Download or read book Touching the City written by Timothy Makower and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-10-08 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scale in cities is relative and absolute. It has the ability tomake us feel at home in the world or alien from it; connected ordisconnected. Both large and small scale in cities can bebeautiful; both are right, neither is wrong. Whilst accepting thatprescription is no answer, 'getting the scale right' – at anintuitive and sensual level – is a fundamental part of themagic of architecture and urban design. Touching the City exploreshow scale is manifested in cities, exploring scale in buildings, inthe space between them and in their details. It asks how scalemakes a difference. Travelling from Detroit to Chandigarh, via New York, London,Paris, Rome and Doha, Tim Makower explores cities with theanalytical eye of a designer and with the experiential eye of theurban dweller. Looking at historic cities, he asks what is goodabout them: what can we learn from the old to inform the new? Thebook zooms in from the macro scale of surfing Google Earth to micromoments such as finding fossils in a weathered wall. It examinesthe dynamics and movement patterns of cities, the making of streetsand skylines, the formation of thresholds and facades, and it alsotouches on the process of design and the importance of drawing. Asthe book's title, Touching the City, suggests, it alsoemphasises the tactile – that the city is indeed somethingphysical, something we can touch and be touched by, alive and everchanging.