Boundaries of the City: The Architecture of Western Urbanism (Heritage)

In this study Alan Waterhouse draws on anthropological, social and cultural history, literature, and philosophy to reach an understanding of the roots of Western architecture and city building. He explores the illusion that cities are constructed to impose rational order, an order articulated through urban boundaries. These boundaries, he finds, are shaped around our instinctive fears and insecurities about crime, insurrection, and the violent disruption of everyday life. At the same time, contrary instincts aspire to create a unified domain, to proclaim the interdependence of things through constructed work. Cities are shaped less by rational design than by a recurring dialectic of boundary formation. These impulses underlie the formal vocabulary of architecture and urbanism. Waterhouse follows them through the theories, ideologies, and styles that seem to govern city buildings; he finds their presence in the creation of territorial divisions, and also wherever the cityscape has been shaped by a poetic imagination. Tracing his narrative of urban boundaries from antiquity to the birth of modernism, Waterhouse discovers some stubborn legacies that bind contemporary urban design to the past. Part One explores the boundary dialectic in our regard for deities, for nature, and for one another, and then as a powerful influence on architectural invention and our ways of life. Part Two traces these themes through city building history, to show how architecture and human relatedness are subordinated by boundary formation in the cycles of urbanization. Electronic Format Disclaimer: Image 6.5 removed at the request of the rights holder. "In this study Alan Waterhouse draws on anthropology, social and cultural history, literature, and philosophy to reach an understanding of the roots of western architecture and city building. He explores the illusion that cities are constructed to impose rational order, an order articulated through urban boundaries. These boundaries, he finds, are shaped around our instinctive fears and insecurities about crime, insurrection, and the violent disruption of everyday life. At the same time, contrary instincts aspire to create a unified domain, to proclaim the interdependence of things through constructed work. Cities are shaped less by rational design than by a recurring dialectic of boundary formation." "These impulses underlie the formal vocabulary of architecture and urbanism. Waterhouse follows them through the theories, ideologies, and styles that seem to govern city building; he finds their presence in the creation of territorial divisions, and also wherever the cityscape has been shaped by a poetic imagination." "Tracing his narrative of urban boundaries from antiquity to the birth of modernism, Waterhouse discovers some stubborn legacies that bind contemporary urban design to the past. Part One explores the boundary dialectic in our regard for deities, for nature, and for one another, and then as a powerful influence on architectural invention and our ways of life. Part Two traces these themes through city building history, to show how architecture and human relatedness are subordinated by boundary formation in the cycles of urbanization."--Jacket Contents 7 ILLUSTRATIONS 11 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 17 INTRODUCTION 19 PART ONE: Elements of the Boundary Idea 27 1. Expressive Meanings, Ancient and Modern 27 2. The Narrative of Boundary Architecture 57 3. Self-Interest and Reciprocity 84 PART TWO: Urban Boundaries in Practice 119 4. Cities in a God-billed Landscape 119 5. Dividing the Urban Realm 148 6. Intensity, Insularity, and Communitas 173 7. The Subversion of Everyday Life 217 8. Urban Boundaries in Turmoil 270 9. The Dissolving Boundaries of Modernism 300 10. Retreat from a Magic Landscape 323 NOTES 337 ILLUSTRATION CREDITS 349 GENERAL INDEX 353 INDEX OF ILLUSTRATIONS 363