Yule Heibel's Library tagged witold_rybczynski →  View Popular, Search in Google

Not sure I agree that dynamiting Pruitt-Igoe in 1972 was the defining watershed moment - I think the impetus for archispeak is economic - but, regardless, Witold Rybczynski gives a conise critique of the beast...

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The destruction of the utopian "towers in a park" signaled the demise of heroic Modernism and its idealistic foray into social engineering. It also rattled the profession. What were architects to do? A few, such as I.M. Pei, soldiered on, seeking inspiration in a more monumental and stylish version of minimal Modernism. Some adopted Postmodernism, which turned out to be a short-lived fad. A few turned back to Classicism, while some, like Richard Rogers and Norman Foster, redefined architecture as an advanced technological craft.

Other architects, especially those teaching in universities, reacted to the collapse of Modernism by attempting to reinvent the field as a theoretical discipline. The theories did not come from the evidence of the practice of architecture, as one might expect (that was left to Christopher Alexander), but from arcane historical tracts and the writings of French literary critics in hermeneutics, poetics, and semiology. Thus began a new phase in professional jargon.
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architecture archispeak witold_rybczynski slate_magazine

Very worth reading, on "The Cities We Want," by Witold Rybczynski
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All the cities that have experienced vigorous population growth during the second half of the 20th century—Houston; Phoenix, Ariz.; Dallas; San Jose, Calif.; Atlanta, Ga.—have grown by spreading out. These are horizontal cities, with generally low population densities, typically fewer than 10 people per acre compared with 15 to 20 people per acre in the older, vertical cities. Horizontal cities depend on automobiles for mass transportation and on trucks for the movement of goods. In a horizontal city, the difference between city and suburb is indistinct. People in both live chiefly in individual houses rather than in flats or apartment buildings, and the houses are organized in dispersed, semi-autonomous planned communities that are different from the urban neighborhoods of the past. Versions of the dispersed city can be found in large cities such as Los Angeles, small cities such as Las Vegas, and in the metropolitan areas surrounding all cities, old and new.
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witold_rybczynski slate_magazine urbanism urbanization urban_development cities

Nice commentary on Witold Rybczynski's popular slide essay on Slate (see http://www.slate.com/id/2184927/). Good to see a native give some feedback on Rybczynski's take on Seattle library, too. I have to agree with David Brewster that the Salt Lake City Library is a knock-out: really gorgeous.

crosscut libraries slate_magazine witold_rybczynski