Bacon francis

1974 · 90339 — New York: The Viking Press A Studio Book 1974. Revised Edition stated. Presumed first printing thus. Hardcover. Good/Fair. Joseph Aronson illustrations and James Drake Au. The format is approximately 8.5 inches by 11 inches. 336 pages. Illustrated endpapers. Illustrations some with color. Maps some with color. Appendix. Notes on Illustrations. Bibliography. Index. Name of previous owner on half-title page. This is a large and heavy book that if sent outside of the United States will require additional shipping charges. Edmund Norwood Bacon May 2 1910 – October 14 2005 was an American urban planner architect educator and author. During his tenure as the executive director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission from 1949 to 1970 his visions shaped today's Philadelphia the city of his birth to the extent that he is sometimes described as "The Father of Modern Philadelphia". He authored the seminal urban planning book Design of Cities. He was awarded a scholarship to the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills Michigan with Finnish architect and planner Eliel Saarinen who Bacon revered and whose theories about the city as a living organism as expressed in Saarinen's book The City were a basis for Bacon's later work. Saarinen sent Bacon to Flint Michigan to guide a WPA traffic survey. Bacon returned to Philadelphia to serve as managing director of the Philadelphia Housing Association. In 1967 he wrote Design of Cities still considered an important architectural text. It’s a seminal work on urban design that illustrates the relationship between historical and modern principles as well as practices of urban planning applied particularly to Philadelphia. "The major contemporary work on urban design . . . Splendidly presented filled with thoughtful and brilliant intuitive insights." —The New Republic. In a brilliant synthesis of words and pictures Edmund N. Bacon relates historical examples to modern principles of urban planning. He vividly demonstrates how the work of great architects and planners of the past can influence subsequent development and be continued by later generations. By illuminating the historical background of urban design Bacon also shows us the fundamental forces and considerations that determine the form of a great city. Perhaps the most significant of these are simultaneous movement systems—the paths of pedestrian and vehicular traffic public and private transportation—that serve as the dominant organizing force and Bacon looks at movement systems in cities such as London Rome and New York. He also stresses the importance of designing open space as well as architectural mass and discusses the impact of space color and perspective on the city-dweller. That the centers of cities should and can be pleasant places in which to live work and relax is illustrated by such examples as Rotterdam and Stockholm. The Viking Press [A Studio Book] hardcover