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Chargement... New York 1960par Robert A. M. Stern
   Aucun Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre.  archidose | Feb 3, 2018 |  aucune critique | ajouter une critique
This is the third volume (and the fourth chronologically) in architect and historian Robert A. M. Stern's monumental series of documentary studies of New York City architecture and urbanism. New York 1880, New York 1900, and New York 1930 have comprehensively covered the architects and urban planners who defined New York from the end of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century. The post-World War II era witnessed New York's reign as the unofficial but undisputed economic and artistic capital of the world. By the mid-1970s, the city had experienced a profound reversal, and both its economy and its reputation were at a historic nadir. The architectural history of the period offered an exceptionally abundant and varied mix of building styles and types, from the faltering traditionalism of the 1940s through the heyday of International Style modernism in the 1950s and 1960s to the incipient postmodernism of the 1970s. Organized geographically, New York 1960 provides an encyclopedic survey of the city's postwar architecture as well as relating a coherent story about each of its diverse neighborhoods. Primary sources are emphasized, including the commentaries of the preeminent architecture critics of the day; the text is illustrated exclusively with a rich collection of period photographs. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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 Google Books — Chargement...GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)720.974710904The arts Architecture Architecture - modified standard subdivisions History, geographic treatment, biography North America Northeastern U.S. New YorkClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne: (4.67)
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An anecdote about 1960 in particular. Recently I wanted to learn about West Village Housing, the low-rise project from the 1960s and 70s that sits on the land vacated by the High Line after its southern section was torn down. Richard Plunz's excellent A History of Housing in New York City was helpful, as was Robert Kanigel's biography of Jane Jacobs, since she was instrumental in getting the project realized as low-rise housing fitted to the vacated land rather than as high-rise housing on cleared blocks, as was the norm at the time. Seeing the project now, it doesn't look like anything special, especially given its sparse, fairly depressing architecture. But the history, which I won't go into here, is fascinating, and explains how something promising ended up compromised; and turns out the best source for it is New York 1960. It delves into things other accounts gloss over, and its references led me to original sources and critiques written when it was completed.
Minutiae like this is commendable for a (pseudo-)historian like me, but it's also the book's biggest problem (hence not a five-star review); there's just too much packed into one book. (Here and there I came across buildings treated at length – buildings I didn't find so deserving.) Perhaps Stern and his co-authors should have broken their ambitious project into decade-long books to make them a more manageable size. As is, they are generational swaths about the physical evolution of one of the few cities worth such an undertaking. (