Title & Author:

A blessing in disguise : war and town planning in Europe, 1940-1945 / [editors] Jörn Düwel, Niels Gutschow.

Publication:

Berlin : DOM Publishers, [2013]
©2013

Description:

415 pages : illustrations (some color), maps (some color), plans (some color) ; 31 cm

Notes:
"This book is published to accompany the exhibition Die erwartete Katastrophe--Luftkrieg und Städtebau in Europa 1940-1945 ... August/September 2013 at the Freie Akademie der Künste in Hamburg"--Page 13.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 404-411).
Foreword / Jörn Düwel, Niels Gutschow, Cor Wagenaar -- Preliminary remarks / Jörn Düwel, Niels Gutschow -- Community and town planning--debates of the first half of the 20th century / Jörn Düwel, Niels Gutschow -- Circles within circles : visions and visualizations of the city of tomorrow / David Kuchenbuch -- The invisible reconstruction : displacing people, emergency housing and promoting decent family life in Rotterdam, Hamburg and Coventry / Stefan Couperus -- Total war meets totalitarian planning : some reflections on Königsberg/Kaliningrad / Kenneth Hewitt -- The inevibility of progress : Rotterdam and the fading image of the city / Cor Wagenaar -- From ruins to reconstruction of France under Vichy / Jean-Louis Cohen -- Planning the rebuilding of bombed cities in Germany 1943-1945 / Niels Gutschow -- Hamburg : two catastrophies in 1842 and 1943 / Jörn Düwel -- The Blitz in England and the city of tomorrow : London, Coventry, Plymouth, Manchester, Exeter, Hull / Niels Gutschow -- Soviet town planning during the War, 1941-1945 / Dmitrij Chmelnizki -- Wartime planning in Boston / Jeffry M. Diefendorf -- Epilogue--Post-war continuities / Jörn Düwel, Niels Gutschow, David Kuchenbuch, Cor Wagenaar. Per aspera ad astra--the persistent yearning for light. From trees to nodes : the fate of the "neighbourhood" in post-war Europe. The demise of the historical cities in the 1940s and the painful awakening in the 1970s. A slow transition from urbanism to spatial management--the Dutch perspective.

Summary:

There is a sense, in which the demolition that is taking place through the war has not yet gone far enough." This astonishing statement was made in the thick of the Second World War (1942) by the influential American social and cultural critic Lewis Mumford. In most of the cities hit hardest by the air-raids, something akin to planning euphoria did in fact break out at that time. In all the countries of Europe, the devastation of the cities was acclaimed as a liberating factor. In this volume, historians and architects from various cultures analyse the ideas and convictions on which post-war urban planning was modelled. To illustrate the points, a number of towns and cities in different countries are discussed with reference to the planning schemes proposed for them and other documents.

ISBN:

9783869222950 (hardback)
3869222956

Subject:

Reconstruction (1939-1951) Europe Exhibitions.
Urban renewal Europe History 20th century Exhibitions.
City planning Europe History 20th century Exhibitions.
Cities and towns Europe History 20th century Exhibitions.
Buildings War damage Europe Exhibitions.
Reconstruction, 1939-1951 Europe Expositions.
Rénovation urbaine Europe Histoire 20e siècle Expositions.
Villes Europe Histoire 20e siècle Expositions.
Dommages de guerre Europe Expositions.
Reconstruction (1939-1951)
Buildings War damage
Cities and towns
City planning
Urban renewal
Europe

Form/genre:

Exhibition publications.
Exhibition catalogs
History

Added entries:

Düwel, Jörn, editor.
Gutschow, Niels, editor.
Freie Akademie der Künste in Hamburg, host institutin.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 285151
Call No.: BIB 224495
Status: Available