As anyone who has flown into Los Angeles at dusk or Houston at midday knows, urban areas today defy traditional notions of what a city is. Our old definitions of urban, suburban, and rural fail to capture the complexity of these vast regions with their superhighways, subdivisions, industrial areas, office parks, and resort areas pushing far out into the countryside. Detractors call it sprawl and assert that it is economically inefficient, socially inequitable, environmentally irresponsible, and aesthetically ugly. Robert Bruegmann calls it a logical consequence of economic growth and the democratization of society, with benefits that urban planners have failed to recognize. In his incisive history of the expanded city, Bruegmann overturns every assumption we have about sprawl. Taking a long view of urban development, he demonstrates that sprawl is neither recent nor particularly American but as old as cities themselves, just as characteristic of ancient Rome and eighteenth-century Paris as it is of Atlanta or Los Angeles. Nor is sprawl the disaster claimed by many contemporary observers. Although sprawl, like any settlement pattern, has undoubtedly produced problems that must be addressed, it has also provided millions of people with the kinds of mobility, privacy, and choice that were once the exclusive prerogatives of the rich and powerful. The first major book to strip urban sprawl of its pejorative connotations, Sprawl offers a completely new vision of the city and its growth. Bruegmann leads readers to the powerful conclusion that "in its immense complexity and constant change, the city-whether dense and concentrated at its core, looser and more sprawling in suburbia, or in the vast tracts of exurban penumbra that extend dozens, even hundreds, of miles-is the grandest and most marvelous work of mankind." “Largely missing from this debate [over sprawl] has been a sound and reasoned history of this pattern of living. With Robert Bruegmann’s Sprawl: A Compact History, we now have one. What a pleasure it is: well-written, accessible and eager to challenge the current cant about sprawl.”—Joel Kotkin, The Wall Street Journal “There are scores of books offering ‘solutions’ to sprawl. Their authors would do well to read this book.”—Witold Rybczynski, Slate

Sprawl: A Compact History

History

Bruegmann, Robert

Americas

University of Chicago Press

As anyone who has flown into Los Angeles at dusk or Houston at midday knows, urban areas today defy traditional notions of what a city is. Our old definitions of urban, suburban, and rural fail to capture the complexity of these vast regions with their superhighways, subdivisions, industrial areas, office parks, and resort areas pushing far out into the countryside. Detractors call it sprawl and assert that it is economically inefficient, socially inequitable, environmentally irresponsible, and aesthetically ugly. Robert Bruegmann calls it a logical consequence of economic growth and the democratization of society, with benefits that urban planners have failed to recognize. In his incisive history of the expanded city, Bruegmann overturns every assumption we have about sprawl. Taking a long view of urban development, he demonstrates that sprawl is neither recent nor particularly American but as old as cities themselves, just as characteristic of ancient Rome and eighteenth-century Paris as it is of Atlanta or Los Angeles. Nor is sprawl the disaster claimed by many contemporary observers. Although sprawl, like any settlement pattern, has undoubtedly produced problems that must be addressed, it has also provided millions of people with the kinds of mobility, privacy, and choice that were once the exclusive prerogatives of the rich and powerful. The first major book to strip urban sprawl of its pejorative connotations, Sprawl offers a completely new vision of the city and its growth. Bruegmann leads readers to the powerful conclusion that "in its immense complexity and constant change, the city-whether dense and concentrated at its core, looser and more sprawling in suburbia, or in the vast tracts of exurban penumbra that extend dozens, even hundreds, of miles-is the grandest and most marvelous work of mankind." 
“Largely missing from this debate [over sprawl] has been a sound and reasoned history of this pattern of living. With Robert Bruegmann’s Sprawl: A Compact History, we now have one. What a pleasure it is: well-written, accessible and eager to challenge the current cant about sprawl.”—Joel Kotkin, The Wall Street Journal “There are scores of books offering ‘solutions’ to sprawl. Their authors would do well to read this book.”—Witold Rybczynski, Slate

World

Winner of the 1998 Spiro Kostof Book Award from the Society of Architectural Historians. Chicago has always held a special fascination for those interested in architectural and urban history. For many, the defining moment occurred at the turn of the century when Chicago was booming and the world came to the city by the lake. But the story most often told in architectural history—the tale of single creative geniuses like Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan—does little to explain the birth of the everyday modern city, with its high-rise downtown, diverse neighborhoods, and sprawling suburbs. This book connects architectural history with urban history by looking at the work of a major architectural firm, Holabird &amp; Roche. No firm in any large American city had a greater impact. With projects that ranged from tombstones to skyscrapers, boiler rooms to entire industrial complexes, Holabird &amp; Roche left an indelible stamp on the city of Chicago and, indeed, far beyond. In this volume, the first of two on Holabird &amp; Roche and its successor, Holabird &amp; Root, Robert Bruegmann traces the firm’s history from its founding in 1880 to the end of the First World War. Incorporating meticulous research based on the extensive architectural holdings of the Chicago Historical Society, Bruegmann documents the firm’s work from the boom years of the 1880s through the period of sustained growth and innovation after the turn of the century. In chapters devoted to topics as diverse as downtown commercial and retail development, business hotels, civic buildings, automobile showrooms, and suburban clubs and housing, Bruegmann creates a sustained historical narrative that considers the profound interdependence of architecture and modern urban life.

The Architects and the City: Holabird & Roche of Chicago, 1880-1918 (Chicago Architecture and Urbanism)

This study tells the story of one of America’s most gifted architects of the postwar years.
During a career that spanned half a century from the 1930s to the 1980s, Weese produced a large number of significant designs ranging from small but highly inventive houses to large urban scale commissions like the Washington, D.C., Metro system. Although influenced to some degree by the rational, and often austere, work of European modernists like Mies van der Rohe, in most of his own oeuvre Weese instead followed the example of Nordic architects like Gunnar Asplund and Alvar Aalto in favoring natural materials, human scale, and comfort; his work was characterized by a deep respect for older buildings and existing urban patterns and a fondness for unexpected, often idiosyncratic design decisions.
This book takes its place within a fast-growing revival of interest in the work of Weese and a number of his friends and contemporaries with shared assumptions and sensibilities, notably Eero Saarinen, Edward Larrabee Barnes, I. M. Pei, Ralph Rapson, and Paul Rudolph. As important as Weese’s buildings were, though, they were only one part of what almost all his contemporaries recognized as his seemingly inexhaustible creativity. Because Weese believed that design was essentially problem-solving, he was willing to apply his skills to everything from a piece of furniture to an entire city. The city on which he lavished the most attention was his own city, Chicago, where he seemed to be everywhere at once, praising, criticizing, cheerleading, and pouring out ideas for creating a humane and livable place for citizens of all walks of life. 56 color and 120 black-and-white illustrations

The Architecture of Harry Weese

Arts & Photography

Architecture

W.W.Norton&Company

Since joining Perkins &amp; Will in the late 1970s, Ralph Johnson has revitalized the venerable Chicago firm with a flurry of award-winning projects ranging from public schools across the country to the Morton International Building in Chicago, to large-scale buildings in Korea and Singapore. Johnson has been widely acclaimed for designs that incorporate complex programs with dynamic, modern forms and a sensitive respect for surrounding context and landscape. He subsumes a strong personal signature into broader concerns for spatial clarity and the urban fabric, suffusing his work with the spirit of the southern European rationalists and the Dutch moderninst Willem Dudok, as well as Eliel and Ero Saarinen, with whom Perkins &amp; Will collaborated on the famous Crow Island School in Illinois in the late 1930s. This first monograph on Johnson's work presents thirty-seven of his projects, organized according to building type and illustrated with photographs, plans, and the architect's striking black-and-white renderings. Included are celebrated earlier projects, such as Capital High School and Desert View Elementary School in New Mexico, of the 1980s, and recent, high-profile commissions: the International Terminal at O'Hare airport in Chicago; Orland Park Village Center in Orland Park, Illinois; three new high schools; and several prominent university facilities, among them the Tarry Research and Education building at Northwestern University and Temple Hoyne Buell Hall, which will house the new graduate schools of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning at the University of Illinois in Champaign. A brief essay by Johnson prefaces each section, while the introduction gives a chronological account of Johnson's career and the influences on his work.

Ralph Johnson of Perkins & Will: Buildings and Projects

Rizzoli

The architecture and development of Benicia, a small town near San Francisco, are examined by an architectural historian

Benicia, Portrait of an Early California Town: An Architectural History

101 Productions

Art at the Armory: Occupied Territory

Wright, Beryl J.

Rorimer, Anne

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Museum Of Contemporary Art, Chicago

Benicia Portrait of an Early California Town: Sisquicentennial Edition

James d Stevenson Pub

Edited by Larry Remele with an introduction by Louis N. Hafermehl. 
How the existing capitol building grew out of the ashes of its predecessor makes entertaining reading. In three essays, authors Robert Bruegmann, Richard Striner, and L. Martin Perry discuss the impact of political shifts, the Depression, and long-range visions on the plans and construction of the new building. The unique structure reflects New Deal design, a blend of modern and classical styles emphasizing clean, simple lines. The finishing touches include art deco influence. 
An architectural gem, the building is unique among capitol buildings with a story that entertains and educates.

The North Dakota State Capitol: Architecture and History

Striner, Richard

Perry, L. Martin

State Historical Society of North Dakota

Air travel has influenced the architecture and design of our century to a perhaps even greater degree than the automobile. This lavishly illustrated, expertly researched book traces the history of that influence, examining the development of airports around the world, as well as such related building types and topics as aircraft factories, maintenance hangars, notable airplane designs, and airline corporate imagery.Written by experts from Britain, Germany, Holland, and the U.S. - among them a pilot of thirty years' international flying experience - the essays in this volume discuss all these developments, together with the legal and financial role played in them by local and national government. The illustrations throughout the book encompass everything from plans and corporate identity designs to documentary photographs and computer renderings.

Building for Air Travel: Architecture and Design for Commercial Aviation

Zukowsky, John

Bosma, Koos

Bouman, Mark J.

Brodherson, David

Lockhart, Wood

Rau, Leonard

Voigt, Wolfgang

Kisho Kurokawa Gallery of Architecture

Prestel Pub

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