Paradigm Islands: Manhattan and Venice Discourses on Architecture and the City

Concerning architecture and the city, built, imagined and narrated, this book focuses on Manhattan and Venice, but considers architecture as an intellectual and spatial process rather than a product.

A critical look at the making of Manhattan and Venice provides a background to addressing the dynamic redefinition and making of space today. The gradual processes of adjustment, the making of a constantly changing dense space, the emphasis on forming rather than on figure, the incorporation of new forms and languages through their adaptation and transformation, make both Manhattan and Venice, in different ways, the ideal places to contextualize and address the issue of an architecture of the dynamic.

Part 1: Paradigm Islands Part 2: Frames 1. Learning from Manhattan, Designing the Frivolous: Rem Koolhaas from ‘Delirious’ to ‘Junkspace’ 2. Building on Tension, Learning from Venice: Manfredo Tafuri’s History Between renovatio and ContinuityPart 3: Makings 3. Manhattan Grid: the City as a Script 4. Manhattan Surfacing: Central Park 5. From Grid to ‘Grid Effect’ 6. Venice Traces: Grids, Mats, Tentacles 7. Venice Impossible: Representations of the Dynamic Part 4: Readings 8. Manhattan: Performance, Artificial Chorality and Exhibitionism 9. Venice: Normative Chorality, Masks, Tenderness Part 5: Modern(s) 10. Le Corbusier and Manhattan 11. Le Corbusier and Venice Part 6: Contemporaries 12. The City as Event: Bernard Tschumi in Manhattan 13. Topology to Diagram: Peter Eisenman Between Venice and Manhattan 14. The City as Diagram. Gianugo Polesello’s Venice Part 7: Representations Part 8: Islands

Teresa Stoppani is Reader in Architecture at the University of Greenwich, UK, where she directs the postgraduate Architecture History and Theory courses, and visiting lecturer in History and Theory Studies at the Architectural Association, London, UK.