1st Edition
Big House Little City Architectural Design Through an Urban Lens
Part 1: Alberti’s House-City 1. A Contested Legacy 2. The City as a Big House 3. The House as a Little City 4. Alberti’s ‘Method’: compartition and concinnitas Part 2: Building Blocks: from house to city 5. House: from villa to ville 6. Ground: natural, historical and social 7. Individual Spaces: from rooms to buildings 8. Connecting Spaces: from corridors to streets 9. Collective Spaces: from living room to piazza Part 3: Designing Buildings as Little Cities 10. Little Cities for Dwelling 11. Little Cities for Work and Interaction 12. Little Cities for Mind and Body Conclusions: House-City as Ecosystem Reflections Niels Torp Bob Allies Richard Hassell
Biography
Benedict Zucchi, Principal and Head of Architecture at Building Design Partnership, studied architecture at the Universities of Cambridge and Harvard. His previous publications include the first English language monograph on Italian architect Giancarlo De Carlo. A close reading of place and use and an abiding interest in user participation have been common threads in Benedict’s projects, which range from mixed-use masterplans, schools and universities to designs for major hospitals.
"This important book, an erudite sweep across western architecture and thinking through the lens of Alberti’s ‘house-city’ speaks to the emergent concern for pro-social place-making and in doing so provides a foundation for work in social value today. Bravo for illustrating so fulsomely how history is relevant for practitioners and for celebrating practice as a form of research."
Flora Samuel, Professor of Architecture, University of Cambridge
"Inspired by the chiastic analogy that Alberti draws between the house and the city, Zucchi traces the historical justification for Alberti’s proposition and explores its implications for contemporary practice. In so doing, he makes a powerful case for an architecture - and an urbanism - that is structured, above all, by social relationships; one that is concerned, in other words, as much with the way spaces interconnect as it is with the spaces themselves."
Bob Allies, Founding Partner, Allies and Morrison
"Big House Little City is that rare beast, a drawbridge between the scholarly world of history and theory and the gritty realities of contemporary practice. Zucchi’s ability to review ideas and designs from the last five centuries through a very current lens recasts the great thinkers of architecture and urbanism as modern-day mentors, very much in dialogue with the current generation, and ready to share both wisdom and mistakes."
Isabel Allen, Editor, Architecture Today
