ABSTRACT

Riverscapes are the main arteries of the world’s largest cities, and have, for millennia, been the lifeblood of the urban communities that have developed around them. These human settlements – given life through the space of the local waterscape – soon developed into ritualised spaces that sought to harness the dynamism of the watercourse and create the local architectural landscape. Theorised via a sophisticated understanding of history, space, culture, and ecology, this collection of wonderful and deliberately wide-ranging case studies, from Early Modern Italy to the contemporary Bengal Delta, investigates the culture of human interaction with rivers and the nature of urban topography. Riverine explores the ways in which architecture and urban planning have imbued cultural landscapes with ritual and structural meaning.

chapter |12 pages

Introduction

chapter |13 pages

The amphibian townscape

section Section One|56 pages

Ensembles

chapter |10 pages

Ancient waterfront palaces

A case study of the Great Palace at Amarna

chapter |11 pages

The spectacle of power on the Po

Ferrara and its riverfront during the Renaissance

chapter |9 pages

From Bishops’ Inns to private palaces

The evolution of the Strand in London from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century

chapter |8 pages

Revealing the lost rivers to re-shape Paris

Recovering a lost tributary of the Seine in south-eastern Paris

part Excursus One|9 pages

Waterloo Sunrise

part Excursus Two|7 pages

Along the river Temo in Bosa, Sardinia

section Section Two|60 pages

Topoi

chapter |13 pages

Building rivers

How the aqueducts of Roman Britain furthered connections between towns and their riverine settings

chapter |10 pages

The Sabarmati in Ahmedabad, India

The story of a city told through its river

chapter |17 pages

Villeneuve d’Ascq

A French new town built around lakes

part Excursus Three|8 pages

Fleeting memories

section Section Three|69 pages

Meanings

chapter |14 pages

Sauf aux riverains

The riverine memorial of Georges-Henri Pingusson

chapter |14 pages

Water and memory

Tracing Nantes’ watermarks

chapter |14 pages

Sensing the Swan

chapter |12 pages

Nature and artifice

Nadav Kander’s Yangtze, The Long River

part Excursus Four|13 pages

Metropolitan riverine