Rodolphe El-Khoury

Andrew Payne

For six months in 2010 Shanghai has been host to the biggest and most ambitious World Expo in history. Central to the event are the truly remarkable pavilions and halls that house exhibitions of the 189 countries and 57 international organisations taking part. The first to include photographs and architectural drawings of the completed buildings, this important new book showcases the Expos most ambitious buildings and reflects a dynamism and spirit of creativity that will surely influence architects and designers for years to come.

New Directions from the Shanghai World Expo

States of Architecture in the Twenty-first Century

Oscar Riera Ojeda

Detlef Mertins

Bruce Mau

Phyllis Lambert

While this diversity is one of the signature strengths of the practice, it is the thoughtful calibration of heterogeneous influences in their rigorous design work that has established KPMB as one of Canada's premier architectural studios.".

The Architecture of Kuwabara, Payne, McKenna, Blumberg

Edwards Robbins

Taking on the key issues in urban design, Shaping the City examines the critical ideas that have driven these themes and debates through a study of particular cities at important periods in their development. As well as retaining crucial discussions about cities such as Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Brasilia at particular moments in their history that exemplified the problems and themes at hand like the mega-city, the post-colonial city and New Urbanism, in this new edition the editors have introduced new case studies critical to any study of contemporary urbanism – China, Dubai, Tijuana and the wider issues of informal cities in the Global South. The book serves as both a textbook for classes in urban design, planning and theory and is also attractive to the increasing interest in urbanism by scholars in other fields. Shaping the City provides an essential overview of the range and variety of urbanisms and urban issues that are critical to an understanding of contemporary urbanism.

Studies in History, Theory and Urban Design

Shaping the City

Claude-Nicolas Ledoux's engraving Coup d'oeil du théâtre Besançon in which the architect's building is seen reflected in the eye of a viewer, is the center piece in this intellectual archaeology. Rodolphe el-Khoury's close reading of Ledoux's celebrated icon uses it to excavate the foundations of architectural transparency, Modernism's most potent and lasting "invention," which is here traced back to an intellectual milieu that precedes the industrial revolution's glass and steel building technology. The image becomes a site of entry into the culture of the eighteenth century - debates in public health, the political ideas of Rousseau, the philosophy of Condillac, the project of the Encyclopaedie - yielding insights into important philosophical, and architectural issues. The book includes a translation of Ledoux's chapter on the theater from his magnum opus, Considarae Sous le Rapport de l'art, des Moers, et de la Legislation ILLUSTRATIONS: 5 colour & 60 b/w photographs

Rodolphe El-Khoury

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