Magazine

Nature and the City
Nature and the City Massimo Venturi Ferriolo Preliminary remarks Ideas on the landscape Is the city still a place? The question is powerful, even if it seems superfluous as the answer is still affirmative if we give the term “place” the broad interpretation given by the Treccani vocabulary of “a part of space, ideally or […]
The Search for the Ideal
The Search for the Ideal Sam Olshin, FAIA Critical factors for consideration in community placemaking: Philadelphia as a case study Much has been written about successful communities and why certain places are “destinations” and others are not. Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” emphasizes in poetic prose that the city is a constantly evolving place – simultaneously […]
Places, Spaces and Traces
Places, Spaces and Traces Ian Boyd Tools for better urban design The concept of local distinctiveness has never been more important to our individual and collective will to change this bland urbanism into biological design and curated space. Local distinctiveness, as a description of meaningful, authentic place content, was perfectly described and developed by the […]
Utopian Disruption Concept
Utopian Disruption Concept Anca Badut + Matthias Bühler (vrbn), Ulrich Gehmann ( Ideal Spaces) Joining their creative forces again, Ideal Spaces Working Group (ISWG) and vrbn are facing the challenge of reframing an old architectural and philosophical theme under a new approach: what would an ideal city look like in a contemporary context? Under […]
Resilience, Utopia, Community
Resilience, Utopia, Community Ulrich Gehmann The general relations between space, place, utopia, community and architecture have been outlined at https://www.idealspaces.org/magazines/ideal-spaces/; here, it is about a specific aspect of a ‘true’ community and the idea of its ideal space, an aspect that turned into a buzzword recently: resilience. In its broad terms, resilience is defined as […]
Community, Space, Utopia
Community, Space, Utopia Ulrich Gehmann Utopia is typically associated with community. Despite the existence of individual, “private” utopias, traditionally, a utopia does not exist for a single human being but for a group of people – a community. If we set aside the more sinister version of utopia, the so-called dystopia (which also has groups […]
Crystal Architecture
Crystal Architecture Yulia Leonova Cities made of rocks, palaces of crystal and towers of minerals designed by the Expressionist Glass Chain group are famous, but were not the only design concepts that informed the world of “crystalline” architecture. Whilst the term “crystalline” is not strictly codified, it is not widely accepted and used by architectural […]
Sentences on Gestalt
Sentences on Gestalt Michael Johansson My work on formulating sentences about gestalt began three years ago. I went into academia in the late ’90s with a background in art/design and it was especially important for me to incorporate the unique qualities of digital media as a material and its methods and process in relation […]
Gestalt – an Introduction
Gestalt – an Introduction Ulrich Gehmann The following contribution is about a notion long forgotten: gestalt. It refers to an anthropological necessity, namely the ability to conceive wholes, entire contexts, and the unity of both perceiving and conceiving as a precondition to do so. Gestalt relates to another notion, that of order, as well […]
Ideal Spaces
Ideal Spaces Ulrich Gehmann What is an ideal space, what is the ideal about it? An ideal space can denote both a space imagined, and a space ‘ideal’ in the word’s common sense as a space perfected. Both meanings overlap, since a ‘perfect’ space has also to be imagined first. Referring to its Greek origins, “ideal” comes from idea, an (inner) image of something, and from eidos, image. Ιδέα denotes the […]