Book Description

"American Vitruvius: an Architects' Handbook of Civic Art. At the end of the second decade of this [the twentieth] century, Werner Hegemann, a German-born urban planning theorist and practitioner, and Elbert Peets, a young American recently graduated from Harvard University's School of Landscape Architecture, joined together in Wisconsin in a professional partnership. The association of these two students of American urbanism culminated in 1922 with The American Vitruvius: an Architects' Handbook of Civic Art, a critical text that played an essential role in the definition and promotion of modern American city planning. American Vitruvius offers the reader an atlas of design solutions and advocates a humanistic, as well as rational, development of the urban environment. Princeton Architectural Press has reprinted the entire original text including the book's 1203 plates. These illustrations consist of plans, elevations, and perspective views of both European and American cities, spanning in date from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. The republication of this volume suggests the relevance of Hegemann and Peets' approach for contemporary city planning. Today, in the midst of an era responding to the de-humanization of the city, American Vitruvius offers a reconciliation of artistic aspects of civic art with scientific theory of city planning -- the authors insist upon a city that allows its residents both pleasure and freedom of expression"--Front flap.