Space and Anti-Space

de Steven Peterson, Barbara Littenberg

This book challenges the conventional idea of what constitutes the physical form of the contemporary city. Observing the absence of extended urban fabrics--the missing urbanism--in the new global cities developed today, it argues that these cities are merely statistical accumulations of density that lack the positive attributes of a genuine urban condition. Cities as urban places cannot be made by individual buildings alone but rather depend on the intertwined combination of an architecture that is bound to the creation of public spaces and streets, and engaged in the structure of urban blocks to form a complex field pattern of interactive solids and voids. In a series of essays, articles and urban projects extensively illustrated by plans, analytic diagrams, and dramatic images, this book makes a visual and verbal argument for the steps that need to be taken to re-urbanize the city in order to achieve an urbanity consisting of multiple discrete places that depend on the essential concept of contained geometrical space. These spatial ideas are illustrated in this book in three proposals: for Rome, Roma Interrotta, 1979; Paris, the Consultation Internationale pour L'Ame nagement du Quartier des Halles, 1980; and New York in the World Trade Center Site Innovative Design Study, 2002. "This book challenges the conventional idea of what should constitute the physical form of the contemporary city. Observing the absence of connective urban fabrics in the new global cities being made today, it argues that they are merely dense accumulations of buildings that lack the positive formal attributes that are required to establish an extended public realm. Cities cannot be made by individual buildings alone but rather depend on the intertwined combination of architectural and urban forms bound together in networks of public space. ... Cities, because of their compact efficiency, will be an important part of the solution to climate change and resource depletion, especially as they house an increasing percentage of the world's population. In this series of essays and urban projects, 'Space & anti-space' makes the case for an urban fabric of shaped public space being the indispensable core of the future city."--Front flap of paper wrapper.