If we think of "transit areas" as airport lounges, train-station waiting rooms and subways--spaces always in temporary use, and inherently associated with flexibility and mobility--"Transit Areas" suggests that more and more cities now match that description. These case studies cover urban transformations in Eastern Europe since the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Ever increasingly, Western cities are affected by international competition for business and exurban competition for residential life. Some have fortified themselves by developing unmistakable profiles--brands and business communities based on specific economic expertise. IBA Urban Redevelopment 2010, an innovative project established by Saxony-Anhalt in the face of urban attrition there, here turns its attention to political approaches for promoting those distinctive urban identities, taking as examples communities such as Magdeburg, Newcastle, Lutherstadt, Wittenberg and Santiago de...

In the process of renovating Walter Gropius's seminal 1926 Bauhaus building in Dessau, Germany, which was added to UNESCO's World Heritage list in 1996, architectural plans were unearthed among sheaves of long-forgotten paperwork, door handles discovered in the basement and original windows found in a greenhouse. This icon of Modernism and brick-and-mortar manifesto of Bauhaus ideas has always been regarded as a revolution in twentieth century architecture--not merely as the formal, architectonic expression of Modernist ideals, but as a laboratory for the technical innovations in building...

Los Angeles and New York are ever more crammed with domestic and international migrants; Hartford, St. Louis, Gary, Baltimore and Flint are ever lonelier. This pattern of growth in urban supercenters and flight from midland cities is not just an American phenomenon. The pioneering German project "IBA Urban Redevelopment 2010" begins from the premise that our present methods of urban planning will prove inadequate for the long-term demands of shrinking cities. How can new instruments be developed? What disciplines should be involved? The fifth IBA title on this topic presents the current tools...

What role should a city's historic architecture play in its future? In areas facing demographic shifts towards lower populations and, in a vicious cycle, economic slowdown--in the European and American heartlands--the question is crucial. And any answer requires innovative methods of preservation for monuments and historic buildings, beyond the current standards. Ideas for the reevaluation of structures at hand, for subsequent discourse, and for preservation itself are illustrated here with cases from the European cities of Quedlinburg, Halle-Neustadt, Le Havre, Ljubljana and Novi Beograd....

The new urban elite live a lifestyle that benefits from and heavily depends on the service economy, a development with potential consequences for architecture and urban planning. "Serve City" explores this latest challenge to the city via an Australian study: the development of an urban-planning strategy for a new service site in Sydney where information and communication technologies play decisive roles in the plan.

Cell phones, automatic teller machines and the Internet have incontrovertibly become part of our daily lives, indistinguishable from other components of our habitual everyday activity. Life does not seem to have been fundamentally changed by these hi-tech, information-giving tools of convenience--or has it? Have we, unawares, become accustomed to a new way of living? And how can designers make creative use of these new digital possibilities? This publication of the Fourth International Bauhaus Kolleg--a year-long thematic graduate session run by the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation--offers...

Should the Director's House Gropius in Dessau, a masterpiece of Modernism, be rebuilt? Should an attempt be made to continue the traditions of Bauhaus? What role do modern principles play in today's architecture? What can be expected from alternative approaches such as manipulation or an entirely new design? These and other questions are examined here--through numerous black and white images and two DVDs--in order to continue the debate concerning the Director's House that was destroyed during the Second World War.

When the public coffers are low, the burden for social policy and urban planning falls more to citizens, and community apathy or simply lack of involvement can have dire consequences. Addressing this globally crucial issue is the second volume in a series from the International Building Exhibition (IBA), an initiative helmed by the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation--housed in Walter Gropius's former studio--and exploring urban redevelopment in a number of German cities. The aim is that these pilot programs will provide practical models for worldwide urban research and design by 2010. Here, both local...

The International Building Exhibition (IBA), which works to build up practical urban-redevelopment knowledge, has its offices in the refurbished rooms of Walter Gropius's former building studio at the Bauhaus in Dessau. "The Other Cities," the IBA's third book, considers responses to its innovative planning work, revitalizing small and midsized cities.