Cracking the code of the ideal city

摘要

Anyone who reads the introduction to this book is likely to be hooked. Architect and teacher James Madge recalls his first visit to Sabbioneta, near Mantua in the plain of Lombardy, on a day of dense fog in January 1988. In such conditions it was impossible to form an impression of the city as a whole: 'Instead, each incident of its architecture appeared in succession as an isolated and memorably insistent presence.' As Madge wound his way through the streets, the overall atmosphere seemed 'distinctly uncanny if not bordering on the insane'. It sounds like a sequence from an Andrei Tarkovsky film. Don't you want to read more?