A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

DIY City: The Collective Power of Small Actions Hank Dittmar Island Press , June 2020 Paperback | 5-1/4 x 8 inches | 166 pages | 25 illustrations | English | ISBN: 978-1642830521 | $30.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : Some utopian plans have shaped our cities —from England’s New Towns and Garden Cities to the Haussmann plan for Paris and the L’Enfant plan for Washington, DC. But these grand plans are the exception, and seldom turn out as envisioned by the utopian planner. Inviting city neighborhoods are more often works of improvisation on a small scale. This type of bottom-up development gives cities both their character and the ability to respond to sudden change. Hank Dittmar, urban planner, friend of artists and creatives, sometime rancher, “high priest of town planning” to the Prince of Wales, believed in letting small things happen. Dittmar concluded that big plans were often the problem. Looking at the global cities of the world, he saw a crisis of success, with gentrificatio...

The Heart of the City: Creating Vibrant Downtowns for a New Century Alexander Garvin Island Press , May 2019 Paperback | 6 x 9 inches | 264 pages | 100 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9781610919494 | $30.00 Publisher Description : Downtowns are more than economic engines: they are repositories of knowledge and culture and generators of new ideas, technology, and ventures. They are the heart of the city that drives its future. If we are to have healthy downtowns, we need to understand what downtown is all about; how and why some American downtowns never stopped thriving (such as San Jose and Houston), some have been in decline for half a century (including Detroit and St. Louis), and still others are resurging after temporary decline (many, including Lower Manhattan and Los Angeles). The downtowns that are prospering are those that more easily adapt to changing needs and lifestyles. In The Heart of the City , distinguished urban planner Alexander Garvin shares lessons on how...

Adapting Cities to Sea Level Rise: Green and Gray Strategies Stefan Al Island Press , November 2018 Paperback | 8 x 9 inches | 160 pages | 150 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9781610919074 | $35.00 Publisher Description : In 2012, Hurricane Sandy floods devastated coastal areas in New York and New Jersey. In 2017, Harvey flooded Houston. Today in Miami, even on sunny days, king tides bring fish swimming through the streets in low-lying areas. These types of events are typically called natural disasters. But overwhelming scientific consensus says they are actually the result of human-induced climate change and irresponsible construction inside floodplains. As cities build more flood-management infrastructure to adapt to the effects of a changing climate, they must go beyond short-term flood protection and consider the long-term effects on the community, its environment, economy, and relationship with the water. Adapting Cities to Sea Level Rise , by infrastructure expert...

The Divided City: Poverty and Prosperity in America by Alan Mallach, published by  Island Press , 2018. Paperback, 326 pages. ( Amazon ) Although I live in New York City, I haven't lived here all my life and therefore I like to think I'm more aware of some biases held by New Yorkers. With twelve years now as a NYC resident, following decades in Chicago and half a decade in Kansas, I've grown to understand, for instance, why people here are so focused on the city, as if blinders shut out the world – or at least parts not deemed worthwhile – beyond the shores of the five boroughs. Not as cliché or hyperbolic is the way the media in NYC shapes issues well beyond the city, something natives might not be so aware of. Take gentrification, a very real issue for residents of lower-income neighborhoods that witness rezonings, public works improvements, widespread development, and then displacement. With rising rents, stagnant wages for working classes, and rising inequality, ...

How to Study Public Life by Jan Gehl and Birgitte Svarre, published by  Island Press , 2013. Hardcover, 200 pages. ( Amazon ) In the question-and-answer session that followed a book talk given by Jan Gehl and Birgitte Svarre at the Center for Architecture on February 5 , Gehl said that politicians in Copenhagen revealed to him quite a compliment: "If you had not made those studies, we would not have tried to make Copenhagen a better city." Those and other public space studies are highlighted in the book he penned with Svarre, yet the evening focused mainly on what can be learned from their home city. How the Danish city has improved in the last five decades – the span of Gehl's career – is obvious to many people, especially those in the packed house at the Center. Nevertheless, Gehl clearly likes to recount how closing streets to cars, promoting bicycling and other measures have made Copenhagen lively, attractive, safe, sustainable, and healthy – the five-fold barome...

The Nature of Urban Design: A New York Perspective on Resilience by Alexandros Washburn, published by  Island Press , 2013. Hardcover, 264 pages. ( Amazon ) On January 13, a couple weeks after he ended his seven-year post as Chief Urban Designer of the NYC Department of City Planning, Alexandros Washburn spoke at the Center for Architecture about his new book, The Nature of Urban Design . Like many events at the Center, it started a little bit late, prompting members of the audience to ask Rick Bell, AIANY Executive Director, if Washburn was riding his bike to the event on the not-too-cold winter day. Needless to say, the author's reputation preceded his arrival at the podium where he discussed his firsthand experience of Hurricane Sandy in his neighborhood of Red Hook, Brooklyn, his mentors, his definitions of urban design, his ideas on risk and resiliency, and his post-Bloomberg-administration path. Like the book, Washburn started the talk with stories and images of ...

Design for an Empathic World: Reconecting People, Nature and Self by Sim Van der Ryn, published by  Island Press , 2013. Hardcover, 164 pages. ( Amazon ) Fifteen years after the creation of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green-building rating system, it seems that sustainable principles are fairly well entrenched in architectural practice. What used to be considered a costly alternative to the usual materials and systems have become the norm in approaching the design of buildings. But do things like low-flow toilets, green roofs, and other elements within a point-based trade-off system really add up to truly green architecture? Are buildings meeting LEED Silver, Gold, or even Platinum really sustainable? The answer is increasingly "no," not only because the system is flawed but because terms like "sustainability" and "green building" have been co-opted by manufacturers, marketers, and others focused on the bo...

Designing Suburban Futures: New Models from Build a Better Burb by June Williamson, published by  Island Press , 2013. Paperback, 160 pages. ( Amazon ) Original Copies: Architectural Mimicry in China by Bianca Bosker, published by University of Hawai'i Press, 2013. Paperback, 176 pages. ( Amazon ) What is the appropriate form for the city in the 21st century? How will cities deal with the circumstances—crises, really—that dominate their discourse, namely dwindling resources for a growing population? These two books look at a couple unique morphologies—the American suburb and the Chinese new town—that are worth considering in the larger context of 21st-century urbanity, though also as separate cases. While at first glance the two geographically remote types would hardly bear any similarities, they share a number of characteristics, even as one book examines cities as they are being built and the other offers alternative futures. June Williamso...

The Shape of Green: Aesthetics, Ecology, and Design by Lance Hosey, published by  Island Press , 2012. Paperback, 216 pages. ( Amazon ) Books on sustainability and sustainable architecture are so numerous today that one needs to have a strong slant on the topic in order to stand out from the crowd. It's not enough to impart more of the same wisdom on living green or to document the same green buildings; the literature on sustainability needs arguments that push the thinking beyond CFL lightbulbs and green ratings. Lance Hosey, a former columnist at Architect magazine and the President & CEO of GreenBlue , has written a valuable book with a clear yet strong argument at its core: How something looks is as important to sustainability as how it performs. Green building conserves energy, optimizes its ecological footprint, and improves performance. Green architecture, however, becomes an integral part of its community by embracing the total environment, a w...

The Agile City: Building Well-being and Wealth in an Era of Climate Change by James S. Russell, published by  Island Press , 2011. Hardcover, 312 pages. ( Amazon ) Bloomberg architecture columnist James S. Russell 's intriguingly titled book comes on the heels of two titles published by Island Press that focus on urbanism at a time of crisis: Jan Gehl's Cities for People and Peter Calthorpe's Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change . Readers interested in those books, like me, will greatly appreciate Russell's efforts to map out ways of making our cities more livable. He takes into account architecture, engineering, and urban design, but he is also thoroughly educated on economics, and this sets his book apart from others, not just the ones above. While this approach shouldn't come as a surprise given his employer, it makes the book a valuable contribution toward finding solutions for cities in the United States, solutions that are common sense ...

Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change by Peter Calthorpe, published by  Island Press , 2010. Hardcover, 225 pages. ( Amazon ) In the last few months, a debate has been underway between New Urbanism and Landscape Urbanism, or more accurately between the former's Andrés Duany and the latter's Charles Waldheim, spurred by Waldheim's appointment as Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University. (See a good synopsis of the debate and links to articles at Landscape+Urbanism .) New Urbanism is a popular reaction to sprawl in the United States that creates new towns and other large developments -- following the Congress for New Urbanism 's (CNU) Charter -- with a higher density than suburbia, with mixed uses, with walkable neighborhoods, and with well defined civic spaces, all harking to a traditional pre-automobile communities. Landscape Urbanism, on the other hand is an academic movement with growing momentum that basically see...

Cities for People by Jan Gehl, published by  Island Press , 2010. Hardcover, 288 pages. ( Amazon ) In 1971 Danish architect and urban designer Jan Gehl articulated the ideas that he would build upon for the rest of his career in the book Life Between Buildings . In response to modernism's emphasis on objects (buildings) over spaces (streets and plazas) and its bird's-eye-view planning, Gehl argues for the prioritization of the design of public space as a supporter of social life. It's a hard position to argue against, but one that is a difficult sell against the entrenched modernist principles of architecture and planning. Or in other words, Gehl needs to continue articulating and spreading his ideas, and in this his fifth major book he does so clearly, with an abundance of illustrations and examples of the good and bad in today's cities. What Gehl is fighting against can be described in one word: cars. This isn't to say that he ...