X-Urbanism: Architecture and the American City

About this book

For most of his career architect Mario Gandelsonas has been exploring the American city through his writings designs lectures and above all through a series of remarkable analytical drawings. X-Urbanism raises questions about the form of the city by examining various configurations of urban space analyzing them in ways that blur the traditional opposition between figure and ground. This title serves as a visual lexicon of the formal properties of American urbanism-fabric void grid wall-that reveal the hidden structure of the cities New York Los Angeles Boston Chicago New Haven Des Moines and Atlantic City. In the process X-Urbanism confounds our expectations: it shows us the subtle order of chaotic Los Angeles and the disruptions of New Yorks rigorous grid. X-Urbanism carefully reproduces Gandelsonass drawings which range from crisp elegant pen-and-ink to colorful computer renderings and are as beautiful as they are instructive.