"In one accessible, engaging, and easy-to-use volume readers will find historical context, directions, factual information, and analytical architectural analysis for more than two hundred places of interest across the United States. The traveler (armchair, behind the wheel, or on foot), the researcher (seeking a comprehensive view of some of America's greatest ideas and accomplishments), and the architect and landscape architect (seeking sources of inspiration) will find a rewarding journey inside this book."--BOOK JACKET.
From the day it opened in July 1955, in an event given live TV coverage, Disneyland has been a key symbol of contemporary American culture. It has been both celebrated and attacked as the ultimate embodiment of consumer society, a harbinger of shopping-mall culture, a symbol of American hegemony in entertainment, the epitome of fantasy, simulation, pastiche, and the blurring of distinctions between reality and mass-media imagery. Yet for all the power of Disneyland as metaphor, almost no one has discussed the making of this unique place, with its far-flung colonies in Florida, Japan, and France. Written to accompany an exhibition at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, "Designing Disney's Theme Parks: The Architecture of Reassurance" is the first book to look beyond the multiple myths of Disneyland. Uniting a roster of authors chosen from wide-ranging disciplines, this study is the first to examine the influence of Disneyland on both our built environment and our architectural imagination. Tracing the relationship of the Disney parks to their historical forbears, it charts Disneyland's evolution from one man's personal dream to a multinational enterprise, a process in which the Disney "magic" has moved ever closer to the real world. Editor Karal Ann Marling, Professor of Art History and American Studies at the University of Minnesota, draws upon her pioneering work in the Disney archives to reconstruct and analyze the intentions and strategies behind the parks. She is joined by Marty Sklar, Vice Chairman and Principal Creative Executive of Walt Disney Imagineering, historian Neil Harris, art historian Erika Doss, geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, critic Greil Marcus, and architectFrank Gehry to provide a unique perspective on one of the great post-war American icons.
The city does not exist without landscape, nor landscape without the city. The original landscape is always reflected in the form of the city. But how is architectonic coherence between the city and the landscape really achieved? 'Metropolitan Landscape Architecture' sketches the development of the urban landscape from the Renaissance to the present. The examples include urban landscapes and parks in Rome, Paris, London, Berlin, New York, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Boston, Hamburg, Frankfurt and Cologne.
"Published in conjunction with the exhibition 'Yona Friedman -- Genesis of a Vision,' which was presented in 2012 at Archizoom, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. ... The first part brings together a large number of projects and proposals by Yona Friedman into a classified anthology, which includes unpublished works. The second part presents an essay by Manuel Orazi that reconstructs the many facets of Freidman's work since his formative years and places it within the political and geographical context of its time"--Last page.
Everything that landscape architects, architects, planners, civic officials, and citizen activists need to know about the critical urban role of public parks. Everything that anybody (whether they are citizen activists, or public officials, or professional landscape architects, architects, and planners) needs to know about the critical role public parks play in creating livable communities. Millions of dollars are being spent on restoring parks and creating new ones. Planner Alexander Garvin explains the rationales for their existence, the forms they take, their value, ways to pay for and govern them, and the ingredients that make successful parks, providing the first single definitive source of wisdom about them.
Alberto Ponis was born in Genoa in 1933 and studied at Florence University, where he qualified as an architect in 1960. He worked in London with Erno Goldfinger and Denys Lasdun in 1960 64 under the strong and lasting influence also of the movements of Modernism and New Brutalism then prevailing in the theoretical discourse in British architecture. His own studio Ponis established in 1964 in Palau, on the Italian island of Sardinia, working since on private, public and urban planning commissions. In 1990 he was awarded the INARCH prize for the Village of "Stazzo Pulcheddu" in Palau. Ponis often refers to the natural conditions and the social history of Sardinia when talking about his work in architecture. Besides of nature and society, he has also extensively studied the "stazzo, " Sardinia s typical rural building type. This thorough knowledge of conditions, traditions and requirements are the foundation of an oeuvre of more than 300 residential buildings. Each of them deeply rooted in its environment and connected with the land and other dwellings by the "sentiero, " the path leading to and from the house. Ponis s houses are meant to be summer homes, their inert warmth reflecting the architect s fundamental optimism. They show a natural modesty and simplicity rather than their owner s wealth or status. They express the architect s great formal skills and sensitivity. They are inconceivable without the Sardinian landscape and history and the island seems to have been expecting just these particular buildings, merging naturally with nature. The new book "Alberto Ponis Sardinia" is the first comprehensive monograph on this highly interesting and original yet little known architect. In five lavishly illustrated sections it documents his biography and early work, his extensive research on Sardinia, eight selected buildings created between 1965 98 that make traceable the evolution of Ponis s work, his philosophy ( Thoughts and Forms ), and a concluding essay on the essence of his architecture. "
In this completely redesigned follow-up to the successful Building A Dream, readers will get a look at the architecture and the ideas and stories behind the structures which have been designed by some of the most renowned contemporary architects--Robert Venturi, Robert A. M. Stern, Arata Isozaki, Frank Gehry, Aldo Rossi, and Michael. Disney has set new standards for postmodern architecture and has become one of its leading patrons anywhere in the world. The resulting projects, which include quirky, fantastic theme parks, hotels, resorts, movie studios, and offices, are evidence of how Disney's long-standing use of popular, often surreal, imagery and iconography has been absorbed into the architects' styles. This stunning oversize and collectible volume will feature original architectural drawings and superb color photographs of the projects alongside an expertly written text that incorporates extensive interviews with the architects and executives involved.
The Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency, was founded in 1942 by William 'Wild Bill' Donovan under the direction of President Roosevelt, who realized the need to improve intelligence during wartime. A rigorous recruitment process enlisted agents from both the armed services and civilians to produce operational groups specializing in different foreign areas including Italy, Norway, Yugoslavia and China. At its peak in 1944, the number of men and women working in the service totaled nearly 13,500. This intriguing story of the origins and development of the American espionage forces covers all of the different departments involved, with a particular emphasis on the courageous teams operating in the field. The volume is illustrated with many photographs, including images from the film director John Ford who led the OSS Photographic Unit and parachuted into Burma in 1943.
