Book: City Building

City Building

Nine Planning Principles for the Twenty-First Century
John Lund Kriken, Philip Enquist, Richard Rapaport

ISBN 9781568988818
Publication date 5/1/2010
7.5 x 10 inches (19.1 x 25.4 cm), Paperback
304 pages, 200 color illustrations, 100 b/w illustrations

In the twenty-first century the design of cities is more important than it has ever been. Far from being the cause of contemporary problems, cities can offer solutions to many of today's most serious concerns. Good city building counters the sprawl of suburbia with concentrated land use, replaces globalized design with regionally appropriate building types, contains infrastructure to a small footprint, and otherwise allows for livable, desirable communities. -- Princeton Architectural Press

Book: The Genealogy of Cities

The Genealogy of Cities, ISBN-13: 978-0873389396, March 2009 by Charles P. Graves Jr.

The Genealogy of Cities is a compilation of ancient and modern city plans, from 350 BCE to the present, depicting both built and proposed plans. Written in clear and accessible prose, it is illustrated with more than 500 plans drawn at the same scale, a unique feature of this work. It provides a previously unavailable tool for academics and professionals who must grapple with the issue of scale in researching and teaching urban design or when creating new urban spaces.

Other Things about Model

source: urbantick.com

Werner, M., 2011. Model Making, New York, N.Y: Princeton Architectural Press.

Megan Weber. She is the founder of zDp Models, a San Francisco -based model making firm working for a range of clients in the bay area and beyond. This includes Apple, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, SOM, Gensler and EDAW.

The book is designed as a basic reader guide to model making and model material introduction. -- UrbanTick

Source: vam.ac.uk

Architects' models at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK

The collections hold around  300 architects' models, including some additional material relating to the V&A's ongoing FuturePlan  development of the museum buildings by a wide range of architects. These are the most recently acquired architects' models - the oldest is a design model belonging to RIBA, for Nicholas Hawksmoor's grand house, Easton Neston, Northamptonshire, made in the 1690s. -- official web site

Source: cca.qc.ca

Modernism in Miniature:Points of View Exhibition At the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) 22 September 2011 to 8 January 2012, Octagonal Gallery

Modernism in Miniature: Points of View explores the encounter between photography and model-making between 1920-1960. It focuses on model photography as a distinctive genre and suggests that the so-called ‘model boom’ was inextricably bound up with the explosion of modern mass media. -- CCA

Source: cca.qc.ca

Naoya Hatakeyama: Scales Exhibition At the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) 27 September 2007 to 3 February 2008, Octagonal Gallery

The work of Japanese artist Naoya Hatakeyama is concerned largely with the relationship between nature and cities. Comissioned by the CCA, the three series of photographs comprising Scales capture existing architectural models of New York City and Tokyo in a way that challenges notions of scale and the perception of reality.  -- CCA

Source: archdaily.com

Richard Meier’s Model Museum in Long Island City Reopens

The space occupies 3600-square feet and features works from the 1960’s to the present.

Visitors were first invited into the space informally in May 2007.  

Tours of the gallery are by appointment only and last approximately 45 minutes. Appointments can be made through Richard Meier & Partners Architects: modelmuseum@richardmeier.com. The model museum is closed to the public during the winter months due to the climate’s impact on the models. -- ArchDaily

Read more from architect's web site
Richard Meier Model Museum Opens at Mana Contemporary -- ArchDaily
VIDEO: The Models of Richard Meier -- ArchDaily 

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/laserbread/5868078138/in/photostream

Broccoli House by Brock Davis

I couldn't build a tree house for my son so I built him a broccoli house instead. -- Brock Davis

Source: likep.com

Chinese Artist Creates Edible Model of Shanghai

Song Dong, one of China’s leading contemporary artist has almost completed a miniature replica of Shanghai City, made out of various sweets. Song apparently has a thing for recreating major cities out of food, as this is the seventh project in his “Eating the City” series, which includes sweet replicas of Barcelona or London. -- LikePage

Iconic Museums, Rendered In Gingerbread

Levin and Hargreaves conceived of the gingerbread creations for this year’s Art Basel. With the help of Dylan’s Candy Bar, the pair fashioned a line of not-so-cookie-cutter facsimiles of iconic museums. -- Metropolis

Source: Kritische Analysen

Toothpick City by Stan Munro

Source: jeanniejeannie.com

A Castle On the Ocean-Glowing Paper Castle by Wataru Itou

Wataru Itou (伊藤航) is a Japanese student in a Tokyo art university with an amazing piece of work: this paper castle, titled “Umi no Ue no Oshiro” (A Castle On the Ocean) took four years to complete, and the level of intricacy in the structure makes it a true masterpiece. There are so many layers and structures in the piece that when it is lit up from below, different shades of color glow through the paper in a beautiful display of architecture and craftsmanship. -- JeannieJeannie

Source: Fantastic Norway

Slide City Exhibition

In the 70′s Oslo’s own “Man in Black”, Professor of Architecture Per Kartvedt , started his long lasting lecture series on cities, communities, myths and dreams.

Slide City is an installation consisting of small high-rises, lit from the inside, with 2000 of Per’s legendary slides as windows.  -- ArchDaily

The very model of a (LEGO) architect; Using a childhood toy, Adam Reed Tucker has built a career as the creative force behind Lego's Architecture Series -- Cityscape

Source: Architects Teehouse + Tsukihashi Laboratory at Kobe University archdaily.com

‘Lost Homes Project – Restoring by Models’ by Architects Teehouse + Tsukihashi Laboratory at Kobe University

A collaborative effort by Architects Teehouse and the Tsukihashi Laboratory at Kobe University, ‘Lost Homes Project – Restoring by Models’ aims at lamenting lost towns and considering the disaster and the damaged areas brought about by the Great East Japan Earthquake. Damaged areas were looked at dreadful circumstances, and the original sites were flowed away by Tsunamis, especially lots of areas on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Tohoku. Since 2011, their project has consisted of restoring damaged towns and villages, especially the coastal areas devastated by the following terrible tsunamis, by 1:500 scale models. -- ArchDaily

Source: WTSP ckickorlando.com

LEGO project depicts downtown Tampa's buildings

The Greater Florida Lego Users Group project features City Hall and many other buildings. The LEGOs also depict the boats moored behind the Tampa Convention Center, buildings with rooftop gardens, satellite dishes, helipads and wind socks. -- clickorlando

49 Cities: Mapping and Measuring the Utopian Metropolis

New York practice WORKac takes 49 urban designs back to the drawing board

In this respect, 49 Cities: Mapping and Measuring the Utopian Metropolis, a project by New York-based architect WORKac, does an admirable job. It began as an exhibition (and accompanying book) at Manhattan’s Storefront for Art and Architecture gallery, and its premise is to bring together a diverse set of research and practice data in one resource, bridging the gap between speculative urban design and large-scale planning endeavours. -- Architectural Review, August 2009

WORKac: 49 Cities, Second Edition -- ArchDaily

Grid/Street/Place

Grid/Street/Place: Essential Elements of Sustainable Urban Districts. by Nathan Cherry (with Kurt Nagle) 

ISBN-13: 978-1932364729 | Publication Date: September 30, 2009

G/S/P is also a kind of manual; author Cherry describes it as a "playbook" in his introduction. The instructions come largely in visual form: primarily by way of maps of places the authors consider worthy of study. The examples fall into five principal categories: Classic Districts (which give a historic perspective); Mixed Use Districts; Squares, Greens and Parks; Shopping Streets; and Places. The maps in any section are at the same scale, to facilitate comparisons.  -- Frank Gruber, Huffington Post

To Scale: One Hundred Urban Plans

To Scale: One Hundred Urban Plans by Eric Jenkins ISBN-13: 978-0415954006 | Publication Date: January 25, 2008

How big is Moscow’s Red Square in comparison to Tiananmen Square? Why are there less public squares in Japan than in Italy?
What lessons might be found in the plan of Savannah, Georgia’s historic district?
What is the connection between New Haven, Connecticut and Cleveland, Ohio?

To Scale is a collection of plans of urban spaces drawn at the same scale to help answer these and other questions by providing a single and accurate resource of urban plans for architects, urban designers and teachers and students in these fields. -- Eric Jenkins's Blog.

An Architect Picks Top 40 Public Squares

Great Public Squares: An Architect's Selection By Robert F. Gatje 

W.W. Norton & Co., New York, N.Y.; 2010 

224 pp; hardcover; profusely illustrated with full-color images and 35 ground plans; 

ISBN 978-0-393-73173-62 

What makes one open space a great public square, while another space of equal size is an urban wasteland? This new book by architect Robert F. Gatje addresses that question through detailed examination of 40 of the world's great "outdoor rooms."

The full-page CAD plans are drawn in exquisite detail and to uniform scale, so it's easy to compare layouts of the various plazas (see illustration). In addition to the plans, the author provides a table of basic physical data about each square that will interest designers, including: Plan dimensions; ratio of width to length; area; typical height of walls to skyline; ratio of width to skyline height; and angle of view from the short side to the skyline. -- reviewed by Clem Labine, traditional-building.com