Riverine: Architecture and Rivers

Riverscapes are the main arteries of the world’s largest cities, and have, for millennia, been the lifeblood of the urban communities that have developed around them. These human settlements – given life through the space of the local waterscape – soon developed into ritualised spaces that sought to harness the dynamism of the watercourse and create the local architectural landscape. Theorised via a sophisticated understanding of history, space, culture, and ecology, this collection of wonderful and deliberately wide-ranging case studies, from Early Modern Italy to the contemporary Bengal Delta, investigates the culture of human interaction with rivers and the nature of urban topography. Riverine explores the ways in which architecture and urban planning have imbued cultural landscapes with ritual and structural meaning.

Gerald Adler is a Professor and Deputy Head at the Kent School of Architecture (KSA), University of Kent, UK, which he helped to found in 2005. His PhD was on the German ‘Reform’ architect Heinrich Tessenow, and he has written on European twentieth-century topics. He is an active member of CREAte, the University of Kent’s Centre for Research in European Architecture. Adler began his career in practice, working in London, Tokyo, Winchester, Stuttgart and Vienna, and currently directs the MA in Architecture and Urban Design at KSA.

Manolo Guerci is a Senior Lecturer and the Director of Graduate Studies at the Kent School of Architecture, University of Kent, UK. His research concentrates on early-modern European palaces, but he has also looked at issues related to the conservation of historic buildings, traditional Japanese architecture, and post-war social housing estates, on all of which he has published widely. Educated in Rome, London, Paris, and Cambridge, he began working in France for the 'Monuments Historiques' agency, while he has previously taught at the University of Cambridge, UK.