| | Urban
Space,
Rob Krier.
Visiting Stuttgart, Germany for
about a half day ten years ago, I was impressed by the pedestrian
nature of the city, probably the most suited to walking
of any European city I visited at that time. One could walk
across across parts of the city without ever encountering
automobile traffic, achieved via bridges and viaducts. The
pedestrian malls along the way reinforced this apparent
importance on walking.
The urban condition of Stuttgart,
Rob Krier's hometown, is very important to the architect/planner.
One of the four chapters of Urban Space is devoted
to the reconstruction of devastated parts of the city center.
Although I can't say for sure how much of Krier's exhaustive
plan influenced the city's efforts, his plan is intended
more as a critique of Modern planning than as a realistically
realizable scheme. The first two chapters set up the extreme
dialectic between traditional, shaped urban space and the
leftover space created by Modern planning and its object-centric
approach to architecture. Abundant illustrations - primarily
plans and perspective views - are used to get across this
message, one that is undeniable while regrettably ignoring
the political mechanisms that have allowed Modern planning
to take precedence over traditional forms of planning. Now
thirty years old, this book no less relevant today, though
the author's plans seem just as dated as the ones he feverishly
rallied against.
. . or . . 
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