Saratoga

In Saratoga (2009), author/ architect George Ranalli documents the Saratoga Avenue Community Center in Brownsville, Brooklyn -- a city-agency sponsored project to reorganize, renovate, and expand an isolated inner-city housing block. Saratoga looks an in-depth look at Ranalli's innovative approaches to producing abeautiful, durable, adaptable, and sustainable work of architecture, on a rock-bottom budget, that connects an urban community to new green spaces,and light-filled interiors, both functional and lovely. Ranalli provides plenty of contextual and programmatic information alongside vivid color images from photographer Paul Warchol, and reproductions of architectural sketches, renderings, plans, and other details documenting every phase of the life cycle of the project. Acclaimed architecture critic Ms. Huxtable credits Saratoga for breaking every rule of conventional civic architecture. On the architecture itself, Ms. Huxtable writes, "Mr. Ranalli adheres to the logic of modernist practice, integrating itsmechanical, material and structural realities with details drawn fromearlier sources to create an integral ornament of abstract lineargeometry. His purpose is to move modernism into an enriched and moredeeply referenced style."  -- Breaking All The Rules With New York's Public-Building Design by Ada Louise Huxtable, WSJ, May 13, 2009