CURATED LIBRARIES

An Urban Studies Bookshelf

Clement Greenberg once defined Modernism as a phenomenon that emerged “in the middle of the last century--and rather locally, in France, with Baudelaire in literature and Manet in painting.” By this account, Modernism begins with the earliest explorations and depictions of how individual citydwellers inhabit the streets, and of phenomena specific to cities, such as café society, bohemianism, prostitution and social spectacle. These were the abiding themes of both Baudelaire and Manet, as chroniclers of post-Haussmann Paris; and these themes, reinvented successively by Walter Benjamin, the Surrealists, the Situationists, the events of May 68 and theorists from Michel de Certeau to Rebecca Solnit, have transformed our experience of cities and architecture, and have heightened our conceptualization of private and public space. More recently, architecture and urban studies have been further animated by ecological crisis and the need for renewable resources. The below titles reflected current efforts to overhaul architectural paradigms and reinvent everyday civic experience.

Architect and activist Fritz Haeg advocates ripping up resource-sucking front lawns in favor of edible, organic gardens. Featured image is "Edible Estate Regional Prototype Garden #6: Baltimore, Maryland," 2008, commissioned by Contemporary Museum Baltimore and reproduced from Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn.

"Everybody wants the same thing, rich or poor...not only a warm, dry room, but a shelter for the soul."

Samuel Mockbee, architect