The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History - Hardcover

Kostof, Spiro

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0821218670 ISBN 13: 9780821218679

Publisher: Bulfinch Pr, 1991

Synopsis

Cities are among the most enduring and remarkable of human artefacts. This study explains how and why cities took the shape they did. Professor Kostof focuses on a number of themes - organic patterns, the grid, the city as diagram, the grand manner and the skyline - and interprets the hidden order of urban patterns. Photographs, historical views and specially commissioned drawings depict a global mosaic of citybuilding: the shaping of medieval Siena; the creation of New Delhi as the crown of the Raj; the remodelling of Moscow as the self-styled capital of world socialism and the transformation of the skyline as religious and civic symbols yield to the towers of corporate business.

About this title

About the Author:

Spiro Kostof (1936-1991) was a professor of Architectural History at the University of California at Berkley, and also taught at M.I.T., and at Yale, Columbia, and Rice universities. His many books include The Architect: Chapters in The History of the Profession (1977) and A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals (1985), now a standard text. He edited America by Design (1987), the companion to a five-part television series that he presented. Kostof also published The City Shaped with Bulfinch Press in 1991.

From Library Journal:

Kostof has done it again; in prolific fashion he has produced another standard textbook. This time his subject is cities rather than architecture, which he covered in A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals ( LJ 6/1/85). This book will appeal especially to designers, architects, and planners, as it organizes its subject matter according to what form it takes (grids, diagrams, skylines, etc.) rather than chronologically, topically, or typologically, as do other surveys of urbanism. Kostof is a master tour guide, blessed with an easy writing style, a piquant, welcoming mind, and a worldwide mastery of his subject matter. This book is certain to become a classic in its field comparable to Lewis Mumford's Culture of Cities (1933) and Mark Girouard's Cit ies and People ( LJ 10/15/85).
- Peter Kaufman, Boston Coll.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bulfinch Pr
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0821218670
• ISBN 13: 9780821218679
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352
• Illustrator: Tobias Richard