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Public Space
in the Time of Shrinkage |
Volume 8,
No. 1
September 2003 |
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Concepts of Publicity and Privacy |
Robert
Kaltenbrunner |
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Publicity -
in between Location, Function and Appearance |
abstract |
Wolfgang Kaschuba |
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Representation in Public Space |
abstract |
Eduard Führ |
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How Is It That Cities Can Shrink? |
abstract |
Christine Weiske |
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Street and Square:
On the Political Condition of Publicities |
abstract |
Peter Marcuse |
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The Threats to Publicly Usable Space in a Time of
Contraction |
abstract |
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Publicity and Urban Space in the GDR |
Holger Barth |
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Myth Prenzlauer Berg: Publicity and Urban-renewal
in the GDR |
abstract |
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Shrinkage: The Spezific Situation in the Newly-formed Lands of the
Federal Republic of Germany |
Christine
Hannemann |
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From the Socialist City Towards the Shrinking City |
abstract |
Heinz Nagler
& Ulrike Sturm |
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Public Space in the GDR -
Change after the Fall of
Communism |
abstract |
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Strategies and Projects 1: Consequences for the Location |
Katrin Günther
& Marietta Tzschoppe |
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Model-City Cottbus
- City Centre -
The Importance of the Public Space in the Process of Redevelopment |
abstract |
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Strategies and Projects 2: Consequences for the Planning |
Oliver Kuklinski |
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Public Space -
Situation, Call for Action,
Strategies from the Practical Point of View |
abstract |
Gunther Laux |
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Open System - The City as Process |
abstract |
Frank Schwartze |
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Space without City -
Future Organisational Assignments in the Shrinking City |
abstract |
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Strategies and Projects 3: Consequences for the Space |
Andrea Haase |
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Interlinked Spaces |
abstract |
Beate Profé |
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New Strategies of the Open Space Development in Berlin |
abstract |
Tobias Hundt
& Lars Scharnholz |
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Space Meets Density -
Restructuring of Cultural Landscapes |
abstract |
Gereon Sievernich |
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Squares |
abstract |
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abstracts: |
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Concepts of Publicity and Privacy |
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___Robert
Kaltenbrunner
Bonn |
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In
critical circles it is nowadays opportune to complain about the loss of
"public space". However, the mere evidence does not prove this: same as
ever, sun, air and warmth attract the people to go outside. Respective
city areas are publicly consumed even with great relish. Since the city
marketing gradually turns towards "event-culture", the arrangement of
the public spaces furthermore gains increasing importance, too. And it
seems that in many places, one wants to counterbalance this structural
change, which our concept of publicity has undergone for some decades,
by means of an obsessive style. In case the "public space" is really
endangered, then this threat is not only due to privatisation tendencies
(and omnipresent vandalism), but also due to its aesthetic
functionalisation and over-instrumentation.
Nevertheless, idealistic-normative settlements of planners are not
equivalent to the way, a space is used and perceived: even if it is
subject to a public dedication, the perception may well be a different
one – for example in case of a devastated municipal park that is lacking
the required means for its maintenance. And on the other hand, a
rightful private space may generate intense urban feelings, as the
reception of the Potsdamer Platz shows. So, obviously a demand for
sensuous-aesthetic space-qualities does exist. Still, the causal
connection between publicity and style does not exist.
Ý |
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___Wolfgang
Kaschuba
Berlin |
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A shift
in the function of publicity, from the political ambit – as it had to be
looked at subsequently to Habermas – to the cultural ambit, has to be
assumed.
Today publicity appears rather as a landscape of locations that
serve the cultural representation, which thereby also develop a strong
symbolic effect and thus finally again gain political significance, too.
How cultural self-projection and social interaction take place as
specific forms of identity-politics within this publicity, is going to
be demonstrated by means of specific spaces and groups. This
particularly also deals with the illustration of the ethnologic
perspective that considers publicity rather in its symbolic structures
and effects and that regards it as being process-like and open – as "scapes"
and "flows".
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___Eduard
Führ
Cottbus |
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Over
the last years the concept of 'shrinkage" has developed to a central
category for urban design and planning. In this contribution its
history, connotations and denotations are critically analysed.
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___Christine
Weiske
Chemnitz |
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"The street" and "the square" are metaphors, in which the political and
the architecture discourse fuse. Both recourse to communicative scenic
events of the municipal publicities, which
are
full of prerequisites. The most important conditions are the political
ambitions of the city dwellers and the scenic spaces in which they
present themselves. Their gathering is understood as urbanity.
The scenic events of publicity are
creations that are intentionally arranged by very varied actors. The
analysis of these creations leads to the communications theory and
discourse analysis.
The discussion on shrinking cities and a regressive settlement system as
a whole, which is carried out by experts and city dwellers, refers to
the creative power of the public in
this process. The culture of the communication of the participants
influences the courses of a regressive development.
Ý |
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___Peter
Marcuse
New York |
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The
problems of maintaining public space for public uses is not one that is
confined to the particular case of a shrinking economy or a shrinking
population. In most countries in the industrially developed world, with
the United States being perhaps the most extreme example, public space
is shrinking both in extent and in use. It is shrinking along with other
features of the traditional democratic welfare state in a period in
which technological progress has been used to further the accumulation
of wealth and power at the expense of equality and civic participation
in government generally. The causes are both private market forces in
the economic sphere and conservative pressures pursuing a neo-liberal
agenda in the political sphere. The so-called War on Terrorism has
accentuated these trends. Examples are numerous, ranging from Battery
Park City and the World Trade Center site and Bryant Park in Manhattan
to street booms in Johannesburg to gated communities in California and
Sao Paulo to the Federal Center in Berlin. Both agonistic and legal
issues are involved, and clarity on the purposes public space should
fulfill has hardly been reached.
Ý |
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Publicity and Urban Space in the GDR |
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___Holger
Barth
Berlin |
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The GDR's
modern
age of construction
was succeeded by a countermovement in the 1970ties and 1980ties,
recalling the "old city". It concerns – formulated in a sociological
manner – dialectics of modernisation and counter-modernisation, which
was balanced out in a permanent negotiation process (Engler) by social
groups. Among the protagonists there were of course architects and urban
planners, too, who often contributed in a "consensus of elites" to the
assertion of the concrete panel construction – with its pros and cons –
in the GDR.
Apart from the large anonymous housing estates on the outskirts of the
cities, where the inhabitants were often lacking spaces for urban
experiences, numerous examples can be stated that give evidence of good
design proficiencies. During the 1950ties and 1960ties, not only social
buildings were constructed employing means of industrialisation, but
also residential areas that today still show creative qualities and that
certainly developed public spaces. In the 1970ties this qualitative
demand decreased – like in West Germany. This was due to the fact that –
by means of the housing scheme – the state primarily allocated the task
to architects, to produce as many flats as possible in no time.
A reflexive dealing with the side effects of this modernisation started
with the citizen- and protest movement, which formed in the FRG in the
1970ties and in the GDR in the 1980ties. Due to the economic pressure on
the ailing city centres and a political liberalisation, the
participating protagonists in the GDR successfully regained room for
creative action, which had been lost under the economic primacy of the
1970ties. This allowed the architects and urban planners a higher degree
of individuality and subjectivity in the processes of design and
construction. Those tried to use these advantages for the purpose of
urban diversity. The "complex reconstruction" of the old-building
quarters in Berlin's district Prenzlauer Berg became one of the scenes,
where the individual struggled with the "norm-idyll" – offered by the
large housing estates – for his or her right to exist.
Ý |
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Shrinkage: The specific Situation in the Newly-formed Lands of the
Federal Republic of Germany |
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___Christine
Hannemann
Berlin |
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The article analyses
current urban development processes, which recently started to be
subsumed under the term "shrinking cities". This term has currently
become an expression to especially characterise the urban development in
East Germany. Catchwords like financial plight, deindustrialisation,
decline in population and suburbanisation reflect the actual problems.
The article particularly deals with the questions: What causes shrinking
cities in East Germany? What distinguishes this process from West German
developments?
What
features are universally applicable, as "urban development without
economic growth" increasingly develops a spreading reality?
The analysis is integrated into a general discourse on the modern age
(not) making shrinkage processes subject of discussion on the one hand,
and into historical considerations of urban regression processes on the
other hand.
Finally questions are outlined from a sociologic perspective, which
comprise the consequences of the newly developing disperse and disparate
semi-urban structures for the understanding of space and city.
Obviously –
according to the thesis – the historical concept of the "European city"
offers problem-adequate starting points to solve the new urban problems,
only in isolated case
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___Heinz Nagler
&
Ulrike Sturm
Cottbus |
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The
article deals with the question, to what changes the central public
spaces of the cities have been subject to since the Fall of Communism
with respect to significance and appreciation.
Besides the known,
politically characterised prestige spaces, urban spaces of demand
developed in the GDR during the 1970ties. These were intended to be
spaces of consumption that also served a
political function in the way, as they should also deal as showcases, to
demonstrate the population's good supply under socialism.
After the
Breaching of the Wall,
the prestige spaces
and the spaces of demand were dealt with in very different manners.
While the
prestige spaces
often became subject to substantial reconstruction processes – up to
their complete elimination –, the fragmented structure of the spaces of
demand survived in many places.
Two strategies characterised the dealing with
the public spaces: the new assignation, in general with commercial
utilisation on the one hand, and the restructuring in the sense of urban
open space arrangement of the 1990ties on the other hand. Results of the
rearrangement measures and the population's reactions are discussed
within the article, making use of striking examples.
Although the question for the identity of cities in the age of shrinkage
leads to a regeneration and a revaluation of arrangement, a mere "aestheticisation"
of public space is not sufficient. Only a new charging with meaning,
which is performed as a participation movement by the population at the
same time, may create common spaces that outlast the process of
shrinking.
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Strategies and Projects 1: Consequences for the Location |
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___Katrin
Günther
&
Marietta
Tzschoppe
Cottbus |
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By way of introduction the article gives an overall view of the
demarcation of the redevelopment area and the Model-City Scheme and its
promotion mechanisms. By means of the balance plan it will be
demonstrated, what results have been achieved after 12 years of urban
renewal. On the hand, the measure concept and the redevelopment plan
illustrate the still unsettled and difficult tasks of the second
redevelopment phase. Subsequently, the "model-like" brainstorming
procedures for the alteration of public spaces in the redevelopment area
city centre is discussed in detail. These
procedures are in particular:
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dialog-oriented planning for the redesigning of the Altmarkt,
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planning workshop "Heron-Vorplatz" and Idea Contest "Fountain",
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workshop "Stadtpromenade",
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urban planning idea contest "Spremberger Strasse",
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planning workshop "Berliner Platz / Stadtpromenade".
The article is to illustrate the special planning culture of Cottbus
with regard to way, public space is dealt with in the inner city.
Ý |
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Strategies and Projects 2: Consequences for the Planning |
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___Oliver
Kuklinski
Hannover |
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Basically the article describes the results of a research project that
is to be understood as a preliminary study of the currently starting
Experimental Housing and Urban Development-Research Field "Public
Space".
This project was
carried out by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Klaus Selle, Dipl.-Ing. Ulrich Berding,
Chair of Planning Theory and Urban Planning at the Aachen University of
Technology and Dipl.-Ing. Oliver Kuklinski, PlanKom, Hannover.
In the scope of this research it became obvious that a varied
view results from the scientists' perspective, as well as from the
perspective of the interviewed communal practicians, with regard to the
different public spaces and that, what takes place within them.
Assumed
tendencies like the increasing emptying of public spaces, or their
endangerment by privatisation, were investigated in the course of this
study. Doing
so, knowledge deficits and problems, but also numerous chances in and
for public spaces in German cities became apparent. Finally the focus
turns towards the options for action of the Federal Government and the
Laender and to the current communal strategies, and thereby to the
manifold potentials for the development of public spaces, too.
As
these represent the central field of action for urban and open space
planning after all.
In the end, a short illustration of the objectives and the
working method in the Experimental Housing and Urban
Development-Research Field "Public Space" is given.
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___Gunther
Laux
München |
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Since the 1990ties, many cities have noticed a massive decline of
constructional development. The picture of the city has changed
fundamentally. Distinguishing features are inoccupation, demolition,
areas of dereliction, a missing utilisation context, shrinkage and
perforation.
A new city type has developed, which seems to be hardly controllable by
means of the conventional planning instruments. This is due to the fact
that the changing social needs cause a permanent innovative process of
urban spaces at the same time. While the traditional public space is
characterised by stability, the present-day demands are variability and
flexibility. This necessitates new means for control by the activation
of the available potential for the flexibilisation of processual
developments.
The strategy for the implementation of this objective-setting is
formulated as "open system" and intends the reversion of the traditional
urban planning:
Instead of a formulation of buildings, a net of open spaces is being
fixated according to the reverse-principle in a planning manner.
The structured open
space formulates the architectural fabric for the benefit of a maximum
flexibility of architectonic fillings.
The
open space planning thereby deals as a control element of publicity,
which – in its interlinked structure – becomes an extendable and
changeable, partial-space effective, determining ordering system.
A new model, or even a new city type? The planning model rather
represents a method that reacts to social phenomena and that formulates
these in a city-spatial manner. Doing this, the traditional, European
cityscape is not abandoned, it rather changes and is furthermore
extended by another facet.
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___Frank
Schwartze
Cottbus |
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The urban planning situation of the German-Polish border town
Guben-Gubin may be interpreted as a radical
exaggeration
of the expected consequences of the structural crisis in the East German
cities: functionless buildings, empty and cleared city centres,
settlements
drifting apart and a continuous retreat of inhabitants from the town.
The question for the public urban space in both towns reveals a rough
network of spaces without
public,
public locations without space and idealistically associated empty
spaces, onto which the desire for
public
is being projected.
Making use of the Guben-Gubin example, the article investigates two
questions that are paradigmatic for the question on the relevance of the
public space in the East German cities.
Do the cities need a public space – that can sensuously and spatially be
experienced – as an identity creating element for the future? Guben's
four decades lasting, unfinished quest for a new centre and the
articulated lack of "urban" life suggest this impression.
How are the newly arising "open" spaces of the city going to be dealt
with, which will come into being due to the termination of use, clearing
and so forth? A clear differentiation to the public urban space seems to
be indispensable to enable the development of adequate strategies.
As a consequence of the analysis of both questions it becomes apparent
that the constitution of public space is not a question of an urban
planning project. Furthermore it is plead for an acceptance of the
reduced demand for architectonic and urban planning action in the
shrinking cities and for an open mind with respect to – urban projects
that do not only approach the consequences of the shrinking city from a
creative and social point of view, but also in its dimension as a
challenge for a new municipal policy. However, for this kind of policy
there are currently only very few protagonists and there is only little
awareness, too. This way the necessity for a comprehensive municipal
policy concept for the shrinking East German cities becomes more and
more apparent.
Ý |
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Strategies and Projects 3: Consequences for the Space |
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___Andrea
Haase
Aachen / Dessau |
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The article aims at the promotion of individual and collective
acquisition of private land without serious restrictions concerning land
utilisation and to strengthen the structural conditions for a
continuable renewal of city by means of
"interlinked spaces" and to introduce a
"reverse integration" of functions in local
conditions thereby. Initially it introduces to the understanding of
"interlinked space", then sums up the
results from a historical cut through the development of East and West
German spaces during essential periods of the development of the
industrial city since the Middle Ages and finally shows existing
social-spatial and urban economical condition of interlinked
spaces in the case of the cities of
Halle, Dessau und Magdeburg in relation to centres, perimeters and
intermediate zones. The cut makes use of Lefebvre's theory on the
"production of space" in a freely interpreted form, by sketching the
space utilisation, as well as spaces of imagination and representation
for the different periods in their connection or separation.
Perspectives for
interlinked spaces
are demonstrated for the connection of built and lived spaces.
Ý |
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___Beate
Profé
Berlin |
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In the scope of the preparation of the
"Stadtentwicklungskonzept
Berlin 2020" (Concept of Urban Development),
which is going to demonstrate the long-term set-up conditions of urban
development policy and formulate the focuses of action, measures and
projects, the future open space development plays a special role. On the
background of the lack of financial and human resources for the
maintenance of the existing public greenery and the assumption that the
amount of open spaces to be maintained by the public authority is going
to increase in the coming years, altered strategies for the development
and maintenance of public greenery become necessary.
Among other things, it is going to be an objective to examine the
equipment standards of new gardens and to set altered priorities with
respect to the maintenance of existing parks, according to the
respective location and arrangement quality. Doing this, also legal
requirements of the habitat connectivity, as well as the population's
leisure-time demands need to be taken into account. Furthermore new
institutional models shall increasingly be put to the test, which
strengthen the civil engagement and the responsibility of other
institutions (e.g. investors, housing associations, citizen and district
initiatives).
Ý |
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___Tobias
Hundt
Dortmund
&
Lars
Scharnholz
Cottbus / Großräschen |
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Already for a few years, urban- and landscape planning in East Germany
have appeared to be a strange task. The reasons for this are directly
connected to the extensive process of shrinking, which concerns all
Eastern German states. While the planners in the West still find
themselves largely confronted with increasing settlement growth and a
related increasing area claim, the problem in the villages and cities of
the newly-formed German states appears as a massive trend reversal.
In the framework of the European research project
REKULA
(Restructuring of Cultural Landscapes)
the
Internationale Bauausstellung IBA (International Exhibition of
Architecture and Construction)
currently investigates the dealing with emptying and area excess mainly
in towns and villages of southern Brandenburg. In the scope of the
REKULA subproject "Space Meets Density",
planning approaches are identified by means of concrete examples in the
transition zones in-between remaining settlement centres and new open
spaces.
First provisional results are available and show ambitioned
possibilities of the intensive and extensive after-use. To continue the
started exchange of ideas and experiences in the framework of REKULA,
the East German development will be investigated in the coming three
years in a pan-European context. Further REKULA partners are the Veneto
region with the Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche (FBSR) in Italy, as
well as the municipality of Zabrze with the Silesian Technical
University in Gliwice, Poland.
Ý |
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___Gereon
Sievernich
Berlin |
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Sometime in the 1960ties, Bernard Rudofsky wrote that he did not find
one title on streets and squares within the whole Library of Congress.
Meanwhile this might have changed a little, however, it is conspicuous
how seldom one still addresses the "intermediate", this is to say, those
places which determine the communication in a city. The enormous
planning- and destruction power of the post-war architects in Germany
for example, who created a "car-adjusted city" in the devastated cities,
is seemingly still today of an unchangeable dominance. The forming of a
square or a street just does not belong to the prime disciplines of the
architects. This has not always been the case: one should call to mind
the street at the Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro, arranged by Burle Marx,
one should recall the Piazza del Campidoglio in Rom that was designed by
Michelangelo, one should remember Siena or the "theatre streets" in
Palladio's and Scamozzi's Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza. In this article,
an attempt is made to approach this subject matter.
Ý |
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