Shrinking Cities: Volume 2: Interventions

by Gordon Matta-Clark (Artist), Robert Smithson (Artist), Rem Koolhaas (Contributor)

Shrinking cities have pushed urban design and classical city planning to their limits. The new challenges they pose require new approaches, joining the "hard" tools of construction with the "soft" tools of political, social, cultural and communications interventions. Shrinking Volume 2: Interventions provides an international overview of experimental concepts for taking action in shrinking cities, cataloguing tools from the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, urban construction, the media, performance and art. The approaches range from artistic intercessions and self-empowering projects to architectural and landscape interventions, and from strategies of media communication and city marketing to new legal regulations and utopian designs. A series of essays offers critical debate of both successful and failed projects of recent decades. Examples include the products of creative forces including William Alsop, Gordon Matta-Clark, Crimson, Jeremy Deller, OMA, Cedric Price, Andreas Siekmann, Robert Smithson, Stalker, Superflex and O. M. Ungers, in countries including the United States, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Austria, Russia and Japan.

736 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2006