Visionaries and Planners
Visionaries and Planners

Author: Stanley Buder

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0195061748

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In this book, Stanley Buder examines the Garden City movement from its origins in mid-nineteenth-century England to its subsequent development and elaboration in twentieth- century America. The Garden City movement emphasized green belts around cities but was not identified exclusively with suburban development. Much of the city planning which formed the basis for the Garden City movement was based upon designing the ideal community. But this sense of idealism was soon lost with the transfer of the movement to America, and indeed it was unable to sustain itself in the communities of its origin in England.

Designs of Destruction
Designs of Destruction

Author: Lucia Allais

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2018-10-16

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 022628655X

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How historical preservation efforts to protect architectural monuments arose in the twentieth century. The twentieth century was highly destructive, but from its landscapes of ruins was born a new architectural type: the cultural monument. In the wake of World War I, an international movement arose which aimed to protect architectural monuments in large numbers, and regardless of style, hoping not only to keep them safe from future conflicts but also to make them worthy of protection from more quotidian forms of destruction. An evolving group—including architects, intellectuals, art historians, archaeologists, curators, and lawyers—grew out of the new diplomacy of the League of Nations. During and after World War II, it became affiliated with the Allied Military Government and was eventually absorbed by the UN as UNESCO. By the 1970s, this organization had begun granting World Heritage status to a global register of significant sites—from buildings to bridges, shrines to city centers, ruins to colossi. Examining key episodes in the history of this preservation effort—including projects for the Parthenon, the Cathedral of St-Lô, the temples of Abu Simbel, and the Bamyian Buddahs —Lucia Allais demonstrates how the group deployed the notion of culture to shape architectural sites, and how architecture in turn shaped the very idea of global culture. Designs of Destruction emphasizes how the technical project of ensuring various buildings’ longevity jolted preservation into establishing a transnational set of codes, values, and practices. At the same time, this paradoxically helped integrate technologies of destruction—from bombs to bulldozers—into cultural governance. Designs of Destruction not only offers a fascinating narrative of cultural diplomacy, based on extensive archival findings; it also contributes an important new chapter in the intellectual history of modernity by showing the manifold ways architectural form is charged with concretizing abstract ideas and ideals, even in its destruction.