The City As A Work Of Art: London, Paris, Vienna
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Good
What does it mean for a city to be beautiful — not merely functional or grand, but a genuine work of art? Donald J. Olsen's magisterial study takes three of Europe's greatest 19th-century capitals — London, Paris, and Vienna — and argues that each was consciously shaped by its ruling culture into an aesthetic statement of extraordinary ambition, revealing how architecture, urban planning, and civic identity became inseparable from the political and social aspirations of an era. Olsen writes with the authority of a seasoned urban historian, moving fluently between boulevard and back street, between imperial decree and bourgeois taste, to illustrate how the built environment both reflected and reinforced the values of the societies that created it. Rich in archival detail and elegant in its comparative analysis, The City as a Work of Art raises a question that lingers long after the final page: if these cities were once crafted with such deliberate artistry, what does the shape of our own cities say about us?
Author: Donald J. Olsen
Format: Hardback
Published: 1986, Yale University Press
Genre: Architecture
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Good
What does it mean for a city to be beautiful — not merely functional or grand, but a genuine work of art? Donald J. Olsen's magisterial study takes three of Europe's greatest 19th-century capitals — London, Paris, and Vienna — and argues that each was consciously shaped by its ruling culture into an aesthetic statement of extraordinary ambition, revealing how architecture, urban planning, and civic identity became inseparable from the political and social aspirations of an era. Olsen writes with the authority of a seasoned urban historian, moving fluently between boulevard and back street, between imperial decree and bourgeois taste, to illustrate how the built environment both reflected and reinforced the values of the societies that created it. Rich in archival detail and elegant in its comparative analysis, The City as a Work of Art raises a question that lingers long after the final page: if these cities were once crafted with such deliberate artistry, what does the shape of our own cities say about us?