The Architecture of Public Space

468 pages

This new book by Labics, one of Italy's leading architectural firms, is devoted to the country's architecture of public space. Galleries, loggias, porticoes, steps, and courtyards, are the elements that characterize Italy's historic towns and cities-and that make the experience of its public space so intense. Yet the volume does not feature new designs by Labics themselves: rather, Maria Claudia Clemente, Francesco Isidori, and their collaborators set out to explore historic spaces, to analyze their histories and typologies, and to document and describe them through newly taken photographs, plans, and diagrams, treating them as contemporary artifacts.