From the earliest corrals of the mid-1800s (Union Grounds in Brooklyn was a 'saloon in the open air'), to the much mourned parks of the early 1900s (Detroit's Tiger Stadium, Cincinnati's Palace of the Fans), to the stadiums we fill today, Paul Goldberger makes clear the inextricable bond between the American city and America's favorite pastime. In the changing locations and architecture of our ballparks, Goldberger reveals the manifestations of a changing society: the earliest ballparks evoked the Victorian age in their accommodations-bleachers for the riffraff, grandstands for the middle-class; the 'concrete donuts' of the 1950s and '60s made plain television's grip on the public's attention; and more recent ballparks, like Baltimore's Camden Yards, signal a new way forward for stadium design and for baseball's role in urban development. Throughout, Goldberger shows us the way in which baseball's history is concurrent with our cultural history: the rise of urban parks and public transportation; the development of new building materials and engineering and design skills. And how the site details and the requirements of the game-the diamond, the outfields, the walls, the grandstands-shaped our most beloved ballparks.
A fascinating, exuberant ode to the Edens at the heart of our cities-where dreams are as limitless as the outfields.
Why Architecture Matters is not a work of architectural history or a guide to styles or an architectural dictionary, though it contains elements of all three. The purpose of Why Architecture Matters is to 'come to grips with how things feel to us when we stand before them, with how architecture affects us emotionally as well as intellectually' - with its impact on our lives.
'Architecture begins to matter,' writes Paul Goldberger, 'when it brings delight and sadness and perplexity and awe along with a roof over our heads.' He shows us how that works in examples ranging from a small Cape Cod cottage to the 'vast, flowing' Prairie houses of Frank Lloyd Wright, from the Lincoln Memorial to the highly sculptural Guggenheim Bilbao and the Church of Sant'Ivo in Rome, where 'simple geometries... create a work of architecture that embraces the deepest complexities of human imagination.'
Based on decades of looking at buildings and thinking about how we experience them, the distinguished critic raises our awareness of fundamental things like proportion, scale, space, texture, materials, shapes, light, and memory. Upon completing this remarkable architectural journey, listeners will enjoy a wonderfully rewarding new way of seeing and experiencing every aspect of the built world.
The book is published by Yale University Press.
