Mutations

"The city is in the process of mutation as globalization and urbanization transform both the environment and traditional architectural forms. "Mutations" presents an atlas of new urban spaces. Featuring work and texts by: Rem Koolhaas and the Harvard Project on the City, Sanford Kwinter and Daniela Fabricius, Stefano Boeri, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Nadia Tazi, Jean Attali, Moulier Boutang, Saskia Sassen, Bart Lootsma, and many others."--BOOK JACKET.

Library Journal

This time working with a host of collaborators, architect Koolhaas, whose S, M, L, XL was that rare thing, a crossover architecture best seller, has returned with another bricklike tome. Mutations was developed in connection with Harvard Design School's Project on the City, an ongoing graduate-level analysis of "issues related to the urban condition." Year-long investigations have tackled such subjects as the impact of shopping on the city; Lagos, a massive, sprawling West African city that is highly functional despite a lack of infrastructure; and systematizing the structures and relationships in the prototypical Roman city. Results from these projects are gathered here along with a couple photo essays and short profiles of specific places from Pristina to Benelux. Interspersed throughout are a multitude of statistics about the current state and future of the city, presented in a captivating, highly graphical format. The whole does not cohere, and the reader will quickly turn to whatever is of greatest personal interest. But at the end of the day, the various views do coalesce into a portrait of powerful forces of our making but beyond our control: the modern city. As a result, this book is highly recommended for general cultural studies collections as well as all architecture/urban planning collections. Eric Bryant, "Library Journal" Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.