Kim Dovey Chapter Summary

Book Review

BECOMING PLACES Urbanism/Architecture/Identity/Power

Kim Dovey

ISBN: 978-0-415-41637-5

201 pp. Paperback

Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, London and New York, 2010

Kim Dovey, the author of the book, is currently working at the University of Melbourne as professor of architecture and urban design. He has written two other books and they all are focused on social issues on urban design and architecture. This book was written mostly in the inner-city suburb of Fitzroy.

Becoming Places is providing extensive information on how to create change positively from space to place and the content of the book brings positive impact on issues and explains how to solve them. The book consists

Dovey talks of the role of the architecture engaging in an imaginative way with our need of status, sexuality, security and immortality, our fears of violence, death, basically every aspect of life one has. According to the author, architecture is involved with social of arts and it is found the most aesthetic of professions. He talks of the key role of architects and how they design places figuring out the public interest; explains their role is to render the public imagination with a professional vision to create a place. In Chapter 4, ‘Limits of Critical Architecture’, explaining the ways how an architecture facing political, economic, and social aspects of life; how the operation area of critical architecture practices works out was surveyed. In Chapter 5, ‘’Slippery Characters’ (co-authored by Stephen Wood and Ian Woodcock) is about how place identity is being perceived, generated by investigation on in two old and two new Australian suburbs. There are great examples of urban designs in this

The case study analysis on Yogyakarta and Indonesia were given to explain how informal sector based on informal economies and when the formal system cannot accommodate need for shelter, the informal system fills the demand. The concept of how informal urbanism creates a foundation to change ghetto to appropriate housing and sheltered possession is vastly explained in this chapter. Kricak and Sidomulyo's morphology and spatial structure were given as the most constant part example for the urban assemblage. In Chapter 7, ‘Urbanizing Architecture’ explores the work of Rem Koolhaas. It was examined that Koolhaas use interior designs like exterior designs at times. This concept is creating more open and smooth networks of public spaces rather than closed private spaces. It was explained that Koolhaas confronts social reproduction practices, how he is trying to break architectural doctrines through his work. His works are defined as challenging. In this chapter some of the Koolhaas/OMA completed projects, such as school, house and library are