X-urbanism

by Mario Gandelsonas

For Mario Gandelsonas, the American city is essential to the understanding of modern urbanism, its practice, and the city of the 21st century. Through a series of remarkable analytical drawings, X-Urbanism opens up the architectural discourse to the questions raised by the American city: the generation of new configurations of urban space and form, and the production of different conditions of urban viewing. X-Urbanism presents both an examination and a visual deployment of the formal properties of the American city, blurring the traditional oppositions between fabric and object, figure and ground, writing and reading. It reveals the hidden structures of New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, New Haven, Des Moines, and Atlantic City. In the process, X-Urbanism confounds our expectations, showing us such things as the subtle order of chaotic Los Angeles and the random disruptions of Chicago's rigorous grid.