X-Urbanism: Architecture and the American City Review

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(More customer reviews)Both eloquently and clearly, X-Urbanism explores the historical and continuing development of the American City through the lens of an eye opening thesis: fantasy and desire have been pivotal factors in the shaping of Urban Space. As the author illustrates, the implications of this point of departure reach far beyond the conventional boundaries of urban studies to include a wealth of other disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, and popular culture. Through the course of this book, the affects of fantasy on the Renaissance City, the Baroque City, the Modern City, and the Post-modern City are charted. Without being dogmatic or judgmental, Mr. Gandelsonas frames the City as a simultaneous object and subject that is influenced by the desires of architects while also influencing its inhabitants with its own wishes.
After reading the text and viewing the drawings that conclude this book it was as though I was walking around an object that until now I had only understood from a stationary position.
This book is a must read for anyone who lives inside or outside of a city.

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For most of his career, architect Mario Gandelsonas has been exploring the American city through his writings, designs, lectures, and, above all, through a series of remarkable analytical drawings. X-Urbanism raises questions about the form of the city by examining various configurations of urban space, analyzing them in ways that blur the traditional opposition between figure and ground. This title serves as a visual lexicon of the formal properties of American urbanism-fabric, void, grid, wall-that reveal the hidden structure of the cities New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, New Haven, Des Moines, and Atlantic City. In the process, X-Urbanism confounds our expectations: it shows us the subtle order of chaotic Los Angeles, and the disruptions of New York's rigorous grid.X-Urbanism carefully reproduces Gandelsonas's drawings, which range from crisp, elegant pen-and-ink to colorful computer renderings and are as beautiful as they are instructive.

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