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Synopsis
Analyzes the old structure of cities, suggests a new approach to city planning, and shows specific street and building plans.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
As an architecture student interested in the "art" of city planning, I found this book fascinating! Gives Le Corbusier's "radical" views and ideas plenty of substantive support. It is not only a book of design theory, but a book of urban history. Even if you're not too fond of Corbusier's work, this is a must-read for anyone interested in architecture!
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
BOOK WAS WRITTEN in 1929.
This book explores the state of cities in the early 20th century and what needs to be done to make them more efficient. It includes many diagrams and pictures (almost on every page!)and sets out two main visions for a "modern" city (in 1929).
However, the book gives little info about current planning ideas and theories.
This book explores the state of cities in the early 20th century and what needs to be done to make them more efficient. It includes many diagrams and pictures (almost on every page!)and sets out two main visions for a "modern" city (in 1929).
However, the book gives little info about current planning ideas and theories.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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4 reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
ONE OF THE CLASSIC BOOKS BY A KEY MODERN ARCHITECT
13 Jan 2010
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The French architect Le Corbusier (1887-1965; born in Switzerland as Charles Edouard Jeanneret) wrote this book in 1929, in which he proposed what he called the "Radiant City." Unlike Ebenezer Howard (Garden Cities of To-morrow) and Frank Lloyd Wright (The Natural House), Corbusier supported industrialization and the machine as inevitable, glorified plain skyscrapers ("New York is wrong, but the skyscraper remains a noble instrument"), while enthusiastically supporting modern engineering methods and the use of synthetic building materials.
He begins the Foreward by stating, "A Town is a tool. Towns no longer fulfil this function. They are ineffectual... A city! It is the grip of man upon nature. It is a human operation directed against nature, a human organism both for protection and for work. It is a creation." He asserts that town planning "is bound to become one of the burning questions of the day." "The city of to-day is a dying thing because it is not geometrical. To build in the open would be to replace our present haphazard arrangements, which are all we have to-day, by a uniform lay-out. Unless we do this there is no salvation. The result of a true geometrical lay-out is repetition." He concludes, "Therefore the existing centres must come down. To save itself, every great city must rebuild its centre." Rather than wasting time by commuting to the city, each apartment block would contain services such as child care and food preparation.
His philosophy of efficiency and simplicity in form and functionality (perhaps exemplified in his prefabricated apartment buildings, and predilection for reinforced concrete) were highly influential in the United States (he was one of the architects who designed the United Nations building, for example), as well as elsewhere.
He observes, "immense industrial undertakings do not require great men. Such works are carried out in the same way as rain fills a water-butt, drop by drop; and the men who bring them to completion are small, like raindrops, and not great like torrents.... The torrent is in MANKIND, it is not the individuals themselves."
In conclusion, he writes, "I invent no utopia in which to build my city. I assert that its proper place is here, and nothing will remove it. If I affirm this so categorically it is because I am aware of our human limitations, aware that we have not the power to begin all over again build our City as we will elsewhere. To desire such a thing is to be reactionary, and to persist in it would make the whole scheme an impossibility. Therefore it must be here."
He begins the Foreward by stating, "A Town is a tool. Towns no longer fulfil this function. They are ineffectual... A city! It is the grip of man upon nature. It is a human operation directed against nature, a human organism both for protection and for work. It is a creation." He asserts that town planning "is bound to become one of the burning questions of the day." "The city of to-day is a dying thing because it is not geometrical. To build in the open would be to replace our present haphazard arrangements, which are all we have to-day, by a uniform lay-out. Unless we do this there is no salvation. The result of a true geometrical lay-out is repetition." He concludes, "Therefore the existing centres must come down. To save itself, every great city must rebuild its centre." Rather than wasting time by commuting to the city, each apartment block would contain services such as child care and food preparation.
His philosophy of efficiency and simplicity in form and functionality (perhaps exemplified in his prefabricated apartment buildings, and predilection for reinforced concrete) were highly influential in the United States (he was one of the architects who designed the United Nations building, for example), as well as elsewhere.
He observes, "immense industrial undertakings do not require great men. Such works are carried out in the same way as rain fills a water-butt, drop by drop; and the men who bring them to completion are small, like raindrops, and not great like torrents.... The torrent is in MANKIND, it is not the individuals themselves."
In conclusion, he writes, "I invent no utopia in which to build my city. I assert that its proper place is here, and nothing will remove it. If I affirm this so categorically it is because I am aware of our human limitations, aware that we have not the power to begin all over again build our City as we will elsewhere. To desire such a thing is to be reactionary, and to persist in it would make the whole scheme an impossibility. Therefore it must be here."
10 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Must-read for any architecture buff!
5 Sep 1999
Format:Paperback
As an architecture student interested in the "art" of city planning, I found this book fascinating! Gives Le Corbusier's "radical" views and ideas plenty of substantive support. It is not only a book of design theory, but a book of urban history. Even if you're not too fond of Corbusier's work, this is a must-read for anyone interested in architecture!
How and why city's evolved.
28 Feb 2012
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book written in 1924, shows you how cities came about, how they evolved over time. how architecture evolved from roman, threw the middle ages to what we have to day. The single best "over view" book on what cities are, and should be mandatory in all high school and collage civics / government / world history classes. The illustrations in this book look like modern sky scrapers... till you notice the WWI biplane flying past. A man ahead of his time and still ahead of our modern cities.
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