What do our cities say about us? What have we made them, and how ought they to be? How has our vision of the city evolved over time, and can we really influence change and effect improvements? In this vibrant cultural history of the city, Joseph Rykwert explores the great cities of the modern world, examining their fabric and assessing how successfully they have met the needs of their inhabitants. From the teeming city centres of the industrial revolution to the exclusive gated suburbs of the 21st century, from the Parisian boulevards of Haussmann to the 'green' architecture of Emilio Ambasz, Rykwert charts the complex story of the growth of the city, setting architectural development firmly within a political, economic, social, and cultural context. Drawing on examples from Brasilia to Islamabad, Shanghai to Houston, Rykwert presents a fascinating analysis of urban growth, arguing forcefully that as voters and consumers we need to consider the economic, social, and cultural implications of developments and demonstrate our resistance to them if necessary. The arguments over the future of the Ground Zero site in Manhattan encapsulate the conflicting demands of civic pride and public utility set against private gain that vie for dominance in the 21st century, and exemplify the choices that, as citizens, we must all eventually make.

The Seduction of Place The History and Future of the City (Paperback)

RYKWERT, Joseph

History

OUP Oxford

Is architecture art? This vexed question has been posed since the 1700s, when—breaking from earlier centuries in which there were no divisions between visual artist, architect, and engineer—architects and laypeople alike began to see these vocations as distinct. Exploring how this separation of roles occurred, and how in the twentieth century arts and architecture started to come together again, The Judicious Eye is the definitive history of the relationships between painting, sculpture, and architecture as they have shifted over the past three centuries.            Joseph Rykwert locates the first major shift during the Enlightenment, when key philosophers drew implied and explicit distinctions between the visual arts and architecture. As time progressed, architects came to see themselves as part of an established profession, while visual artists increasingly moved toward society’s margins, deepening the chasm between them. Detailing the eventual attempts to heal this breach, Rykwert concludes in the mid-twentieth century, when the artistic avant-garde turned to architects in its battle against a stagnant society. The Judicious Eye, then, provides a necessary foundation for understanding architecture and visual art in the twenty-first century, as they continue to break new ground by growing closer to their intertwined roots. 

The Judicious Eye: Architecture Against the Other Arts

Arts & Photography

Architecture

University of Chicago Press

The First Moderns portrays the complex of social and personal relationships, patronage, humanistic learning, and mystical and hermetic philosophy that made up the world of the "classic" in Europe from around 1650 to 1775. Against this background, it traces a subtle but revolutionary change that occurred in European architecture and which aroused issues that still echo in the debates between architectural traditionalists and modernists and between modernists and postmodernists. Rykwert's study goes well beyond the tradition of architectural history, which has largely been concerned with the outward, stylistic evolution from the classic to the Baroque and Rococo. It examines buildings as embodiments of the whole culture, founded on basic philosophical concepts and shaped by ongoing political and religious upheavals. In particular, it focuses on the shift from the "classic" to the "Neoclassic." The study includes major painters and sculptors of the period and pays considerable attention to the practical and social context in which the architects, artists, and artisans worked—the organization of labor, the establishment of the Academies and of the architectural profession, the development of the building guilds, and the rise of freemasonry. The book concludes with an extensive bibliography and index.

First Moderns: The Architects of the Eighteenth Century

MIT Press]

Joseph Rykwert is one of the major architectural historians of this century. The Dancing Column is his most controversial and challenging work to date. A decade in preparation, it is a deeply erudite, clearly written, and wide-ranging deconstruction of the system of column and beam known as the "orders of architecture". Rykwert traces the analogy between columns and/or buildings and the human body. Contains many color illustrations.

Dancing Column: On Order in Architecture

On Adam's House in Paradise "takes off backward through history hunting for Adam's house, the original image. En route, with wry wit and charm, Rykwert singes every generation of architectural theoreticians back to Vitruvius, but he manages to illuminate their efforts and their immolations."―Charles Moore, Progressive Architecture
This new edition of On Adam's House in Paradise (first published by the Museum of Modern Art) incorporates all the original illustrations and several new ones, as well as additional text by the author.

On Adam's House in Paradise: The Idea of the Primitive Hut in Architectural History

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

The MIT Press

Mit Pr

The idea of a town must be strong enough to survive the inevitable chaotic overlay of urban experience, Joseph Rykwert asserts in this fundamental book on urban form. In his preface to this new edition he reviews the developments over the past thirty ears, in archeology, in historical and philological work, and in urban planning and architectural trends that make The Idea of a Town timely once again; a reminder that recognizable patterns and texture, public open space, and conspicuous institutions can enrich the late twentieth-century city which has become preoccupied with the isolated architectural object, with physical and market forces. Rykwert focuses on the Roman town as a work of art, a symbolic pattern deliberately created and enjoyed by its inhabitants - its shape and the structure of the spaces constructed on the basis of beliefs and rituals. His starting point is the ancient texts: mythical, historical, and ritual in which city-foundations are told and played out, and in particular the "Etruscan rite," a group of ceremonies which regulated the creation of practically all Roman towns. The principal institutions of the town, its walls and gates, its central shrines, and its public spaces, were all part of a pattern to which the myths which accompanied them provide clues. As in the other "closed" societies Rykwert investigates and compares throughout the book, these rituals and myths served to create a secure home for Roman citizens, placing them firmly in a knowable universe. Joseph Rykwert is Paul Philippe Cret Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Idea of a Town: The Anthropology of Urban Form in Rome, Italy, and The Ancient World

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

A deeply erudite, clearly written, and wide-ranging deconstruction of the system of column and beam known as the "orders of architecture," tracing the powerful and persistent analogy between columns and/or buildings and the human body.
Joseph Rykwert is one of the major architectural historians of this century, whose full humanistic understanding of architecture and its historical significance is unrivaled. The Dancing Column is certain to be his most controversial and challenging work to date. A decade in preparation, it is a deeply erudite, clearly written, and wide-ranging deconstruction of the system of column and beam known as the "orders of architecture," tracing the powerful and persistent analogy between columns and/or buildings and the human body.
The body-column metaphor is as old as architectural thought, informing the works of Vitruvius, Alberti, and many later writers; but The Dancing Column is the first comprehensive treatment to do this huge subject full justice. It provides a new critical examination of the way the classical orders, which have dominated Western architecture for nearly three millennia, were first formulated. Rykwert opens with a review of their consequence for the leading architects of the twentieth century, and then traces ideas related to them in accounts of sacred antiquity and in scientific doctrines of humor and character.
The body-column metaphor is traced in archaeological material from Egypt, Asia Minor, and the Levant, as well as from Greece, drawing on recent accounts by historians of Greek religion and society as well as the latest discoveries of archaeologists. Perhaps most important, Rykwert reexamines its significance for the formation of any theoretical view of architecture.
Chapters cover an astonishing breadth of material, including the notions of a set number and a proportional as well as an ornamental rule of the orders; the theological-philosophical interpretation Christiana of antiquity on which the domination of the orders relied; the astrological and geometrical canon of the human figure; gender and column; the body as a constantly refashioned cultural product; the Greek temple building and the nature of cult; and the endurance of ornamental forms and the function of symbols.

The Dancing Column: On Order in Architecture

Eminent architectural historian, Jospeh Rykwert looks at the complex story of the city since the industrial revolution. He draws on sociology, social, economic and political history and their complex interactions with the history of architecture. Rykwert's knowledge of world cities is remarkable, and the book will draw on Shanghai as much as Los Angeles, Rio as well as London, Melbourne as well as Paris, both in looking at past developments and for models for the future. His book is also a timely celebration of metropolitan values that have recently been denigrated: tolerance, liberalism, cultural vitality, pluralism. It is an important book that no-one with an interest in urban living can ignore.

The Seduction of Place : The City in the Twenty-First Century and Beyond

Weidenfelt & Nicolson

One of the most highly respected architectural historians of our time takes on the question of whether or not we have the cities we need and what we can do to create them. To understand why people love or hate their cities and why cities succeed or fail their inhabitants, Joseph Rykwert examines a broad spectrum of urban centers. Among them are Mexico City, the world's largest metropolis, sprawled around its old center; Berlin, newly reunited and furiously rebuilding; New Delhi and Islamabad, new capitals that exist alongside older towns; grandly planned cities like Chandigarh, Canberra, and Brasília; and more modest new towns like Columbia, Maryland, and Celebration, Florida, built in an attempt to correct the problems endemic to big cities. Rykwert looks at image, style, and ornament; at public space and buildings; at infrastructure and street layout; at the visual qualities of contrast, strife, and energy that contribute to a city's appeal. Discussing both successes and failures, he suggests ways in which we can retain--or return to--the sense of place and individuation that determines the nourishing character and soul of the urban landscape.

The Seduction of Place: The City in the Twenty-first Century

World

Pantheon

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by RYKWERT, Joseph. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by RYKWERT, Joseph

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by RYKWERT, Joseph. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Seduction of Place The History and Future of the City (Paperback)

The Judicious Eye: Architecture Against the Other Arts

First Moderns: The Architects of the Eighteenth Century

Dancing Column: On Order in Architecture

On Adam's House in Paradise: The Idea of the Primitive Hut in Architectural History

First Moderns: The Architects of the Eighteenth Century

The Idea of a Town: The Anthropology of Urban Form in Rome, Italy, and The Ancient World

The Dancing Column: On Order in Architecture

The Seduction of Place : The City in the Twenty-First Century and Beyond

The Seduction of Place: The City in the Twenty-first Century