City Riffs: Urbanism, Ecology, Place

Urban Design Lab Director Richard Plunz will introduce his new book City Riffs: Urbanism, Ecology, Place in New York on September 21, 2017 at the Italian Academy of Columbia University, located at 1161 Amsterdam Avenue, at 6:00 PM

City Riffs traces the changing perspectives on urban design within an ever-changing global context, and considers trans-disciplinary aspects of urbanism including: formal and informal growth; post-colonial structures; post-urban phenomena; the changing nature of place; and new ecological realities. Urbanism, examined here through research in sixteen cities worldwide, is viewed as the production of space-integrating aspects of design, ecology, and engineering, as well as its social, economical, and psychological interactions.

There will be a panel discussion at the book launch featuring Amales Andraos, Dean of The Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; Kenneth Frampton, Ware Professor of Architecture; the poet Nathalie Handal, writer of the blog ‘The City and the Writer’; and Professor and Dean Emeritus Bernard Tschumi.