City Catalyst: Architecture in the Age of Extreme Urbanisation(Architectural Design)

This publication allows architects to become familiar with the type of constantly changing, urban conditions that architecture has commonly avoided. A resource for a new generation of designers, young professionals, students, and academics who want to engage with the city on its own grounds, to abet its potentials and seek opportunities in its existing condition, City Catalyst demonstrates how today's architecture is redefining its position within the city.

Table of Contents:
EditorIal 5 Helen Castle About the GUEST-EDITOR 6 Alexander Eisenschmidt SPOTLIGHT 8 Visual highlights of the issue Introduction 14 Stranger Than Fiction: A Mission Statement Alexander Eisenschmidt The City’s Architectural Project: From Formless City to Forms of Architecture 18 Alexander Eisenschmidt Patrons & Prototypes: Walmart’s Catalytic Urbanism 26 Jesse LeCavalier Localising the Global 36 Kyong Park Revolution of the Ordinary 42 Daniela Fabricius China’s Macro-Planning Policies: Architectural Catalyst or Constraint? 50 Edward Denison We Will Be Making Active Form 58 Keller Easterling Counterpoints With Crisis 64 Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss Metropol Parasol, Seville 70 Jürgen Mayer H The Perfect Storm: Urbanism and Architecture 74 Ron Witte The Unified Project 80 Albert Pope Void Metabolism 88 Yoshiharu Tsukamoto Urban Wash 94 Sean Lally African Water Cities 98 Kunlé Adeyemi Make No Big Plans 102 Michelle Provoost and Wouter Vanstiphout Shape and the City 108 RE Somol Too Big To Fail 114 Sarah Dunn and Martin Felsen Parc Des Expositions (PEX), Toulouse: A Condenser for Diversity 120 Clément Blanchet Dancing with Entropy 124 Adriaan Geuze and Matthew Skjonsberg Importing the City into Architecture: An Interview with Bernard Tschumi 130 Alexander Eisenschmidt Counterpoint 136 Hello Stranger: Phenomenology and Topography of the Megacity Caroline Bos Contributors 142

About the Author :
Alexander Eisenschmidt is an architect, writer, historian and theorist, who teaches design and history & theory at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and his Diploma in architecture from the University of Leipzig in Germany. Before moving to Chicago, Eisenschmidt taught at Pratt Institute in New York and Syracuse University. Most recently, Eisenschmidt chaired a conference panel on the Metropolis and hosted a symposium at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, entitled Informal Cities. He has written widely for journals and recently accepted the co-editorship for the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Modern and Contemporary Architecture, which will have a worldwide distribution.