Thom Mayne
Stray Dog Cafe, 2011, English
Nonfiction, Architecture; Nonfiction, Urban Design
9 x 7 x 2 inches, flexibound, 448 pages
ISBN: 9780983076308
Suggested Retail Price: $39.95

From Morphosis. For the past 40 years Thom Mayne and his firm, Morphosis, have been engaged with projects that exist in the hybrid space between architecture and urban planning. Against this backdrop, Combinatory Urbanism: The Complex Behavior of Collective Form surveys 12 urban projects that range in scale from a 16-acre proposal for rebuilding the World Trade Center site after the 2001 terrorist attacks to a 52 thousand-acre redevelopment proposal for post-Katrina New Orleans. This book and the proposals found within, posit an alternative to traditional end-state planning solutions, while attempting to not only illuminate but also explicate Mayne’s own work and critical processes. Combinatory Urbanism represents a departure from previous Morphosis publications. Both a manifesto on urbanism and a comprehensive presentation of Morphosis urban design projects, many of which have never before been published; this book fills a void in the world of architectural and urban design publications. Foreword by Stan Allen.

Available from Stray Dog Cafe.

On 2 book lists
John Hill

This collection of a dozen urban design projects by Morphosis is elegantly designed and illustrated, a visual feast. But it is also theoretically intriguing, in the way Mayne uses the computer for exploring the evolution of urban form.

comments powered by Disqus