Big House Little City: Architectural Design Through an Urban Lens

Combining  architectural and urban thinking in an unusual and engaging way, this  book presents an integrated approach to architectural theory and design.  Leon Battista Alberti’s assertion in his famous Renaissance treatise  that ‘the city is like a big house, and the house is in turn like a  little city’ forms the springboard for a series of reflections on  architecture’s relationship with urbanism and how their once intimate  symbiosis, unravelled by International Style Modernism, can be  recovered.

Explicit references to Alberti’s  house-city phrase have been made by figures as diverse as the architects  Louis Kahn, Aldo Van Eyck, Denys Lasdun and Niels Torp and novelist  Italo Calvino. But, as the book shows, thinking of buildings as little  cities provides a new lens through which to reappraise the contributions  of many other architects, including Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright,  Alvar Aalto, Eliel Saarinen, Bernard Rudofsky, Hans Scharoun, Leon  Krier, Fumihiko Maki, Charles Correa and Team 10. 

In  doing so, the author identifies common themes that form an unexpected  bridgehead between the urban and architectural approaches of Antiquity,  the Middle Ages, Renaissance and 20th century. The book explores  buildings from across the globe, including lesser-known projects, such  as Wright’s unbuilt house in Italy or Saarinen’s master plan for  Cranbrook Academy, as well as more recent projects by Niels Torp,  Behnisch Architekten, Sou Fujimoto, Peter Barber and WOHA.

It  concludes with practical case studies of residential, health, education  and workplace projects from different countries, fulsomely illustrated  with many drawings and photographs. These show how architectural design  viewed through an urban lens provides a conceptual framework for  breaking down the scale of large buildings and integrating them with  their context. And crucially, these also show a very accessible way of  explaining evolving designs to the intended users and eliciting their  participation in the design process.

The book offers a  compelling approach to the design of projects at all scales, within an  ecological perspective: the sense that big and small, cities and  buildings must be approached holistically if we are to reverse the  degradation and depletion of our habitat, both natural and man-made.