Hidden cities, hidden longings
By: Nancy Wolf ; Karen A. Franck ; [introd. by Peter Blake]
Contributors: Franck, Karen A
Series: Art & design monograph; Art and design monographs
Publisher: Academy Editions; Distributed to the trade in the USA by National Book Network, Inc.
Published: 1996
Place of publication: London; Lanham, Md
Language: eng
Number of pages: 128
Subjects: Wolf, Nancy, -- 1942-; Artists -- United States -- Interviews; Architecture and society
Other titles: Nancy Wolf
Description: In the latest of our Art & Design Monograph series, American artist Nancy Wolf leads the reader through her life and her art, from her earliest work, when she first began commenting on architecture and society, to her most recent drawings, which pose compelling alternatives to the anonymous modern cityscape. Wolf vividly portrays the coldness and sterility of modernism, the superficiality of postmodernism, and the possibilities for change in deconstructivism.

She has integrated her pointed critiques of these architectural movements with her own experiences - of alienation in a new urban renewal area in Washington, DC, of the urban devastation of New York in the 1970s and 80s, and of the warmth and intimacy of traditional communities in Africa and Asia.

Wolf's message is clear: contemporary Western architecture and planning have lost sight of people. Cities, buildings and public spaces leave inhabitants disconnected from each other and from the places where they live and work.
Notes: Based on transcribed conversations between Nancy Wolf and Karen A. Franck, recorded at Wolf's studio, May-September, 1995

Includes bibliographical references (p. 127)
Table of contents: title: Foreword; title: Drawing the dreams, built and felt; title: Finding a perspective; title: Modernism; title: Urban despair; title: Transition remembered; title: Postmodernism; title: Deconstructivism; title: Suspended dreams; title: Chronology