Steven Holl's library © Carlos Solis
Through February 2010, New York’s Urban Center Books is exploring the relationship between architecture and print with Unpacking My Library, an exhibition of the book collections of prominent New York architects such as Steven Holl and Michael Sorkin.
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.
