Site Matters: Design Concepts, Histories and Strategies / Edition 1

by Carol Burns, Andrea Kahn

Overview

One of the trends in twentieth century architecture and planning has been to denigrate and ignore the site, or larger context (both physical and social), surrounding a building or set of buildings.

Focussing on Le Corbusier's designs, Site Matters presents that first considered theory and vocabulary for the inevitable reaction against Modernism in planning, beginning in the 1960s and swelling through the 1980s as architects and planners alike developed a new appreciation of site, reincorporating the wider context into their plans.

Theoretical essays and empirically grounded pieces combine to provide the language and theory of this re-emergence of site, looking at Le Corbusier's designs, contemporary suburbs, and the planning agendas involved at the World Trade Center site.

Groundbreaking and innovative, Site Matters provides valuable theory and vocabulary for planners and architects.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415949750
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	01/15/2005
Pages:	370
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Burns, Carol; Kahn, Andrea

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments, Why Site Matters, 1 Around the Corner: A Photo Essay, 2 Claiming the Site: Evolving Social–Legal Conceptions of Ownership and Property, 3 From Place to Site: Negotiating Narrative Complexity, 4 Groundwork, 5 Site Citations: The Grounds of Modern Landscape Architecture, 6 Shifting Sites, 7 Contested Contexts, 8 The Suppressed Site: Revealing the Influence of Site on Two Purist Works, 9 Neighborhoods Apart: Site/Non-Sight and Suburban Apartments, 10 Study Areas, Sites, and the Geographic Approach to Public Action, 11 Defining Urban Sites, 12 High-Performance Sites, Engaging the Field, Biographical Information, Figure Credits, Index

Editorial Reviews

'The authors (both of the School of Planning, Oxford Brookes University) promote the use of expert systems - "computer programs crystallizing the way experts solve certain problems" - and geographical information systems for conducting the impact assessment studies increasingly required for development proposals in Europe and elsewhere. They introduce the three fields, explaining their methodologies and summarizing the literature on their combined use. They then explore the potentials and limitations of the computer technologies for project screening and scooping, modeling air and noise impacts, impacts on terrestrial ecologies and landscapes, socio-economic and traffic impacts, and water impacts.'

"...must reading on a topic of perennial import for those concerned with the designed environment."—Charles Waldheim, Scapes No. 4, Fall 2005

From the Publisher