The Restless Hungarian

The Restless Hungarian
Author: Tom Weidlinger
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2019-04-16
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1943006970

The Restless Hungarian is the saga of an extraordinary life set against the history of the rise of modernism, the Jewish Diaspora, and the Cold War. A Hungarian Jew whose inquiring spirit helped him to escape the Holocaust, Paul Weidlinger became one of the most creative structural engineers of the twentieth century. As a young architect, he broke ranks with the great modernists with his radical idea of the “Joy of Space.” As an engineer, he created the strength behind the beauty in mid-century modern skyscrapers, churches, museums, and he gave concrete form to the eccentric monumental sculptures of Pablo Picasso, Isamu Noguchi, and Jean Dubuffet. In his private life, he was a divided man, living behind a wall of denial as he lost his family to war, mental illness, and suicide. In telling his father’s story, the author sifts meaning from the inspiring and contradictory narratives of a life: a motherless child and a captain of industry, a clandestine communist who designed silos for the world’s deadliest weapons during the Cold War, a Jewish refugee who denied he was a Jew, a husband who was terrified of his wife’s madness, and a man whose personal saints were artists.

Landscape and Utopia

Landscape and Utopia
Author: Jody Beck
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 189
Release: 2022-12-22
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 135105371X

This book examines three landmark utopian visions central to 20th century landscape architectural, planning, and architectural theory. The period between the 1890s and the 1940s was a fertile time for utopian thinking. Significant geographic shifts of large populations; radically altered relations between capital and labor; rapid technological developments; large investments in transportation and energy infrastructure; and repetitive economic disruptions motivated many individuals to wholly reimagine society – including the connections between social relations and the built environment. Landscape and Utopia examines the role of landscapes in the political imaginations of the Garden City, the Radiant City, and Broadacre City. Each project uses landscapes to propose a reconstruction of the relationships between land, labor, and capital but - while the projects are well-known – the role played by landscapes has been largely left unexamined. Similarly, the radical anti-capitalism that underpinned each project has similarly been, for the most part, left out of contemporary discussions. This book sets these projects within a historical and philosophical context and opens a discussion on the role of landscapes in society today. This book will be a must-read for instructors, students, and researchers of the history and theory of landscape architecture, planning, and architecture as well as utopian studies, cultural and social history, and environmental theory.

Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century

Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century
Author: Robert Fishman
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 390
Release: 1982-09-16
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780262560238

The utopian visions of three of urban planning’s greatest visionaries. Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier, hated the cities of their time with an overwhelming passion. The metropolis was the counter-image of their ideal cities, the hell that inspired their heavens. In this book Robert Fishman examines the utopian visions of three of urban planning’s greatest visionaries. Howard created the concept of the “garden city” where shops and cottages formed the center of a geometric pattern with farmland surrounding; Wright conceived of “Broadacre City,” the ultimate suburb, where the automobile was king; and Le Corbusier imagined “Ville Radieuse,” the city of cruciform skyscrapers set down in open parkland.

Radiant Child

Radiant Child
Author: Javaka Steptoe
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Total Pages: 44
Release: 2016-11-08
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 0316394327

Winner of the Randolph Caldecott Medal and the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award! Jean-Michel Basquiat and his unique, collage-style paintings rocketed to fame in the 1980s as a cultural phenomenon unlike anything the art world had ever seen. But before that, he was a little boy who saw art everywhere: in poetry books and museums, in games and in the words that we speak, and in the pulsing energy of New York City. Now, award-winning illustrator Javaka Steptoe's vivid text and bold artwork echoing Basquiat's own introduce young readers to the powerful message that art doesn't always have to be neat or clean—and definitely not inside the lines!—to be beautiful.

Unruly Cities?

Unruly Cities?
Author: Chris Brook
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2006-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 113463627X

The text argues that cities are open to many forms of order and disorder both from within the city and outside. They represent cities potentials as well as their problems. It challenges the assumption that cities are threatened by disorder from below and that they might be ruled by 'order' imposed from above.

City of Stairs

City of Stairs
Author: Robert Jackson Bennett
Publisher: Del Rey
Total Pages: 466
Release: 2014-09-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0804137188

An atmospheric and intrigue-filled novel of dead gods, buried histories, and a mysterious, protean city--from one of America's most acclaimed young fantasy writers. The city of Bulikov once wielded the powers of the gods to conquer the world, enslaving and brutalizing millions—until its divine protectors were killed. Now Bulikov has become just another colonial outpost of the world's new geopolitical power, but the surreal landscape of the city itself—first shaped, now shattered, by the thousands of miracles its guardians once worked upon it—stands as a constant, haunting reminder of its former supremacy. Into this broken city steps Shara Thivani. Officially, the unassuming young woman is just another junior diplomat sent by Bulikov's oppressors. Unofficially, she is one of her country's most accomplished spies, dispatched to catch a murderer. But as Shara pursues the killer, she starts to suspect that the beings who ruled this terrible place may not be as dead as they seem—and that Bulikov's cruel reign may not yet be over.

Modern City Revisited

Modern City Revisited
Author: Thomas Deckker
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2005-08-12
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1135802505

The second in a series of titles published to address issues relating to the conservation of the Modern Movement, this is a key publication for architects, planners and all those with a specific interest in modernism and modern planning.

The Best-laid Plans

The Best-laid Plans
Author: Randal O'Toole
Publisher: Cato Institute
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2007
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1933995076

Drawing on 30 years of experience reviewing hundreds of government plans, Randal O'Toole shows that, thanks to government planners, American cities are choked with congestion, major American housing markets have become unaf-fordable, and the cost of government infrastructure is spiraling out of control. The book makes the case for repeal of federal planning laws and closure of gov-ernment planning offices. Every American who worries about the insidious growth of the Nanny State must read this book.

Le Corbusier in America

Le Corbusier in America
Author: Mardges Bacon
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 442
Release: 2001
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780262523424

In this study of Le Corbusier's American tour, Mardges Bacon reconstructs his encounter with America in all its fascinating detail. It presents a critical history of the tour as well as a nuanced and intimate portrait of the architect.