Architecture in Transition

by Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis, Xavier Rubert de Ventós (Translator)

Architectural concepts

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis was an architect and urban planner who was extremely successful and influential in his field during the 1960s & 1970s. He was perhaps best known as the lead architect of Islamabad, the new capital of Pakistan. He later was also renowned for his pioneering work in the study of human habitation, which he referred to as ekistics. He was a prolific author, and is still revered by many as the father of modern urban planning. His son, Apostolos K. Doxiadis, is an internationally acclaimed novelist.

Reviews

[Harrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of Doxiadis' more focused architecture manifestoes. Worth a read. While it's out of print, it's still available online at the Universal Digital Library (https://archive.org/details/architect...).

[Zachary · Rating 5 out of 5]

The problems presented in this text are not new now, but were when it was written, providing an illuminating look back at how our contemporary problems in architecture, city-planning, and spatial management have developed over time. Most interesting to me was Doxiadis's recognition of our need to distance ourselves from our machines in our lived space, recommending that cars be kept to very specific avenues in cities and walkways and paths be championed in the places where people most lived their daily lives. His note that maybe a turn to communication research and scholarship as a means to figuring out the problem of consistency or monotony in design was also quite interesting.

[Mike Bularz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a basic sketch of how we can bring Doxiadis' small scale humanistic geography into form in a global perspective. Although a bit dated (published late 60s), Architecture In Transition gets its title from the population boom of the time. The main idea is that we should look to the local and developing building and urban styles as a guide to the ecumenic, or, Constantionos's word for Global. The logic is of anthropology - what works for basic developed society must be a clue to the guides of basic and untainted-by-modern-abstractions-man, that, what the most basic societies construct should be an example for the metropolitan and global scale. Although the book lacks in detail of what exactly these types of program should be, the consensus is that of any great innovator: see things at their basic roots, like a child would explain it to a developed adult with a professionally, developmentally inflicted case of group think. I wouldn't recommend this today except FANS ONLY, as there isn't a lot of material except for the ideas I just covered above (most of which take their full reality in ch's 7-8 fro the skimmers). This was an amusing and spring-board of a read, but no too much gained from it.