Customer Reviews

Housing and Urbanization: Building Solutions for People and Cities

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book offers a fine compilation of Charles Correa's housing projects (who I AM SURE did not apprentice with Louis Kahn). Correa has achieved his status as an international architect of relevance in two ways: one, through his rich vocabulary of images and ideas as employed in the various cultural centres like the Jawahar Kala Kendra; two, by his concern for shelter and his attempt to reconcile communitarian needs within the growing shortage of space. The book is about the latter. In a Corbusian way, the houses are micro-urban laboratories to be replicated and used in larger schemes. Sometimes they reflect his ability to inject a poetic sensibility even in the most banal of projects. Many of the projects and drawings of his houses, housing schemes, and urban proposals have been published elsewhere, but some delightful new houses, seem to throw his postmodern work volte-face and return to an invigorating rigorous modernism. It is time to to focus on the unfulfilled socialist agenda of the Modern Movement which seems to have been always Correa's goal in his role as an architect not only of elite institutions but the most important public institution -- housing. More architects should take note of Correa's experiments, and this book provides a wide range of both evocative and sensible designs.

Very good book for all those interested in housing for low income people, and in finding out solutions for city's problems.