49 Cities Book by Work AC available (free PDF sample)
When David Basulto and David Assael from ArchDaily went to NY and interviewed Work AC, they got the chance to see this book before being published. Now, it has been published as the catalog of the 49 Cities exhibition we featured a couple of weeks ago, currently taking place at the Storefront for Art and Architecture.
49 Cities sets out to crunch the numbers of several centuries of unrealized urbanism, all the way from the ideal Roman city to the great utopian projects of the 20th century. Through plans, sections, charts and scale drawings, 49 cities are observed statistically and presented in an unprecedented comparative study, the result of a research project conducted over several years. Despite the fact that these cities never actually existed in their intended form, this overview of utopian urbanism provides a remarkable insight into our understanding of the contemporary metropolis.
How many inhabitants would Buckminster Fuller’s Tetrahedron City house? What would the density of Rem Koolhaas’ Exodus plan for London, or Superstudio’s Continuous Monument, have been had they ever been realized? How would they compare in scale to Kenzo Tange’s Tokyo Bay project, or to Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse?
You can buy the book here ($25.00), and there’s also a free 20-page sample PDF for you to download.
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10 comments »
this looks a bit like a waste of money….
Ah, finally an overview. Too bad they didn’t process more photos of the things actually built.
i think the book is pretty insightful…
good
maybe,it is too expensive
Better to wait and scan it from the library…too expensive, not enough content
You guys are nuts. It is a great deal for such thorough research. As filling and rich as a NY porterhouse steak which you definitely won’t be able to find for $25.
Too expensive?! It’s 2 years of work. It’s a downright steal at $25 dollars…and the money goes to a great organization.
Random architect’s “let’s pretend we do research” stuff. The shelves of all those post-oma offices are full of that shit. Should we really do like InDesign is an actual social science tool?
Avenger,
To a degree a totally agree with you re: post-OMA offices pumping out fat books that say nothing…or less than nothing.
This isn’t that, however. Although I just bought the book, and find it too thin on the research end, this book at least strives to achieve something that isn’t just girth.