Mysteries of the Mall: And Other Essays

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Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2015 (paperback, 2018), English

Nonfiction, Architecture

Hardcover, 5.8 x 8.52 in., 336 pages

ISBN: 9780374269937

From the Publisher: In thirty-four discerning essays, Witold Rybczynski ranges over topics as varied as shopping malls, Central Park, the Opéra Bastille, and America’s shrinking cities. Along the way, he examines our post-9/11 obsession with security, the revival of the big-city library, the rise of college towns, our fascination with vacation homes, and Disney's planned community of Celebration. By looking at contemporary architects as diverse as Frank Gehry, Moshe Safdie, and Bing Thom, revisiting old masters such as Palladio, Le Corbusier, and Frank Lloyd Wright, and considering such unsung innovators as Stanley H. Durwood, the inventor of the cineplex, Rybczynski ponders the role of global metropolises in an age of tourism and reflects on what kinds of places attract us in the modern city.

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