Associate Professor Alexander Eisenschmidt recently published The Good Metropolis (Birkhäuser, 2019), a book that explores the productive tension between the city and architectural form.
From the publisher’s description:
Architecture has always been engaged in a dialogue with its context, i.e. the city—a relationship often dominated by tension. The architectural avant-garde in particular is commonly understood in its opposition to the existing metropolitan terrain: it positioned the form of the individual building against an—assumed—urban formlessness.
The publication explores this dichotomy and analyzes the works of important urbanists, ranging from August Endell, Karl Scheffler, Ludwig Hilberseimer and Reyner Banham to Rem Koolhaas and Bernard Tschumi. Thus The Good Metropolis develops a theoretical and historical framework for understanding the complex relationship between architecture and the city.
For more information, visit the Birkhäuser website.