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 Timeless CitiesAn Architect's Reflections On Renaissance Italyby David Mayernik Sep 3, 2003
DescriptionFor Italian city builders over the course of a thousand years, the urban realm was the great theater where their best aspirations were played out, the place where society said the most substantial things about who they were and what they longed for. In Timeless Cities, architect David Mayernik reveals how Venice, Rome, Florence, Siena, and Pienza emerged from the cultural ideas of humanism that characterized Italian society from late antiquity to the eighteenth century. Cities were literally designed to be models of the mind and images of heaven. Mayernik takes the reader on an architect's tour of these five cities and describes the cultural beliefs and ideas behind the buildings. Not only a journey into the past, Timeless Cities also explains why these city-building ideas are relevant today. Whether travelling on holiday or appreciating the art and architecture of Italy from home, Mayernik helps bring the wonder and beauty of the Italian mind and its great cities a little closer. Reviews"You'll never look at a building again without wondering what its meaning is." "Every page of this book offers a wealth of insights about the past and hope about the future of cities." "Erudite travelers will enjoy [Mayernik's] thoughtful meditations." "Timeless Cities is a true original, a thoughtful, passionate, learned, and unexpected examination of cities past, present, and ideal, written with conviction and humor." "David Mayernik writes convincingly about the choices great Italian cities made in projecting their civic mythologies. He not only illuminates how that was done in the past, he also argues for how we can choose to build our public realm today." "Timeless Cities is a fascinating interpretation of ideas and ideals which guided city building from ancient Rome through the Renaissance and beyond. David Mayernik makes a compelling case for the relevance of these ideas as we struggle to rediscover ways to make human habitats humane." "This gracefully written and well-informed book makes accessible to us five Italian cities both large and small that have long given people pleasure. It opens their meaning and their beauty to us. But more importantly, it tells us how we can love cities and thereby once again build cities we can love. And it reminds us why it is so very important to do so." Selling TerritoryWorld |
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