Alex Lehnerer

Jayne Kelley

Jared Macken

Lorenzo Stieger

Robert E Somol

25 towns in the Wild West are the protagonists in this book, including famous places like El Paso, Rio Bravo, and Lahood-not as clichés, but as constructed reality. Detailed maps offer a previously non-existent overview of spatial contexts and form the basis for an intensive exploration of architecture and urban planning. The culture of the "city without a future" in the American West between 1860 and 1900 has been maintained in the films out of which it arises. This architectural analysis does not attempt to nostalgically reactivate the Western town, but uses it instead as a vehicle to critique contemporary phenomena in terms of infrastructure, the link between architecture and city, and the role of urban planning-after the Stranger persuaded the residents of Lago to paint the whole town red, he declared himself ready to protect it from the approaching gunmen. With maps of the towns from the following films (selected): 'A Fistful of Dollars' (1964), 'Buchanan Rides Alone' (1958), 'For a Few Dollars More' (1965), 'Fort Apache' (1948).

A Theory of Aggregation

The Western Town

"Grand Urban Rules offers a compilation and discussion of significant rules invented and implemented by European, North American, and Asian cities. The reader does not only get an overview of the functionality and repercussions of these rule sets but also gains insight into the context and situation of the specific city through the lens of rule-based governance: a citys code as the inverted, abstracted and extracted image of a citys actual situation. Setting standards is first and foremost a cultural act. We map cities by their rules! The publication is based on a database of approximately 100 relevant urban rules researched over the past three years at the ETH Zurich. These rules describe built form with regard to physical characteristics, qualities, and consequences as well as the distribution of program, density, urban performance, and aesthetics."--Publisher's description.

Alex Lehnerer

Books

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