内容简介

Since its original publication in 1978, Delirious New York has attained mythic status. Back in print in a newly designed edition, this influential cultural, architectural, and social history of New York is even more popular, selling out its first printing on publication. Rem Koolhaas's celebration and analysis of New York depicts the city as a metaphor for the incredible variety of human behavior. At the end of the nineteenth century, population, information, and technology explosions made Manhattan a laboratory for the invention and testing of a metropolitan lifestyle -- "the culture of congestion" -- and its architecture.

"Manhattan," he writes, "is the 20th century's Rosetta Stone . . . occupied by architectural mutations (Central Park, the Skyscraper), utopian fragments (Rockefeller Center, the U.N. Building), and irrational phenomena (Radio City Music Hall)." Koolhaas interprets and reinterprets the dynamic relationship between architecture and culture in a number of telling episodes of New York's history, including the imposition of the Manhattan grid, the creation of Coney Island, and the development of the skyscraper. Delirious New York is also packed with intriguing and fun facts and illustrated with witty watercolors and quirky archival drawings, photographs, postcards, and maps. The spirit of this visionary investigation of Manhattan equals the energy of the city itself.

作品目录

Contents ......Page 8

Introduction ......Page 10

Prehistory ......Page 14

Coney Island:The Technology of the Fantastic ......Page 30

The Double Life of Utopia:The Skyscraper ......Page 82

The Frontier in the Sky ......Page 83

The Skyscraper Theorists ......Page 111

The Lives of a Block:The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and the Empire State Building ......Page 133

Definitive Instability:The Downtown Athletic Club ......Page 153

How Perfect Perfection Can Be:The Creation of Rockefeller Center ......Page 162

The Talents of Raymond Hood ......Page 163

All the Rockefeller Centers ......Page 179

Radio City Music Hall:The Fun Never Sets ......Page 209

Kremlin on Fifth Avenue ......Page 221

2 Postscripts ......Page 231

Europeans :Biuer!Dali and Le Corbusier Conquer New York ......Page 236

Postmortem ......Page 284

Appendix: A Fictional Conclusion ......Page 293

Notes ......Page 312

Acknowledgments ......Page 316