Susannah Hagan – författare

Susannah Hagan boldly discusses the fraught relationship between key dominating areas of architectural discourse - digital design, environmental design, and avant-garde design.

Digitalia firstly demonstrates that drawing such firm lines between architectural spheres is damaging and foolish, particularly as both environmental and avant-garde practices are experimenting with the digital, and secondly remonstrates with an avant-garde that has repudiated the social/ethical agenda of the modernist avant-garde because it failed the first time round. It is environmental architecture that has picked up the social/ethical ball and is running with it, using the digital to very different, and more far-reaching, ends.

As the debates rage, this book is a key read for all who are involved or intrigued.

Susannah Hagan boldly discusses the fraught relationship between key dominating areas of architectural discourse - digital design, environmental design, and avant-garde design.

Digitalia firstly demonstrates that drawing such firm lines between architectural spheres is damaging and foolish, particularly as both environmental and avant-garde practices are experimenting with the digital, and secondly remonstrates with an avant-garde that has repudiated the social/ethical agenda of the modernist avant-garde because it failed the first time round. It is environmental architecture that has picked up the social/ethical ball and is running with it, using the digital to very different, and more far-reaching, ends.

As the debates rage, this book is a key read for all who are involved or intrigued.

Within the concept of the ''sustainable city'' nothing is fixed, mapped or agreed upon. To some, the term encompasses innovation, change and commitment to the future and to others it means preservation, conservatism and a watchful eye on the future.

City Fights follows on from the symposium ''Energy and Urban Strategies'', which brought together contributors from a wide variety of disciplines, with the aim of developing sharp ideas about making better and more sustainable cities in environmental, social and economic terms. The result is a passionate and illuminating debate on this vast question, bringing into focus the complexity and diversity of the issues involved.

City fights is essential and thought provoking reading for all with a common interest in the future of the city- from architects and urban designers, urban and town planners and policy makers, to academics and researchers, sociologists, environmentalists and economists.

Within the concept of the ''sustainable city'' nothing is fixed, mapped or agreed upon. To some, the term encompasses innovation, change and commitment to the future and to others it means preservation, conservatism and a watchful eye on the future.

City Fights follows on from the symposium ''Energy and Urban Strategies'', which brought together contributors from a wide variety of disciplines, with the aim of developing sharp ideas about making better and more sustainable cities in environmental, social and economic terms. The result is a passionate and illuminating debate on this vast question, bringing into focus the complexity and diversity of the issues involved.

City fights is essential and thought provoking reading for all with a common interest in the future of the city- from architects and urban designers, urban and town planners and policy makers, to academics and researchers, sociologists, environmentalists and economists.

Ecological Urbanism: The Nature of the City asks the questions that are important inside and outside the built environment professions: what are climate change, urbanisation and ecology doing to the theory and practice of urban design? How does Ecological Urbanism figure in this change? What is Ecological Urbanism?

In answer, this book is neither definitive – impossible when a subject is still in motion – nor encyclopaedic – equally impossible when so much has been written on almost every aspect of these essays. Instead, it seeks to rebalance the ecological narrative and its embryonic modes of practice with the narratives of urbanism and its older, deeply embedded modes of practice. It examines the implications for cities and the designers of cities now we are required to again address their metabolic as well as social and formal dimensions, and it explores the extent to which environmental engineering and natural systems design can and should become drivers for the remaking of cities in the 21st century. Above all, it argues that sooner rather than later, urbanism needs to become environmentally literate, and environmental design needs to become culturally literate.

Ecological Urbanism: The Nature of the City asks the questions that are important inside and outside the built environment professions: what are climate change, urbanisation and ecology doing to the theory and practice of urban design? How does Ecological Urbanism figure in this change? What is Ecological Urbanism?

In answer, this book is neither definitive – impossible when a subject is still in motion – nor encyclopaedic – equally impossible when so much has been written on almost every aspect of these essays. Instead, it seeks to rebalance the ecological narrative and its embryonic modes of practice with the narratives of urbanism and its older, deeply embedded modes of practice. It examines the implications for cities and the designers of cities now we are required to again address their metabolic as well as social and formal dimensions, and it explores the extent to which environmental engineering and natural systems design can and should become drivers for the remaking of cities in the 21st century. Above all, it argues that sooner rather than later, urbanism needs to become environmentally literate, and environmental design needs to become culturally literate.