'New World Architecture' Exhibition

'New World Architecture' Exhibition

16 Nov 2006 - 22 Dec 2006

The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design, together with The European Centre for Architecture, Art, and Urban Studies and Metropolitan Arts Press Ltd., have organized the first exhibition of 'New World Architecture' as a way in which to honour and celebrate the most outstanding architecture designed and built throughout the world.

'New World Architecture' opens at the Architecture Centre of The Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, 8 Merrion Square, Dublin 2 on 16 November 2006 and continues until 10 January 2007.

The exhibition is curated by Christian K. Narkiewicz-Laine, President of The Chicago Athenaeum, and is co-presented with ABITARE Magazine in Milan.

Over 60 new projects are presented and designed by the world’s most prestigious architecture firms in Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, and North America. The works were selected and awarded in The Chicago Athenaeum's Awards programs for 2006: The International Architecture Awards and The American Architecture Awards.

Exhibited works include new corporate headquarters, skyscrapers, cultural institutions, schools, sports and transportation facilities, airports, urban planning projects, sacred spaces, and private residences and multi-family housing designed by architects in their countries of origin or abroad for both built and unbuilt projects alike, as of 1 January 2002.

Location: Architecture Centre, RIAI, 8 Merrion Square, Dublin 2.
Dates: 16 November 2006 – 10 January 2007
(RIAI closes from 1pm on 22 December until 9am on 2 January 2007)
Times: 9am – 5pm; Monday to Friday

Books to buy for Christmas 2006

The following urban design books are the most useful I have read. They are, in effect, seminal texts. Ask for them for Christmas!

Alexander, Christopher, A New Theory of Urban Design, Oxford University Press, New York, 1987.

Anderson, Stanford (editor), On Streets, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1991.

Appleyard, Donald, The View from the Road, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1964.

Bacon, Edmund N., Design of Cities, Viking Press, New York, 1967.

Barnett, Jonathan, An Introduction to Urban Design, Harper & Row, New York, 1982.

Barnett, Jonathan, The Elusive City: Five Centuries of Design, Ambition, and Miscalculation, Harper & Row, New York, 1986.

Baudrillard, Jean America, Verso, London, 1988.

Boyer, M. Christine, The City of Collective Memory: Its Historical Imagery and Architectural Entertainments, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1994.

Boyer, M. Christine, Dreaming the Rational City: The Myth of American City Planning, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1983.

Calthorpe, Peter, The Next American Metropolis: Ecology, Community and the American Dream, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1993.

Collins, George R. and Collins, Christine Crasemann, Camillo Sitte: The Birth of Modern City Planning, Rizzoli, New York, 1986.

Cullen, Gordon, Townscape, Reinhold, New York, 1961.

Duany, Andres and Plater-Zyberk, Elizabeth, Towns and Town-Making Principles, Rizzoli, New York, 1991.

Gandelsonas, Mario, The Urban Text, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1991.

Gosling, David and Maitland, Barry, Concepts of Urban Design, Academy Editions, St. Martin's Press, London and New York, 1984.

Jacobs, Alan, Great Streets, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1993.

Jacobs, Jane, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Random House, New York, 1961

Katz, Peter, The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1994.

Kelbaugh, Doug, editor, The Pedestrian Pocket Book: A new Suburban Design Strategy, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1989.

Kostoff, Spiro, The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History, Thames and Hudson, London, 1991.

Krier, Rob, Urban Space, Rizzoli, New York, 1979.

Kunstler, James Howard, The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man- made Landscape, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1993.

Lynch, Kevin, Good City Form, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1984.

Lynch, Kevin, The Image of the City, Technology Press & Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1960.

Lynch, Kevin, A Theory of Good Urban Form, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1981.

Newman, Oscar, Defensible Space, MacMillan, New York, 1972.

Rasmussen, Steen Eiler, Towns and Buildings, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1949.

Reps, John, The Making of Urban America: A History of City Planning in the United States, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1965.

Rossi, Aldo, The Architecture of the City, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1982.

Rowe, Colin and Koetter, Fred, Collage City, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1979?

Rowe, Peter, Making a Middle Landscape, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1991.

Sennett, Richard, The Conscience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life of Cities, W.W. Norton, New York, 1990.

Sennett, Richard, The Fall of Public Man, Knopf, New York, 1977.

Sennett, Richard - new book

Sitte, Camillo, The Art of Building Cities: City Building According to its Artistic Fundamentals, translated by Charles T. Stewart, Reinhold Publishing Corporation, New York, 1945.

Sorkin, Michael, editor, Variations on a Theme Park, Noonday Press, New York, 1992.

Stein, Clarence S., Toward New Towns for America, University Press of Liverpool, Liverpool, 1951.

Unwin, Raymond, Town Planning in Practice: An Introduction to the Art of Designing Cities and Suburbs, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1994.

Van der Ryn and Calthorpe, Peter, Sustainable Communities: A New Design Synthesis for Cities, Suburbs, and Towns, Siera Club Books, San Francisco, 1986.

Whyte, William, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, The Conservation Foundation, Washington, D.C., 1980.

Irish planner should study New Urbanism in detail

New Urbanism is an urban design movement that burst onto the scene in the late 1980s and early 1990s. New Urbanists aim to reform all aspects of real estate development. Their work affects regional and local plans. They are involved in new development, urban retrofits, and suburban infill. In all cases, New Urbanist neighborhoods are walkable, and contain a diverse range of housing and jobs. New Urbanists support regional planning for open space, appropriate architecture and planning, and the balanced development of jobs and housing. They believe these strategies are the best way to reduce how long people spend in traffic, to increase the supply of affordable housing, and to rein in urban sprawl. Many other issues, such as historic restoration, safe streets, and green building are also covered in the Charter of the New Urbanism, the movement's seminal document.

The Congress for the New Urbanism views disinvestment in central cities, the spread of placeless sprawl, increasing separation by race and income, environmental deterioration, loss of agricultural lands and wilderness, and the erosion of society's built heritage as one interrelated community-building challenge.

We stand for the restoration of existing urban centers and towns within coherent metropolitan regions, the reconfiguration of sprawling suburbs into communities of real neighborhoods and diverse districts, the conservation of natural environments, and the preservation of our built legacy.

We recognize that physical solutions by themselves will not solve social and economic problems, but neither can economic vitality, community stability, and environmental health be sustained without a coherent and supportive physical framework.

We advocate the restructuring of public policy and development practices to support the following principles: neighborhoods should be diverse in use and population; communities should be designed for the pedestrian and transit as well as the car; cities and towns should be shaped by physically defined and universally accessible public spaces and community institutions; urban places should be framed by architecture and landscape design that celebrate local history, climate, ecology, and building practice.

We represent a broad-based citizenry, composed of public and private sector leaders, community activists, and multidisciplinary professionals. We are committed to reestablishing the relationship between the art of building and the making of community, through citizen-based participatory planning and design.

We dedicate ourselves to reclaiming our homes, blocks, streets, parks, neighborhoods, districts, towns, cities, regions, and environment.