We inhabit a vulnerable planet. The devastation caused by natural disasters such as the southern Asian tsunami, Hurricanes Katrina and Ike, and the earthquakes in China's Sichuan province, Haiti, and Chile—as well as the ongoing depletion and degradation of the world's natural resources caused by a burgeoning human population—have made it clear that "business as usual" is no longer sustainable. We need to find ways to improve how we live on this planet while minimizing our impact on it. Design for a Vulnerable Planet sounds a call for designers and planners to go beyond traditional concepts of sustainability toward innovative new design that fosters regeneration and resilience.
Drawing on his own and others' experiences across three continents, Frederick Steiner advocates design practice grounded in ecology and democracy and informed by critical regionalism and reflection. He begins by establishing the foundation for a more ecological approach to planning and design, adopting a broad view of ecology as encompassing human and natural, urban and wild environments. Steiner explores precedents for human ecological design provided by architect Paul Cret, landscape architect Ian McHarg, and developer George Mitchell while discussing their planning for the University of Texas campus, the Lake Austin watershed, and The Woodlands. Steiner then focuses on emerging Texas urbanism and extends his discussion to broader considerations beyond the Lone Star State, including regionalism, urbanism, and landscape in China and Italy. He also examines the lessons to be learned from human and natural disasters such as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the BP oil spill. Finally, Steiner offers a blueprint for designing with nature to help heal the planet's vulnerabilities.
With new research on building programs in political, religious, and domestic settings in the United States and Europe, this collection of essays offers a fresh look at postwar modernism and the role that architecture played in constructing modern identities.
In the decades following World War II, modern architecture spread around the globe alongside increased modernization, urbanization, and postwar reconstruction—and it eventually won widespread acceptance. But as the limitations of conventional conceptions of modernism became apparent, modern architecture has come under increasing criticism. In this collection of essays, experienced and emerging scholars take a fresh look at postwar modern architecture by asking what it meant to be “modern,” what role modern architecture played in constructing modern identities, and who sanctioned (or was sanctioned by) modernism in architecture.
This volume presents focused case studies of modern architecture in three realms—political, religious, and domestic—that address our very essence as human beings. Several essays explore developments in Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia and document a modernist design culture that crossed political barriers, such as the Iron Curtain, more readily than previously imagined. Other essays investigate various efforts to reconcile the concerns of modernist architects with the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church and other Christian institutions. And a final group of essays looks at postwar homebuilding in the United States and demonstrates how malleable and contested the image of the American home was in the mid-twentieth century. These inquiries show the limits of canonical views of modern architecture and reveal instead how civic institutions, ecclesiastical traditions, individual consumers, and others sought to sanction the forms and ideas of modern architecture in the service of their respective claims or desires to be modern.
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