Product Description

The City Assembled is a history of the elements of cities: streets, public places, urban divisions (religious, political, and social), and the frontiers of city and countryside.

Kostof follows the evolution of city components to modern times. He discusses "urban process": the effect on cities of natural disasters like the Great Fire of London and the Lisbon earthquake, war, and comprehensive redevelopment, compared with traditional patterns of growth and change. The current recovery from modernist extremes has made us look again at what we treasure in traditional urban life, and how we can recharge the old forms with contemporary common sense. Over 300 drawings, prints, paintings, and photographs help to tell the story, illustrating both patterns and uses, from the colonnaded streets of ancient Palmyra to gentrified London squares.

A fitting testament to the wide-ranging intellect of Professor Kostof, The City Assembled is at once an exercise in architectural and social history, a case study for the present, and a pointer for the future. 346 illustrations, 40 in color.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #192299 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Library Journal
This final book by noted architectural historian Kostof, who died in 1991, is a companion to The City Shaped ( LJ 10/1/91; LJ's Best Books of 1991, LJ 1/92, p. 56). Here he considers the parts that make up the city through time--walls, urban divisions, public places, the street, and the urban process. The book is wide-ranging in time and space and presents the fruits of a lifetime of looking, but it is fragmented, appearing to be almost an assembly of notes for a more considered work or for The City Shaped. Still, the author is an astute observer, and his remarks are frequently illuminating for specialists and novices alike. This survey of the microparts of cities will be of interest primarily to professionals and historians but also to urban inhabitants, the same audience addressed by William Whyte ( City: Rediscovering Its Center , LJ 2/1/89).
- Jack Perry Brown, Art Inst. of Chicago Lib.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
Kostof...writes with tireless intelligence and commanding powers that never cease to surprise...tough, brilliant, and rewarding. -- The Observer

About the Author
Spiro Kostof (1936-1991) was Professor of Architectural History at the University of California at Berkley, and also taught at Yale, Columbia, MIT, and Rice universities.

Customer Reviews

Wow!
When I ordered this book I'd already knew that it's good, but it surprised me! It is different of the other books about urbanism history. Kostof have always a special point of view in his works. Here he shows the history of the city from a different angle, someway from the inside to outside. It don't analise the city from its form (from the outside), but from the elements that fills it. The street, the public space and other city elements tells about the city more than you think, because it is a mirror of the city and citizen culture. This book give to you a new point of view of the city. A must have to any architect and entusiast.