Projecting Urbanity: Architecture for and Against the City

Existing histories of modern architecture
typically give their highest praise to private houses and their most severe
condemnation to architect-authored urban plans, often neglecting the built
works that are no smaller than a single building and possibly as large as an
urban block, the middle or institutional scale, where culturally significant
urban transformation actually takes place.

Urban architecture is a timely topic as today
cities worldwide are suffering accelerated urbanisation, which is often
dehumanising and destructive, especially to the unbuilt environment, airs,
waters and soils. The middle or institutional scale is shown to activate and
actualise latent potentials for cultural experience and environmental
intelligence, allowing the city to surprise itself and delight in its
discoveries.

In Projecting
Urbanity, David Leatherbarrow, via author-architect texts by his former
doctorate students, lays out the basis for a revision of modern architecture's
contribution to cities and their culture. Presenting a series of texts
featuring buildings or their parts of various scales - from the construction
detail, to the room or garden, to ensembles within a neighborhood - the
contributors introduce concepts for contemporary and future urban
architecture, together with richly indicative examples from the past several
decades.

While architecture cannot "solve" today's
urban problems, it certainly has a role to play in their productive
transformation, articulating opportunities for life and culture that are more
humane, less wasteful, and more beautiful.