and for those with an interest in the history of one of the world’s great businesses.

Learn how to make 15 beautifully crafted projects for your home using sustainable and upcycled materials.

Step-by-step photography and clear instructions will guide you through projects ranging from the utterly simple to the technically advanced, that will elevate your interior from the everyday to the extraordinary.

Created by designer-maker Tobias George, whose brand is inspired by a love of good craftsmanship combined with a consciousness of materials, Maker.Home will inspire you to fill your surroundings with well-designed items. Suitable for beginner and experienced makers, learn new processes or hone your skills, and discover the peaceful satisfaction to be found through making by hand.

Including:

Chopping board - Wineglass rack - Copper tablet stand - Boot rack - Stool - Magnetic knife holder - Coffee scoop - Concrete planters - Weaving loom - Lamp - Wall-mounted storage - Bookshelf - Coffee table - Stationery tidy - Clothes rack and storage.

Written by acclaimed architecture expert Jonathan Glancey, Modern Architecture is a beautifully illustrated guide to the key styles, architects and movements that have defined our skylines since the dawn of the twentieth century. From the dizzying heights of the Shard to the exquisite curves of the Sydney Opera House, and from Frank Lloyd Wright to Sir David Adjaye, this is the essential handbook to the creative discipline that shapes our world.

Certain cities—most famously New York, London, and Tokyo—have been identified as “global cities,” whose function in the world economy transcends national borders. Without the same fanfare, formerly peripheral and secondary cities have been growing in importance, emerging as global cities in their own right. The striking similarity of the skylines of Dubai, Miami, and Singapore is no coincidence: despite following different historical paths, all three have achieved newfound prominence through parallel trends.

In this groundbreaking book, Alejandro Portes and Ariel C. Armony demonstrate how the rapid and unexpected rise of these three cities recasts global urban studies. They identify the constellation of factors that allow certain urban places to become “emerging global cities”—centers of commerce, finance, art, and culture for entire regions. The book traces the transformations of Dubai, Miami, and Singapore, identifying key features common to these emerging global cities. It contrasts them with “global hopefuls,” cities that, at one point or another, aspired to become global, and analyzes how Hong Kong is threatened with the loss of this status. Portes and Armony highlight the importance of climate change to the prospects of emerging global cities, showing how the same economic system that propelled their rise now imperils their future. Emerging Global Cities provides a powerful new framework for understanding the role of peripheral cities in the world economy and how they compete for and sometimes achieve global standing.

In times of crisis, mutual aid becomes paramount. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, new forms of sharing had gained momentum to redress precarity and stark economic inequality. Today, a diverse array of mutualistic organizations seek to fundamentally restructure housing, care, labor, food, and more. Yet design, art, and architecture play a key role in shaping these initiatives, fulfilling their promise of solidarity, and ensuring that these values endure.

In this book, artist Marisa Morán Jahn and architect Rafi Segal converse about the transformative potential of mutualism and design with leading thinkers and practitioners: Mercedes Bidart, Arturo Escobar, Michael Hardt, Greg Lindsay, Jessica Gordon Nembhard, Ai-jen Poo, and Trebor Scholz. Together, they consider how design inspires, invigorates, and sustains contemporary forms of mutualism—including platform cooperatives, digital-first communities, emerging currencies, mutual aid, care networks, social-change movements, and more. From these dialogues emerge powerful visions of futures guided by communal self-determination and collective well-being.

Deemed “one of the best books of 2016” by the American Society of Landscape Architects’ The Dirt, this illustrated collection of essays by leading international architects, landscape architects, city planners, and urban designers demonstrates the economic, environmental, and public health benefits of integrating nature more fully into cities. 

From modest chapels to majestic cathedrals, and historic synagogues to modern mosques and Buddhist temples: this photo-filled, pocket-size guidebook presents 1,079 houses of worship in Manhattan and lays to rest the common perception that skyscrapers, bridges, and parks are the only defining moments in the architectural history of New York City. With his exhaustive research of the city's religious buildings, David W. Dunlap has revealed (and at times unearthed) an urban history that reinforces New York as a truly vibrant center of community and cultural diversity.

Published in conjunction with a New-York Historical Society exhibition, From Abyssinian to Zion is a sometimes quirky, always intriguing journey of discovery for tourists as well as native New Yorkers. Which popular pizzeria occupies the site of the cradle of the Christian and Missionary Alliance movement, the Gospel Tabernacle? And where can you find the only house of worship in Manhattan built during the reign of Caesar Augustus? Arranged alphabetically, this handy guide chronicles both extant and historical structures and includes

• 650 original photographs and 250 photographs from rarely seen archives

• 24 detailed neighborhood maps, pinpointing the location of each building

• concise listings, with histories of the congregations, descriptions of architecture, and accounts of prominent priests, ministers, rabbis, imams, and leading personalities in many of the congregations

This beautifully conceived and produced survey of Islamic architecture explores the glorious world of the caravansarai, mausoleum, palace, and mosque. Focusing on the multifaceted relation of architecture to society, Robert Hillenbrand covers public architecture in the Middle East and North Africa from the medieval period to 1700. Extensive photographs and ground plans— among which are hundreds of newly executed three-dimensional drawings that provide an accurate and vivid depiction of the structure—are presented with an emphasis on the way the specific details of the building fulfilled their function.

Included are chapters on religious and secular architecture and the architecture of tombs. Each building is discussed in terms of function, the links between particular forms and specific uses, the role of special types of buildings in the Islamic order, and the expressions of different sociocultural groups in architectural terms. Here the student or historian of Islamic architecture will find an astonishing resource, including Maghribi palaces, Anatolian madrasas, Indian minarets, Fatimid mausolea, and Safavid mosques, each rendered in lavish illustrations and explained with incomparable precision.

Cass Gilbert's pioneering buildings injected vitality into skyscraper design, and his "Gothic skyscraper," epitomized by the Woolworth Building, profoundly influenced architects during the first decades of the twentieth century. Now, as the New-York Historical Society mounts a major exhibit documenting his architectural career, the full breadth of Gilbert's achievements is visible in one lavishly illustrated volume.

Architect of the Broadway Chambers Building, the US Custom House, the Minnesota State Capitol, the St. Louis Art Museum, and large-scale projects like the city plan for New Haven, Connecticut, Gilbert is most famous for his skyscrapers—"symbols of our national genius and unrestraint"—monuments of the Beaux Arts "City Beautiful" aesthetic he embraced throughout his career.

Containing essays by major Gilbert scholars, Inventing the Skyline documents fascinating details about the buildings: the color scheme of the main entrance of the Minnesota State Capitol, made to resemble the Byzantine tomb of Galla Placidia in Ravenna; the controversy that erupted over the use of female nudes on the relief of the Essex County Courthouse; and the ill-fated plans for the George Washington Bridge as a Beaux Arts monument with elaborate plazas, fountains, and sculptures.

The designer of such landmarks as the Washington Square Arch, the New York Herald and Tiffany Buildings, and the homes of captains of American industry, Stanford White is a legendary figure in the history of American architecture. Yet while the exteriors and floor plans of his designs have been extensively studied and written about, no book has fully examined the other aspect of his career, which claimed at least half of his time and creativity. Wayne Craven's work offers the first study of Stanford White as an interior decorator and a dealer in antiques and the fine arts.

Craven also offers a vivid portrait of the sweeping social and cultural changes taking place in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He places White's work as an interior decorator within the context of the lives and society of the nouveaux riches who built unprecedented fortunes during the Industrial Revolution. Rejecting the dominant middle-class tastes and values of the United States, the Whitneys, Vanderbilts, Astors, Paynes, Mackays, and other wealthy New York families saw themselves as the new aristocracy and desired the prestige and trappings accorded to Old World nobility. Stanford White fulfilled their hunger for aristocratic recognition by adorning their glamorous Fifth Avenue mansions and Long Island estates with the sculptures, stained-glass windows, coats of arms, and carved fireplaces of the European past. Interior decorators such as White did more than just buy single pieces for these families. They purchased entire rooms from palazzos, chateaux, villas, nunneries, and country houses; had them dismantled; and shipped—both furnishings and architectural elements—to their American clients. Through Stanford White's activities, Craven uncovers the mostly, but not always, legal business of dealing in antiquities, as American money entered and changed the European art market.

Based on the archives of the Avery Architectural Library of Columbia University and the New-York Historical Society, this book recovers a neglected yet significant part of White's career, which lasted from the 1870s to his murder in 1906. White not only set the bar for twentieth-century architecture but also defined the newly emerging profession of interior design.

A few years before his death in 2009, Anant Raje had begun to assemble a draft of his works – published and unpublished. The present book is inspired by that draft, which remained unfinished. Raje's meticulous documentation of the process of thoughts that gave direction to design and of the development of construction details, and the eventual record of the building form an elaborate archive. The collection of photographs, drawings and notes provides clues to the many fundamental problems and situations he constantly wrestled with. To monitor, sift and make a selection from such an archive is perhaps the only way of providing the first point of public contact with the very private, very varied and fulfilled life of someone who treated the profession of architecture as a personal discovery.

Anant Raje Architect: Selected Works 1971–2009 features over thirty projects that Raje had assembled into a skeletal draft – of both built and unbuilt works, and competition entries. Each project is extensively illustrated with photographs, models, drawings, sketches and reflections by the architect, many of which are previously unpublished. These have been selected and assembled from Raje's office archives, diaries, interviews, publications and lecture transcriptions. The book includes essays by Raje on his seminal association with Louis Kahn in Philadelphia and the subsequent continuation of his work at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, as well as reflections on his independent practice, methods, sources, and inspirations. It also contains a chronological listing of all his projects, and of his lectures and teaching assignments. As a whole, the material in the book presents the architect both at work and in reflection of it. For the many who knew him, the book is a eulogy; for others, it is a record of a working life.

Since its emergence in the mid-nineteenth century as the nation's "metropolis," New York has faced the most challenging housing problems of any American city, but it has also led the nation in innovation and reform. The horrors of the tenement were perfected in New York at the same time that the very rich were building palaces along Fifth Avenue; public housing for the poor originated in New York, as did government subsidies for middle-class housing.

A standard in the field since its publication in 1992, A History of Housing in New York City traces New York's housing development from 1850 to the present in text and profuse illustrations. Richard Plunz explores the housing of all classes, with comparative discussion of the development of types ranging from the single-family house to the high-rise apartment tower. His analysis is placed within the context of the broader political and cultural development of New York City. This revised edition extends the scope of the book into the city's recent history, adding three decades to the study, covering the recent housing bubble crisis, the rebound and gentrification of the five boroughs, and the ecological issues facing the next generation of New Yorkers. More than 300 illustrations are integrated throughout the text, depicting housing plans, neighborhood changes, and city architecture over the past 130 years. This new edition also features a foreword by the distinguished urban historian Kenneth T. Jackson.

WINNER, THE VICTORIAN SOCIETY NEW YORK, 2022 BOOK AWARD

How a prolific yet little-known architect changed the face of education in New York City

As Superintendent of School Buildings from 1891 to 1922, architect Charles B. J. Snyder elevated the standards of school architecture. Unprecedented immigration and Progressive Era changes in educational philosophy led to his fresh approach to design and architecture, which forever altered the look and feel of twentieth-century classrooms and school buildings. Students rich or poor, immigrant or native New Yorker, went from learning in factory-like schools to attending classes in schools with architectural designs and enhancements that to many made them seem like palaces. Spanning three decades, From Factories to Palaces provides a thought-provoking narrative of Charles Snyder and shows how he integrated his personal experiences and innovative design skills with Progressive Era school reform to improve students’ educational experience in New York City and, by extension, across the nation.

During his thirty-one years of service, Snyder oversaw the construction of more than 400 New York City public schools and additions, of which more than half remain in use today. Instead of blending in with the surrounding buildings as earlier schools had, Snyder’s were grand and imposing. “He does that which no other architect before his time ever did or tried: He builds them beautiful,” wrote Jacob Riis. Working with the Building Bureau, Snyder addressed the school situation on three fronts: appearance, construction, and function. He re-designed schools for greater light and air, improved their sanitary facilities, and incorporated quality-of-life features such as heated cloakrooms and water fountains.

Author and educator Dr. Jean Arrington chronicles how Snyder worked alongside a group of like-minded, hardworking individuals—Building Bureau draftsmen, builders, engineers, school administrators, teachers, and custodians—to accomplish this feat.

This revelatory book offers fascinating glimpses into the nascent world of modern education, from the development of specialty areas, such as the school gymnasium, auditorium, and lunchroom, to the emergence of school desks with backs as opposed to uncomfortable benches, all housed in some of the first fireproofed schools in the nation. Thanks to Snyder, development was always done with the students’ safety, well-being, and learning in mind. Lively historical drawings, architectural layouts, and photographs of school building exteriors and interiors enhance the engaging story.

Funding for this book was provided by: Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund

Robert A. Van Wyck, mayor of the greater city of New York, broke ground for the first subway line by City Hall on March 24, 1900. It took four years, six months, and twenty-three days to build the line from City Hall to West 145th Street in Harlem. Things rarely went that quickly ever again. The Routes Not Taken explores the often dramatic stories behind the unbuilt or unfinished subway lines, shedding light on a significant part of New York City’s history that has been almost completely ignored until now.

Home to one of the world’s largest subway systems, New York City made constant efforts to expand its underground labyrinth, efforts that were often met with unexpected obstacles: financial shortfalls, clashing agendas of mayors and borough presidents, battles with local community groups, and much more. After discovering a copy of the 1929 subway expansion map, author Joseph Raskin began his own investigation into the city’s underbelly. Using research from libraries, historical societies, and transit agencies throughout the New York metropolitan area, Raskin provides a fascinating history of the Big Apple’s unfinished business that until now has been only tantalizing stories retold by public-transit experts.

The Routes Not Taken sheds light on the tunnels and stations that were completed for lines that were never fulfilled: the efforts to expand the Hudson tubes into a fullfledged subway; the Flushing line, and why it never made it past Flushing; a platform underneath Brooklyn’s Nevins Street station that has remained unused for more than a century; and the 2nd Avenue line—long the symbol of dashed dreams—deferred countless times since the original plans were presented in 1929. Raskin also reveals the figures and personalities involved, including why Fiorello LaGuardia could not grasp the importance of subway lines and why Robert Moses found them to be old and boring. By focusing on the unbuilt lines, Raskin illustrates how the existing subway system is actually a Herculean feat of countless political compromises.

Filled with illustrations of the extravagant expansion plans, The Routes Not Taken provides an enduring contribution to the transportation history of New York City.

A major social and political phenomenon of how a community overcame overwhelming opposition and obstacles to build the Brooklyn Bridge Park.

Stretching along a waterfront that faces one of the world’s greatest harbors and storied skylines, Brooklyn Bridge Park is among the largest and most significant public projects to be built in New York in a generation. It has transformed a decrepit industrial waterfront into a new public use that is both a reflection and an engine of
Brooklyn’s resurgence in the twenty-first century. Brooklyn Bridge Park unravels the many obstacles faced during the development of the park and suggests solutions that can be applied to important economic and planning issues around the world.

Situated below the quiet precincts of Brooklyn Heights, a strip of moribund structures that formerly served bustling port activity became the site of a prolonged battle. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey eyed it as an ideal location for high-rise or commercial development. The idea to build Brooklyn Bridge Park came from local residents and neighborhood leaders looking for less intensive uses of the property. Together, elected officials joined with members of the communities to produce a practical plan, skillfully won a commitment of government funds in a time of fiscal austerity, then persevered through long periods of inaction, abrupt changes of government, two recessions, numerous controversies often accompanied by litigation, and a superstorm.

Brooklyn Bridge Park is the success story of a grassroots movement and community planning that united around a common vision. Drawing on the authors’ personal experiences—one as a reporter, the other as a park leader—Brooklyn Bridge Park weaves together contemporaneous reports of events that provide a record
of every twist and turn in the story. Interviews with more than sixty people reveal the human dynamics that unfolded in the course of building the park, including attitudes and opinions that arose about class, race, gentrification, commercialization, development, and government.

Despite the park’s broad and growing appeal, its creation was lengthy, messy, and often contentious. Brooklyn Bridge Park suggests ways other civic groups can address such hurdles within their own communities.

Wittgenstein's House reads Wittgenstein's his two main philosophical texts, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations, in relation to an experience that intervened between them: his design and construction of the Stonborough-Wittgenstein house in Vienna. Arguing that the practice of architecture occupies not just a historical position between Wittgenstein's early and late philosophy, but a conceptual position as well, the book demonstrates that Wittgenstein's practice of architecture constitutes a fundamental component in the development of his philosophy of language from its early to late phases.

The book advances the radical proposition that the field in which architecture and philosophy operate includes linguistic and spatial practices. It develops innovative forms of interdisciplinary analyses to demonstrate that the philosophical positions put forth by Wittgenstein's two main works are literally unthinkable outside of their respective conceptions of space: the view from above in the early work and the view from within constructed by the late work.

To examine the manner in which Wittgenstein's practice of architecture insinuated itself into his philosophy, the author interweaves in-depth analyses of the spatial constructs underpinning the early and late philosophies with conceptual, formal and operative discussions of the design of the Stonborough-Wittgenstein house. Together these discussions reveal how Wittgenstein's practice of architecture engaged philosophical concepts, through which it influenced Wittgenstein's philosophy of language. At the heart of this approach is the finding that the philosophical concepts at the core of Wittgenstein's philosophy are indeed spatial ones, including his concerns with the limits of language, the boundary between showing and saying, the intricate textual numbering systems he devises, the relationship between the interiority of the subject and the publicness of language, and the formative principle of family resemblance.

Winner of the 2022 Urban Affairs Association Best Book Award.

City visions represent shared, and often desirable, expectations about our urban futures. This book explores the history and evolution of city visions, placing them in the wider context of art, culture, science, foresight and urban theory.

It highlights and critically reviews examples of city visions from around the world, contrasting their development and outlining the key benefits and challenges in planning such visions.

The authors show how important it is to think about the future of cities in objective and strategic ways, engaging with a range of stakeholders – something more important than ever as we look to visions of a sustainable future beyond the COVID-19 crisis.

Drawing on a unique archive spanning the lifetime of twenty council estate projects in the UK and using hundreds of resident voices, this book reveals the secrets of council housing’s failures and successes, and the reasons for them.

Bringing to light the complex variety of the lived experiences of residents, it shows how estate pathways were predetermined by factors such as location, design and date, as well as by their local and national social, economic and political contexts. The book highlights what can be learned from some of the successes of less successful housing projects and provides lessons for building sustainable communities in the twenty-first century.

In this accessible and passionately argued book, Bob Colenutt goes to the roots of the long-term crisis in housing and planning in the UK.

Providing a much needed, in depth critique of the nexus of power of landowners, house builders, financial backers and politicians that makes up the property lobby, this radical book reveals how this complex, self-serving and intimidating network perpetuates a cycle of low supply, high prices and poor building which has resulted in one of the biggest social and economic challenges of our time. With radical ideas for solutions, this is essential reading for anyone with an interest in housing, planning and social justice.