49 CITIES | Amale Andraos, Dan Wood, Stan Allen, Chip Lord, Kate Orff | Architectural Explorations in Books Series Event

In celebration of the release of the cloth-bound third edition of 49 CITIES designed by the award winning designers Project Projects, special guests join acclaimed architects Amale Andraos and Dan wood for a provocative and informative discussion about the evolution and future of architecture in relation to city planning and urban developement.

Throughout history architects and planners have dreamed of “better” and different cities more controllable, more defensible, more efficient, more monumental, more organic, taller, denser, sparser or greener. With every plan, radical visions were proposed, ones that embodied not only the desires but also, and more often, the fears and anxieties of their time. Today, with the failure of the suburban experiment and the looming end-of-the world predictions—from global warming and waste to post-peak oil energy crises and uncontrolled world urbanization—architects and urbanists find themselves once more at a crossroad, fertile for visionary thinking.

49 CITIES crunches the numbers of several centuries of visionary urbanism, from the ideal Roman city to SUPERSTUDIO’s Infinite Monument, in a call to re-engage cities as sites of experimental thinking.  In addition to enhanced, high-quality reproductions and illustrations, this cloth-bound third edition includes includes an interview between Amale Andraos, Dan Wood, Joseph Grima, and Archigram’s Michael Webb, an essay on The Death and Life of Urban Planning by Sam Jacob (founder of FAT Architecture) and new interviews with culture-defining architects Chip Lord (Ant Farm) and Yona Friedman.

Advance copies of 49 CITIES (Inventory Press 2015) are available of purchase and signing at the end of event.

WORKac, founded in 2003, is interested in positing architecture at the intersection of the urban, the rural and the natural. We embrace reinvention and collaborate with other fields to rethink architecture ‘in the world.’ In the face of overwhelming challenges and increasingly normative scenarios, we remain stubborn in our commitment to imagine alternate scenarios for the future of cities. We appropriate the more productive aspects of the urban discourse – from density and compression, to appropriateness of scale, the expression of intelligent and shared infrastructures, and a more careful integration between architecture, landscape and ecological systems – to bear upon architecture as we find shared concerns across our global practice. We hold unshakable lightness and polemical optimism as a means to move beyond the projected and towards the possible, an ambition with which we approach every project.

In its seventh year Architectural Explorations in Books, initiated and organized by Arezoo Moseni, is a series of engaging programs delving into the critical role that architecture publications play in the understanding of contemporary urban developments and structures. The events feature book presentations and discussions by acclaimed architects, critics, curators, designers, photographers and writers.

Events at The New York Public Library may be photographed or recorded. By attending these events, you consent to the use of your image and voice by the Library for all purposes.

• Books & Literature
• Design & Architecture
• Free

In celebration of the release of the cloth-bound third edition of 49 CITIES designed by the award winning designers Project Projects, special guests join acclaimed architects Amale Andraos and Dan wood for a provocative and informative discussion about the evolution and future of architecture in relation to city planning and urban developement.

Throughout history architects and planners have dreamed of “better” and different cities more controllable, more defensible, more efficient, more monumental, more organic, taller, denser, sparser or greener. With every plan, radical visions were proposed, ones that embodied not only the desires but also, and more often, the fears and anxieties of their time. Today, with the failure of the suburban experiment and the looming end-of-the world predictions—from global warming and waste to post-peak oil energy crises and uncontrolled world urbanization—architects and urbanists find themselves once more at a crossroad, fertile for visionary thinking.

49 CITIES crunches the numbers of several centuries of visionary urbanism, from the ideal Roman city to SUPERSTUDIO’s Infinite Monument, in a call to re-engage cities as sites of experimental thinking.  In addition to enhanced, high-quality reproductions and illustrations, this cloth-bound third edition includes includes an interview between Amale Andraos, Dan Wood, Joseph Grima, and Archigram’s Michael Webb, an essay on The Death and Life of Urban Planning by Sam Jacob (founder of FAT Architecture) and new interviews with culture-defining architects Chip Lord (Ant Farm) and Yona Friedman.

Advance copies of 49 CITIES (Inventory Press 2015) are available of purchase and signing at the end of event.

WORKac, founded in 2003, is interested in positing architecture at the intersection of the urban, the rural and the natural. We embrace reinvention and collaborate with other fields to rethink architecture ‘in the world.’ In the face of overwhelming challenges and increasingly normative scenarios, we remain stubborn in our commitment to imagine alternate scenarios for the future of cities. We appropriate the more productive aspects of the urban discourse – from density and compression, to appropriateness of scale, the expression of intelligent and shared infrastructures, and a more careful integration between architecture, landscape and ecological systems – to bear upon architecture as we find shared concerns across our global practice. We hold unshakable lightness and polemical optimism as a means to move beyond the projected and towards the possible, an ambition with which we approach every project.

In its seventh year Architectural Explorations in Books, initiated and organized by Arezoo Moseni, is a series of engaging programs delving into the critical role that architecture publications play in the understanding of contemporary urban developments and structures. The events feature book presentations and discussions by acclaimed architects, critics, curators, designers, photographers and writers.

Events at The New York Public Library may be photographed or recorded. By attending these events, you consent to the use of your image and voice by the Library for all purposes.