Customer Reviews

Camillo Sitte: The Birth of Modern City Planning: With a translation of the 1889 Austrian edition of his City Planning According to Artistic Principles (Dover Architecture)

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Much scholarship is reflected by this work which clearly results from considerable research by the two authors, George and Christiane Collins. The long introduction presents Camillo Sitte's biography and discusses the urban development context in Vienna and Austria when he wrote the `Art of Building Cities' as well as this book's impact on planning in the German-speaking world and abroad.

The authors explain that the 1902 French version of the book became the reference for the majority of later editions. They point out that this was much more than a translation but that the work was actually edited and completed by the translator. They describe this as a `heinous literary crime'.

However, the authors themselves explain that Sitte's original work was poorly written, more akin to notes than to a final manuscript, and that he himself thought the French version to reflect his ideas better than his original.

They then offer a translation that is more in conformity with the original German. Sadly, it displays a poor organization of ideas and rather muddled sentences such as: `One might add only _ and it has already been maintained _ that the artist who had been able to design such a marvellous project for Dresden should have been consulted much earlier; it must be admitted, however, that Semper was at that time living in obscurity in Zurich and his never-to-be-executed Dresden plan was as good as lost.' or 'If aesthetic aspects were to receive more attention, and if by means of frequent competitions artistic potentialities were relied upon more frequently, we could accomplish some good, at least as regards method_ although the great ideals of the ancients may still remain unattainable for some time to come.'.

Had it not been for the French edition of 1902, one can therefore question whether Sitte's ideas would have been understood and popularized as they have.

Are an author's ideas or loyalty and faithfulness to his original wording more important?

Camillo Sitte is very dear to architects that become urbanists because he is one that stressed the three-dimensional aspects of the city, its volumes (buildings) and free spaces (squares). This book covers his ideas thouroughly, with a profusion of images and is full of references. Buy it in hardcover for it is a book to be kept in your library for further readings.

The book was a gift for my son, a Landscape Architect. He was thrilled to get the book; was not familiar with it book looked through it with care & was very pleased to get it; plans to keep it at his office as a reference.