Cities of light: Two centuries of urban illumination

Cities of Light is the first global overview of modern urban illumination, a development that allows human wakefulness to colonize the night, doubling the hours available for purposeful and industrious activities. Urban lighting is undergoing a revolution due to recent developments in lighting technology, and increased focus on sustainability and human-scaled environments. Cities of Light is expansive in coverage, spanning two centuries and touching on developments on six continents, without diluting its central focus on architectural and urban lighting. Covering history, geography, theory, and speculation in urban lighting, readers will have numerous points of entry into the book, finding it easy to navigate for a quick reference and or a coherent narrative if read straight through. With chapters written by respected scholars and highly-regarded contemporary practitioners, this book will delight students and practitioners of architectural and urban history, area and cultural studies, and lighting design professionals and the institutional and municipal authorities they serve. At a moment when the entire world is being reshaped by new lighting technologies and new design attitudes, the longer history of urban lighting remains fragmentary. Cities of Light aims to provide a global framework for historical studies of urban lighting and to offer a new perspective on the fast-moving developments of lighting today

Cities of Light: Two Centuries of Urban Illumination

Cities of Light is the first global overview of modern urban illumination, a development that allows human wakefulness to colonize the night, doubling the hours available for purposeful and industrious activities. Urban lighting is undergoing a revolution due to recent developments in lighting technology, and increased focus on sustainability and human-scaled environments. Cities of Light is expansive in coverage, spanning two centuries and touching on developments on six continents, without diluting its central focus on architectural and urban lighting. Covering history, geography, theory, and speculation in urban lighting, readers will have numerous points of entry into the book, finding it easy to navigate for a quick reference and or a coherent narrative if read straight through. With chapters written by respected scholars and highly-regarded contemporary practitioners, this book will delight students and practitioners of architectural and urban history, area and cultural studies, and lighting design professionals and the institutional and municipal authorities they serve.\ud \ud At a moment when the entire world is being reshaped by new lighting technologies and new design attitudes, the longer history of urban lighting remains fragmentary. Cities of Light aims to provide a global framework for historical studies of urban lighting and to offer a new perspective on the fast-moving developments of lighting today

Anxious Modernisms : Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture

This major anthology, edited by S.W. Goldhagen and R. Legault, focuses on the role of architectural culture in postwar society (referred to as the “age of anxiety”). It contains monographic essays by 12 authors, on the work of selected postwar architects and theorists whose revisions of modernism provided alternatives to International Style and historicism. A wide range of issues are considered in relation to scientific, technological and cultural developments following the Second World War. The editors’ introductory text outlines the central themes addressed in the book: the modern movement, popular culture and everyday life, anti-architecture, democratic freedom, “homos ludens” (man at play), primitivism, authenticity, history and regionalism/place. The essays focus on the following subjects: Italian Neorealism; ATBAT’s housing projects in Casablanca; Alison and Peter Smithson’s theories about home; Neutra’s postwar suburban houses; Price’s Fun Palace; Saarinen’s work for IBM; Berlin housing projects of the Stalinallee and the Hansaviertel; Rudolph’s art building on the Wellesley College campus; Rudofsky’s architectural polemics; the Marxist critique of the Situationist International; Bakema’s architectural theory; and the Japanese Metabolists. Other topics discussed include: J.-P. Sartre’s existential philosophy; issues of monumentality, functionalism, ornamentation and fashion; vernacular architecture and nomadism; and modernist definitions of Zeitgeist. Numerous references are made to S. Giedion’s book “Space, Time, and Architecture.” Biographical notes on authors. Index. Circa 750 bibl. ref