Fit

An Architect's Manifesto

Robert Geddes

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780691155753
• eBook ISBN: 9781400844548
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

Why architecture matters—and how to make it matter more

Fit is a book about architecture and society that seeks to fundamentally change how architects and the public think about the task of design. Distinguished architect and urbanist Robert Geddes argues that buildings, landscapes, and cities should be designed to fit: fit the purpose, fit the place, fit future possibilities. Fit replaces old paradigms, such as form follows function, and less is more, by recognizing that the relationship between architecture and society is a true dialogue—dynamic, complex, and, if carried out with knowledge and skill, richly rewarding.

With a tip of the hat to John Dewey, Fit explores architecture as we experience it. Geddes starts with questions: Why do we design where we live and work? Why do we not just live in nature, or in chaos? Why does society care about architecture? Why does it really matter? Fit answers these questions through a fresh examination of the basic purposes and elements of architecture—beginning in nature, combining function and expression, and leaving a legacy of form.

Lively, charming, and gently persuasive, the book shows brilliant examples of fit: from Thomas Jefferson's University of Virginia and Louis Kahn's Exeter Library to contemporary triumphs such as the Apple Store on New York's Fifth Avenue, Chicago's Millennium Park, and Seattle's Pike Place.

Fit is a book for everyone, because we all live in constructions—buildings, landscapes, and, increasingly, cities. It provokes architects and planners, humanists and scientists, civic leaders and citizens to reconsider what is at stake in architecture—and why it delights us.

index

The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

abstract art

abstraction

Adam

aesthetics. See also beauty; Dewey, John; form; Vitruvius Pollio

Agora, Athens

agrarian society

Agricultural Revolution

agriculture. See also farms; landscapes airports

Alberti, Leon Battista

Alexander

Christopher

Algonquian Indians

Allen, Woody

altars

America; civic monumentalism in; civic populism in; colonial; and forest-edge habitat; as rectangular country

American Embassy London

animals human See also human body

Apple Store, Fifth Avenue, New York

arbors

arcades

Arcadia

arches

architecture: as body, as bottle and buildings and coats composition of as enabling mechanism as fabric; and forest-edge habitat; and geometry; as graphic composition and grid; and groups of people; and human bodies; and Jefferson's intellectual ideas; and landscape boundaries; as mass; as movement and nature; and new modern; as palimpsest; and Piero della Francesca; for protection; and romantic landscapes; and sculpture; secular; as shared, functional and expressive places; social behavior in; and social relations and society; as surface; as sustaining mechanisms; as third skin; vernacular

art

articulations

art museums

assembly, of parts

association, imaginative

Athens, Agora

automobiles

autonomy

Bacon, Leonard

banks

bars and cafés

Baton Rouge, Louisiana, State Capitol building

Bauhaus

beams

Bear Run, Pennsylvania, Fallingwater (Kaufmann Residence)

beauty. See also aesthetics; Dewey, John; form; Vitruvius Pollio

Beaux-Arts style

Bell, Clive

boredom vs. confusion

Boston Commonwealth Avenue; Fenway; streets of

Bratton, William J.

Bryant Park, New York City

built environment. Seeenvironment(s)

Burnham, Daniel H.

Burnham Plan

business corporations

businesses

bus terminals

buttresses

Cambridge, colleges of

Cambridge, Massachusetts, Mount Auburn Cemetery

camouflage

capitol

cast-iron style

castle

catenary curve

cathedrals

cemeteries

Central Park, Manhattan

Centre Pompidou, Paris

centroidal places

Chamberlain, John

chaos

Charlottesville, Virginia, University of Virginia

Chicago: and Great Chicago Fire; Loop business district; Monadnock Building; and Plan of Chicago; Reliance Building; Tribune Tower; and World's Columbian Exposition; and Wright

Chicago frame

Chicago window

choice

churches; and assembly; and light; need for; and ritual; as social institutions and buildings; and Wren

Churchill, Winston

cities: ancient Roman; changes in; colonial American; connection with countryside; as constructed landscapes; denigration of; downtown area of; and geometry; Glazer on; greenswards in; and grids; and human bodies; ideal plans for; and Jefferson's Public Land Survey System; and linear vs. centroidal places; and Lorenzetti; medieval; and nature; need for; as palimpsests; and populism and monumentalism Renaissance; and romantic landscapes; squares in. See also grid/gridiron

City Beautiful movement

City Hall, Philadelphia

civic improvement

civic infrastructure

civic monumentalism

civic populism

civil engineering

civilization. See also Western civilization civil society

Classical architecture/architectural style; birth of; and combination; and explanatory articulation; and functionalism; and Piero della Francesca; representations of; and Sullivan; use of

Classical culture

Cleveland, civic center of

cloisters

clothing

clubhouse

coats

colleges

colonnades. See also columns

Columbus, Christopher

columns. See also colonnades

comfort

Commercial Club, Chicago

Commonwealth Avenue, Back Bay, Boston

community. See also groups; society

compression

computational design

Congress. See also United States Capitol building, Washington, DC

conservation and preservation

conservative style

construction

constructivism

cosmos

countryside

courthouses

courtyards

cubism

culture

deconstructivism

delight

democracy

design

design school

Dewey, John; Art as Experience

digital age

disease

Disneyland

domes

doors/doorways. See also entrances/entryways

drawings

Dürer, Albrecht, The Art of Measurement

Dutch architecture

dynamic equilibrium

earth, axis of

eating, ritual of

ecology

education

egalitarianism

Egypt, pyramids of

Eiffel Tower, Paris

elevators

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

empiricism

enablement

England. See also London

English Georgian buildings

English landscape gardens

English Renaissance

Enlightenment

entrances/entryways. See also doors/doorways

environmental determinism

environment(s); built; and cemeteries; conditions of; Dewey on; and forest-edge habitat; and here and now; and historical Japanese houses; and home improvement; and Jefferson; and outer space; and palimpsest; and personal space; protection from hostile; protection through constructed; shared, reproducible...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• The Origin of Architecture is Nature
• The Task of Architecture is Function & Expression
• The Legacy of Architecture is Form
• Notes
• Index