we Speak of architecture, mostly refers to the big buildings in the cities of Poland: museums and football stadiums, concert halls and airports. In contrast, smaller and small buildings it is difficult to draw attention to themselves – even though they play the majority of the residents sometimes have a greater role and their everyday life in a stronger shape than the prestige of the temple. With these “important trivia” is now Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani, a Professor Emeritus of the history of urban design at the ETH Zurich, in a book to read values.

“grace, Even as insignificant as the end of urban objects such as manhole covers prove to be on closer inspection a rich history of memory.” The 1951 born in Rome in Lampugnani is not only a theorist but also the architect, is particularly evident when it comes to materials. “As the Material for the covers of cast iron by rapidly against wood and stone, sometimes also of cast steel, less Aluminium.” During the two world wars, however, the concrete casting has been preferred. Because the iron, the author, was needed for the armaments industry. To be able to the heavy metal masses roles, were most of the Manhole covers around.

Modern confessionals

The attractively designed volume contains 22 Essays, several of which have already appeared in the “magazine”: this ranges from the fountain to the town clock, from the street sign to public toilet, from the metro entrance to the Kiosk. Some of these objects have fallen out of the time, such as the cell phone, the end of which was ushered in with the development of mobile telephony.

“The phone house will disappear, as the facilities of the telephone communication, but on our streets and in the squares its slightly foreign and yet ver-believe presence is missing, the suggested Illusion of small refuges.” That’s why they called it as modern-day confessionals. In Switzerland, the first phone booth in 1889 in the newly built Cathedral, the fraumünster post office was installed in Zurich – ten years after in New Haven, Connectitut, this world novelty for the first time in operation, had been taken.

Kiosk is derived, the author from informed, from the middle Persian “kusk” and means corner or angle. Photo: Nicole Pont

Similar to the cell phone, it will fare in the digital age, probably the Newsstand – that house, which until the recent past, people were grapes, when the world headlines. Since the public space loses as a meeting place of increasing importance, are the “Little things in the city”, as the subtitle of the book, rare.

The Kiosk, which was celebrated in 1857, on the Grands Boulevards in Paris Premiere, was designed to be “flashy enough to be widely visible in the urban space, without compromising him”. He was a kind of urban lighthouse, the Curious and the passers-by supplied with news and information from around the world. The word Kiosk directs, by the way, the author gives, from the middle Persian “kusk” meaning corner or angle, but also the gazebo or garden house.

urban accents

Since the author from 1994 to 2016, the ETH taught, is the Limmat city, in its analysis and considerations in detail, for example in the Chapter on the tram stop. “A highlight of the architecture of the holding reached in the tram city par excellence, Zurich. The first tram waiting hall was built in 1899 on the just-finished built-up parade-ground.”

It is the home place of the cross of space and 1938/1939 followed by the city architect Hermann Herter, together with the engineer Fritz Stüssi-built bus stop at the Bellevue. You Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani is not attested to only provide shelters for passengers, but also, and especially, urban accents of the respective free spaces.

on the basis of town-planning accents you can recognize what metropolis is. Photo: Reto Oeschger

Also, the best notes are the Swiss cities for the design of your fountain. Whether in Bern, Basel or Zurich, where there are over 1000 fountains, “every 100 meters” everywhere, whose Form and Design contribute significantly to the attractiveness of a city.

Each of the 22 objects are dedicated to a few pages, rich white illustrated with historic black and white photographs. The author proves himself as a passionate Flaneur, has hiked the European metropolises with an attentive eye for Detail. The short texts are set in architectural history, sometimes also the etymological explanations of the terms, and conclude with assessments of the Aesthetics or for the Benefit of the things.

Who viewed a photograph of any European city, so Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani, promises that it can detect on the basis of such Details, to which city it is. How are the street lights? How playful the metro are designed to be inputs? How massive the bollards are?

will bring Up to you, however, to such a championship as the author, it takes certainly some time – the book is certainly an invitation to attend increasingly to the nondescript but culturally and historically significant things we overlook in everyday life, lightly.

Created: 15.11.2019, 18:12 PM