Riverine: Architecture and Rivers

Edited book based on a conference run with Gerald Adler in 2014.

Human settlements may be broadly divided between inland ones often located on high ground, such as the hill towns of Urbino and Jerusalem, those of inland plains such as Brasilia and Novosibirsk, and those located on waterways or rivers close to the sea, which form by far the great majority of cities. In this new volume we concentrate on the latter, and seek to tease out and explore architectural, planning, artistic and literary backgrounds to cities as diverse as Ahmedabad, Amsterdam, Isfahan, London, New York, Paris, Rome and Shanghai; that is, we are interested in human settlements whose origins depend upon rivers. And not just the cities proper, but also their hinterlands, or more precisely their riverine conditions up and downstream of their urban centres.

This book investigates the relationship between architecture and rivers at a number of scales, from the geographical/topographical, through the urban/infrastructural, down to that of the individual building or space. Here, we examine the interface between terrain and water through the techniques and cultures of landscape, urban, architectural and material history and design, and through cross-cultural studies in art, literature, as well as social and cultural history