Category: books
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City Limits: Where I Walked…
One of the inspirations for the Urban Edge is the book City Limits: Walking Portland’s Boundary by Portland author David Oates. Aside from a great read, David is a fantastic guy and a friend. His recent work as part of the South Waterfront Artist-in-Residence program (which was led by artist Linda K. Johnson, whom also…
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Reading List: Kerb 17: Is LA Dead?
“Landscape architecture has not evolved the necessary operational agility to manage the growing complexity of regional urban infrastructures… Contemporary landscape architecture should seek to generate new performative models of infrastructural form that renew the biophysical environment while facilitating a regional understanding of market forces. Landscape architecture has failed to embrace the technical complexity of infrastructural…
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Where the Revolution Began
The passing of Lawrence Halprin has close ties to an upcoming book that is being released this weekend celebrating his legacy in Portland. This Saturday is a chance to celebrate the legacy of Halprin in Portland, with the release of ‘Where the Revolution Began: Lawrence and Anna Halprin and the Reinvention of Public Space’. On…
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Reading List: Subnature
Another book that engaged me on my hiatus from blogging is one I picked up on somewhat of a whim as it looked like a fascinating read. I wasn’t disappointed, as ‘Subnature: Architecture’s Other Environments” by David Gissen, quickly became impossible to put down. The reason? It really tackles some interesting terrain that is definitely…
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Reading List: Beyond No. 1
Perfect airplane fare, on a recent trip I had an opportunity to borrow Beyond No. 1, entitled Scenarios and Speculations, featuring a range of short stores on the ‘post-contemporary’, edited by Pedro Gadanho. An interesting idea, the slim volume takes a different tack: “…dedicated to new, experimental forms of architectural and urban writing, a bookazine…
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Large Parks
In the spirit of one of the finest collections of writing on parks (and landscape urbanism) ‘Large Parks’ (edited by Czerniak & Hargreaves) a recent post on The Infrastructurist catalogs 10 of the world’s greatest large parks. “We thought it would be fun to take ten of the world’s largest, most famous, and most beautiful…
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Video: The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
A great video series on YouTube – featuring ‘The Social Life of Small urban Spaces’ videos (a companion to the book, or is that vice-versa) by William ‘Holly’ Whyte . The content is kind of late Mad Men era (OK it’s the 1970s, but one expects Don Draper to mosey through the shot looking dapper,…
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Reading List: Andrea Cochran: Landscapes
I’ve had the book ‘Andrea Cochran: Landscapes’ for a while now, since Princeton Architecture Press (2009) sent me a copy. I’ve paged through it numerous times, but figured I’d get around to reading it at some point, at least formally, before putting the review together. Well, for a review I have to admit that I…
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Reading List: Learning from Las Vegas
:: Logorama by H5 – image via Designboom :: (color plate from the book) It is one of those books that everyone should read at some point, so I finally got around to sitting down and busting through the entirety of my copy of Learning from Las Vegas by Venturi, Scott-Brown and Izenour. Strangely enough,…
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Reading List: Healing Spaces
In an attempt to give back to all of the fine publishers that send me review copies of books, I’m striving for a couple of weeks of posts in the spirit of the ‘Overdue Book Report’. First on the list is a great book that I just finished this morning, “Healing Spaces: The Science of…