Contemporary Authors

• Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 2000
• Louis Kahn's Situated Modernism Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2001
• Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives Harper (New York, NY), 2017

1. Welcome to your world : how the built environment shapes our lives LCCN 2017385610 Type of material Book Personal name Goldhagen, Sarah Williams, author. Main title Welcome to your world : how the built environment shapes our lives / Sarah Williams Goldhagen. Edition First edition. Published/Produced New York, NY : Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2017] ©2017 Description xxxiv, 347 pages : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 24 cm ISBN 9780061957802 (hardcover) 0061957801 (hardcover) CALL NUMBER NA2542.4 .G64 2017 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms 2. Louis Kahn's situated modernism LCCN 00043677 Type of material Book Personal name Goldhagen, Sarah Williams. Main title Louis Kahn's situated modernism / Sarah Williams Goldhagen. Published/Created New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, c2001. Description 277 p., [16] p. of plates : ill. (some col.) ; 27 cm. ISBN 0300077866 (alk. paper) CALL NUMBER NA737.K32 G65 2001 FT MEADE Copy 2 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE 3. Anxious modernisms : experimentation in postwar architectural culture LCCN 00110189 Type of material Book Main title Anxious modernisms : experimentation in postwar architectural culture / edited by Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Rej́ean Legault ; [essays by] Maristella Casciato ... [et al.]. Published/Created Montréal : Canadian Centre for Architecture ; Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, c2000. Description 335 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. ISBN 0262072084 (MIT) CALL NUMBER NA682.M63 A59 2000 FT MEADE Copy 2 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE

• Sarah Williams Goldhagen C.V. - http://sarahwilliamsgoldhagen.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/SarahWilliamsGoldhagenCV_2016.10.pdf

  1
  of 11

  SARAH WILLIAMS GOLDHAGEN236 East 111thStreet #1NewYork, NY 10029Phone: 646-896-1696Email: sarah@goldhagen.comSarah Williams Goldhagen writes and lectures about architecture and landscapes, cities and urban design,infrastructure and public art --all the things that constitute the built environment. In 2015 she won the prestigious Jesse H. Neal Award for Best Commentary for her criticism in Architectural Record. Now a contributing editor atArt in America andArchitectural Record, she was the New Republic’s architecture critic for many years, and taught for a decade at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Goldhagen has been an invited guest lecturer at numerous universities and colleges. Heressays have appeared in scholarly and general-interest publications in the US and abroad, from Art in Americaand theNew York Timesto the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians,Giornale dell’Architetturaand L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui.CURRENT POSITIONSWriterand CriticContributing Editor, Architectural RecordContributing Editor, Art in AmericaCURRENT BOOKS“Welcome to YourWorld: Experiencing the Built Environment”Harper/CollinsPublishers, April 2017How the new scientific understanding of cognition could, should, and is changingthe design of our built environment.“Critical Criteria: Judging the Built Environment”Criticism ofnew buildings, landscapes, and urban interventions around the world, and why it matters
  2SELECTED PUBLICATIONSBooksLouis Kahn’s Situated Modernism. Yale University Press, 2001. Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture. CCA and MIT Press, 2001,edited with Réjean Legault.Articles, Op-Eds,and Essays in Books“Alvar Aalto’s Embodied Rationalism.” In Alvar Aalto and America.Yale University Press, 2012,Edited byStanford Anderson, Gail Fenske, and David Fixler. “Alvar Aalto’s Astonishing Rationalism.” In A Field Guide to a New Metafield: Bridging the Humanities-Neurosciences Divide. University of Chicago Press, 2011,Edited by Barbara Maria Stafford.“Architecture as Vocation: Urban Vision in the Architecture of Moshe Safdie.”In Global Citizen: The Architecture of Moshe Safdie.” Skira, 2010, edited by Donald Albrecht.“Positioning Positions.” Positions, 2008.“Snapshots: Monumentality inPostwar Architecture”In Architecture between Spectacle and Use.Clark Studies in the Visual Arts and Yale University Press, 2008,ed. Anthony Vidler.“Something to Talk About: Modernism, Discourse, Style,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians,2005.“Showing Cities What Planning Can Accomplish: Techniques for the Production of Locality in Josep Luis Sert’s Peabody Terrace.”Harvard Design Magazine, Fall 2005. Josep Luis Sert: Fifty Years of Architecture,eds. Miró Foundation and Josep Maria Rovira, Spring 2005.“Critical Themes of Postwar Modernism.” In Anxious Modernisms, edited by Goldhagen and Legault.“Freedom’s Domiciles: Three Projects by Alison and Peter Smithson.” In Anxious Modernisms, edited by Goldhagen and Legault.
  3“Reconceptualizing the Modern.” In Anxious Modernisms, edited by Goldhagen and Legault.“Looking Back at Neutra’s Windshield House.” Richard Neutra’s Windshield House, ed. Dietrich Neumann, Harvard University Graduate School of Design and Yale University Press, 2001 (published under name Sarah Ksiazek)."David Geiger," "Georgia Dome," "Pontiac Silverdome," "Stadiums." In L’art de l’ingénieur: Constructeur, entrepeneur, inventeur,ed. Antoine Picon. Editions du Centre Georges Pompidou, 1997 (published under name Sarah Ksiazek).“Critiques of Liberal Individualism: Louis Kahn’s Civic Projects, 1947-1957.” Assemblage, December 1996 (published under name Sarah Ksiazek).“Architectural Culture in the Fifties: Louis Kahn and the National Assembly Complex in Dhaka.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, December 1993 (published under name Sarah Ksiazek).“James Stirling: Circumstances Against Style.” Newsline, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, November 1990 (published under name Sarah Ksiazek).“Detail and Abstraction: The Inevitable Task.” In Detail: The Special Task, catalogue essay with contributions by Helen Searing, M. Christine Boyer, and Patricia Conway. A.I.R. Gallery, New York, 1984(published under names Sarah Williams).Criticism“Deconstruction Site” (review of Diller, Scofidio + Renfro’s Eli and Edythe Broad Museum, Los Angeles), Art in America, December 2015.“Concrete Future” (review of “Unfinished” Exhibition and Met Breuer opening), Art in America, June 2016.“One World Trade Center” Architectural Record, 2015.“The Blob That Ate Wilshire Boulevard” Architectural Record, 2015(Zumthor’s LACMA).“Critique: Chicago Architecture Biennial” Architectural Record, 2015.“Rem’s Rules” (on Koolhaas’ curatorial program for the Venice Architecture Biennale). Architectural Record, 2014.
  4“The Great Architect Rebellion of 2014” (on the exhibitions in the national pavilions at the Venice Architecture Biennale), The New Republic,2014.“Frank Lloyd Wright was a Genius at Building Houses, but His Ideas for Cities Were Terrible” The New Republic, 2014.“The Winner of the 2014 Pritzker Prize is Revolutionizing Architecture” The New Republic, 2014.“Crashing the Boy’s Club: How Far Have Women Architects Come?” Architectural Record, 2013.“Yes, Denise Scott Brown Deservesa Pritzker Prize” The New Republic, 2013.“Toyo Ito’s Pritzker Prize” The New Republic, 2013.“The Revolution at Your Community Library” The New Republic, 2013.The local branch library, a new building type with an old-fashioned name, is our best hope to reconstitute the public realm. Inspired the Charles Revson Foundation’s support of the Center for an Urban Future’s influential “Re-Envisioning New York’s Branch Libraries” report (2014) and CUF/Architectural League of New York’s “Re-Envisioning Branch Libraries” Design Competition.“Architecture is More Than Just Buildings: In Remembrance of Ada Louise Huxtable” The New Republic, 2013.”Seeing the Building for the Trees” The New York Times, Sunday Review, 2012.Metaphors of embodied cognition in new buildings by Jürgen Mayer H., Mount Fuji Architects, NADAAA, Toyo Ito, and Junya Ishigami.“A Vision Beyond Rebuilding” The New York Times,Room for Debate.Shrinking cities and the model of Leinefelde-Worbis in East Germany.“The Beauty and Inhumanity of Oscar Niemeyer’s Architecture” The New Republic, 2012.“Living High” The New Republic, 2012.New models for high density residential living from Asia, features the work of WOHA.“Death By Nostalgia” Op-Ed, The New York Times, 2011.Why historic preservation can’t and shouldn’t substitute for urban planning.“In Praise of Sea Ranch, A Sublimely Beautiful Example of Environmental Architecture” The New Republic, 2011.“Valuable China” The New Republic, 2011. China’s urbanization has problems, but we can still learn from what they’re doing right.
  5“How Steve Jobs Turned Design Into a Necessity” The New Republic, 2011.“When Did Architecture’s Top Prize Become So Predictable and Boring?” The New Republic, 2011.The Pritzker Prize Committee needs to take a look at the world.“On Background: Was Architecture Really a Non-factor in Byzantine Art?”, The New Republic, 2010.“Tarnished Stirling” The New Republic, 2010.On “Notes from the Archive: James Fraser Stirling, Architect and Teacher,” Exhibition curated by Anthony Vidler at the Paul Mellon Center for British Art, Yale University.“Stick Stuck” The New Republic, 2009.On “Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling,” at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and the real promise of prefabricated architecture.“Park Here” The New Republic, 2010.On the importance of Great Urban Parks in Chicago, St. Louis, and NewYork City.Winner, Best Article of the Year, American Society of Landscape Architects.“Moshe Safdie” Design Observer, 2010.“Only Skin and Bones” The New Republic, 2007.On the exhibition “Skin + Bones: Parallel Practices in Architecture and Fashion” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.“Place of Grace: Peter Zumthor”The New Republic, 2009.No one does experiential architecture better.“Stopped Making Sense”The New Republic, 2008.SANAA’s Failed New Museum of Contemporary Art in NewYork.“Making Waves: EnriqueMiralles, the Real Frank Gehry”The New Republic, 2008.Miralles’ Scottish Parliament and parks in Barcelonademonstrate his lasting brilliance.“American Collapse”The New Republic, 2007.The alarming decrepitude of American infrastructure.Reprinted in U.S. Infrastructure: The Reference Shelf, edited by Paul McCaffrey, H. W. Wilson, 2011.“Dorm Art”The New Republic, 2006.Student centers by Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects and Morphosisshow a new attitude among architects to landscape.“Extra-Large”The New Republic, 2006.
  6Rem Koolhaas’ brilliant architecture and atrocious urbanism.“For the Birds: Santiago Calatrava’s Moment” The New Republic, 2006.The Ascendance of Kitsch.“Putting Some Pizzazz Back in the Skyline” Op-Ed, New York Times, February 15, 2003.“Our Degraded Public Realm: The Multiple Failures of Architectural Education” Chronicle Review(a weekly publication of the Chronicle of Higher Education), cover story, January 2003.“Kool Houses, Kold Cities” American Prospect, June 2002.“Boring Buildings: Why is American Architecture So Bad ?” TheAmerican Prospect, December2001.“Bringing the Mall Back Home” Architectural Record, September 1985 (published under Sarah Williams”.BookReviewsMark Wigley, White Walls, Designer Dresses, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 1997.Michael J. Lewis and Eugene Johnson, Drawn from the Source: The Travel Sketches of Louis I. Kahn, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 1997.Meredith Clausen, Pietro Belluschi, Modern American Architect, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians,December 1995.Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History, GSD News,Fall 1995.Lawrence J. Vale, Architecture, Power, and National Identity, Design Book Review, Summer/Fall, 1993.Dolores Hayden, Redesigning the American Dream: The Future of Housing, Work and Family Life, Architectural Record, 1984.“The International Style in Israel: From Europe’s Utopian Dreams to the Pragmatism of Palestine,” Architectural Record, 1985.LECTURES, CONFERENCES, APPEARANCES(selected)Inaugural Lecturer, Vincent Scully Series, University of Miami, fall 2017.
  7Speaker, Equality in Design series, Yale University School of Architecture, November 2016.“Dream Big: The Future of Public Libraries”, Cambridge Public Library Foundation, Cambridge, MA, October 2016.Art, Architecture, and Design Keynote: Sarah Williams Goldhagen with Moshe Safdie, Boston Book Festival, 2015.Crystal Bridges Museum, Bentonville, Arkansas, 2015.Panelist on AIANY Global Dialogues, “Viral Voices IV: Storytelling: Media, Representation, and Narrative” Center for Architecture, New York, 2015.“How to Judge a Building: Critical Criteria,” Fay Jones School of Architecture Dean’s Lecture Series, 2015.Speaker, “Neuro Logics: Architecture, Starting with the Brain” symposium, School of Architecture, University of Toronto, 2014. “Re-envisioning New York’s Branch Libraries” panelist, 2014, conference sponsored by Center for an Urban Future, the Revson Foundation, and the Architectural League.“Pritzker Winner Finds Inspiration in Air, Wind, and Water,” WBUR, 2013 (at www.wbur.org).Panelist, Discussion onFritz Lang’s “M”, Forum on Law, Culture, and Society, New York, 2011.“Metaphors We Live In.” École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, 2011. “Metaphors in Architecture.” MIT School of Architecture lecture series, 2011.“Fritz Lang’s Urban Vision: M.” Forum on Law, Culture, and Society at Fordham University, 2011.“Rethinking Kahn.” City College of New York School of Architecture, Dean’s lecture series, 2011.“Moderators of Change: Architecture that Helps,” conversation with Andres Lepik, Van Alen Books, 2010.Moderator, “Civic Infrastructure” panel, Northeastern University School of Architecture, 2009, with Marilyn Jordan Taylor and Charles Waldheim.“A Bridge to Somewhere: the Case for a National Infrastructure Policy.” Architecture,2009.
  8Article on “American Collapse,” The New Republic, 2007.“A Conversation with Critics: Imagining the Future of the City,” panel discussion with Jonathan Glancey, Paul Goldberger, and Blair Kamin, moderated by Edward Lifson, in conjunction with Chicago Architecture Foundation’s Visionary Citiesseries.“Odessey,” Chicago Public Radio, February 2005.“The Museum of Modern Art’s Other Tradition”, “When Modern was Modern” symposium, Yale University School of Architecture, 2004.School of Architecture, SUNY Buffalo, 2004.“Public eye: Sarah Williams Goldhagen saysAmericans would get better architecture if our schools taught us how to look at it.” Q&A Interview conducted by Martin Pederson, Metropolis, 2003.“The Independent Group and its Legacy,” Symposium on the Independent Group and its Legacy,” organized by Anne Massey and Nigel Whiteley, Tate Britain, London, March 23-24, 2007.Dean’s lecture series, School of Architecture, University of Texas at Austin, March 2006.Dean’s lecture series, School of Architecture, Rice University, March 2006.“William Jordy –A Commemorative Symposium,” Department of Art and Art History, Brown University, March 2006.Keynote Speaker, Annual Meeting, Society of Architectural Historians, Southwest Chapter, Fort Worth, Texas, October 2005.“Snapshots: Monumentality in Postwar Architecture,” in“Architecture between Spectacle and Use,” symposium organized by Anthony Vidler, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, Spring 2005.“The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to ModernArchitectural History,” Session Chair, Society of Architecture Historians, Annual Conference, Vancouver, 2005.“Eero Saarinen,Formgiver of the American Century,” School of Architecture, Yale University, March-April, 2005. “Constructing Modernismat MoMA in the 1930s”in “When Modern was Modern” conference,School of Architecture, Yale University, October 2004.Investigation of MoMA’s construction of a more inclusive modernism after “The International Style” exhibition of 1932.
  10Architectural History, Department of Art, Vassar College, 1993-1994.Architectural History, School of Architecture, Columbia University, 1991.Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University, 1988-1991.CoursesArchitectural Theory and Practice After 1960; Seminar, Wellesley College, 2007.Modern American Architecture and Urbanism; Lecture, Wellesley College, 2006.The Architecture and Urbanism of Louis Kahn; Seminar, Wellesley College, 2006; Harvard University, 1996; University of Texas at Austin, 1995.Modernism/Modernity; Seminar, Harvard University, 2005.The Dimensions of Modernism; Lecture, Harvard University, 2002.Buildings, Texts, and Contexts: Case Studies in Modern Architecture; Lecture, Harvard University, 1995-2005 (team taught with K. Michael Hays 1995-2001).Reconceptualizing the Modern (previously entitled The Dissolution of the Modern Movement and the Birth of Team 10); Lecture, Harvard University, 1996-2001.Methodologies of Architectural History; Ph.D. Seminar, Harvard University, 1999 (co-taught with Alice Jarrard, Department of Art and Architectural History).Ideologies of Theory: Architecture and Culture After World War II; Seminar, Harvard University and University of Texas at Austin, 1994-1995.Architecture of the Twentieth Century; Lecture, University of Texas at Austin, 1994-1995.Modern Architecture 1850-1930; Lecture, Vassar College, 1993.The Spread of Modernism, Modernist Critiques: Architecture 1930-1970; Lecture, Vassar College, 1994.Art and Architecture from Prehistory to Postmodernism; Lecture, Vassar College, 1993-1994 (team-taught by the Department of Art).Art Humanities(Monuments of Western Art and Architecture); Lecture/Seminar; Columbia University, 1988-1992.
  11SERVICE, CONSULTING, AND ADVISINGJury, Kohn Pederson Fox student travel award, 2016.Jury, Womens’s Design Awards, sponsored by Architectural Record(2013-present).Reviewer, Yale University Press, MIT Press, University of Minnesota Press, 2010-1995.Reviewer,Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 2000-2009.Member, Committee for Philip Johnson Award, Society of Architectural Historians, 2007.Organizer, Interdepartmental Faculty Colloquium in Architectural History and Theory, Harvard University, 1996-2004.Consultant, Kansas City Design Forum, Kansas City, Missouri, 2004.Consulted the Architect Selection Committee, Museum of Science, Boston, 2002.Consultant to the Architect Selection Committee, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 1999-2000.EDUCATIONPh.D. Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University, 1995.Specialties: Modern and Contemporary Architecture and Contemporary TheoryM.A. Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University, 1987.B.A. Department of English and American Literature, Brown University, 1982.With Honors; Minor in Art History.

  2SELECTED PUBLICATIONSBooksLouis Kahn’s Situated Modernism. Yale University Press, 2001. Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture. CCA and MIT Press, 2001,edited with Réjean Legault.Articles, Op-Eds,and Essays in Books“Alvar Aalto’s Embodied Rationalism.” In Alvar Aalto and America.Yale University Press, 2012,Edited byStanford Anderson, Gail Fenske, and David Fixler. “Alvar Aalto’s Astonishing Rationalism.” In A Field Guide to a New Metafield: Bridging the Humanities-Neurosciences Divide. University of Chicago Press, 2011,Edited by Barbara Maria Stafford.“Architecture as Vocation: Urban Vision in the Architecture of Moshe Safdie.”In Global Citizen: The Architecture of Moshe Safdie.” Skira, 2010, edited by Donald Albrecht.“Positioning Positions.” Positions, 2008.“Snapshots: Monumentality inPostwar Architecture”In Architecture between Spectacle and Use.Clark Studies in the Visual Arts and Yale University Press, 2008,ed. Anthony Vidler.“Something to Talk About: Modernism, Discourse, Style,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians,2005.“Showing Cities What Planning Can Accomplish: Techniques for the Production of Locality in Josep Luis Sert’s Peabody Terrace.”Harvard Design Magazine, Fall 2005. Josep Luis Sert: Fifty Years of Architecture,eds. Miró Foundation and Josep Maria Rovira, Spring 2005.“Critical Themes of Postwar Modernism.” In Anxious Modernisms, edited by Goldhagen and Legault.“Freedom’s Domiciles: Three Projects by Alison and Peter Smithson.” In Anxious Modernisms, edited by Goldhagen and Legault.
  3“Reconceptualizing the Modern.” In Anxious Modernisms, edited by Goldhagen and Legault.“Looking Back at Neutra’s Windshield House.” Richard Neutra’s Windshield House, ed. Dietrich Neumann, Harvard University Graduate School of Design and Yale University Press, 2001 (published under name Sarah Ksiazek)."David Geiger," "Georgia Dome," "Pontiac Silverdome," "Stadiums." In L’art de l’ingénieur: Constructeur, entrepeneur, inventeur,ed. Antoine Picon. Editions du Centre Georges Pompidou, 1997 (published under name Sarah Ksiazek).“Critiques of Liberal Individualism: Louis Kahn’s Civic Projects, 1947-1957.” Assemblage, December 1996 (published under name Sarah Ksiazek).“Architectural Culture in the Fifties: Louis Kahn and the National Assembly Complex in Dhaka.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, December 1993 (published under name Sarah Ksiazek).“James Stirling: Circumstances Against Style.” Newsline, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, November 1990 (published under name Sarah Ksiazek).“Detail and Abstraction: The Inevitable Task.” In Detail: The Special Task, catalogue essay with contributions by Helen Searing, M. Christine Boyer, and Patricia Conway. A.I.R. Gallery, New York, 1984(published under names Sarah Williams).Criticism“Deconstruction Site” (review of Diller, Scofidio + Renfro’s Eli and Edythe Broad Museum, Los Angeles), Art in America, December 2015.“Concrete Future” (review of “Unfinished” Exhibition and Met Breuer opening), Art in America, June 2016.“One World Trade Center” Architectural Record, 2015.“The Blob That Ate Wilshire Boulevard” Architectural Record, 2015(Zumthor’s LACMA).“Critique: Chicago Architecture Biennial” Architectural Record, 2015.“Rem’s Rules” (on Koolhaas’ curatorial program for the Venice Architecture Biennale). Architectural Record, 2014.
  4“The Great Architect Rebellion of 2014” (on the exhibitions in the national pavilions at the Venice Architecture Biennale), The New Republic,2014.“Frank Lloyd Wright was a Genius at Building Houses, but His Ideas for Cities Were Terrible” The New Republic, 2014.“The Winner of the 2014 Pritzker Prize is Revolutionizing Architecture” The New Republic, 2014.“Crashing the Boy’s Club: How Far Have Women Architects Come?” Architectural Record, 2013.“Yes, Denise Scott Brown Deservesa Pritzker Prize” The New Republic, 2013.“Toyo Ito’s Pritzker Prize” The New Republic, 2013.“The Revolution at Your Community Library” The New Republic, 2013.The local branch library, a new building type with an old-fashioned name, is our best hope to reconstitute the public realm. Inspired the Charles Revson Foundation’s support of the Center for an Urban Future’s influential “Re-Envisioning New York’s Branch Libraries” report (2014) and CUF/Architectural League of New York’s “Re-Envisioning Branch Libraries” Design Competition.“Architecture is More Than Just Buildings: In Remembrance of Ada Louise Huxtable” The New Republic, 2013.”Seeing the Building for the Trees” The New York Times, Sunday Review, 2012.Metaphors of embodied cognition in new buildings by Jürgen Mayer H., Mount Fuji Architects, NADAAA, Toyo Ito, and Junya Ishigami.“A Vision Beyond Rebuilding” The New York Times,Room for Debate.Shrinking cities and the model of Leinefelde-Worbis in East Germany.“The Beauty and Inhumanity of Oscar Niemeyer’s Architecture” The New Republic, 2012.“Living High” The New Republic, 2012.New models for high density residential living from Asia, features the work of WOHA.“Death By Nostalgia” Op-Ed, The New York Times, 2011.Why historic preservation can’t and shouldn’t substitute for urban planning.“In Praise of Sea Ranch, A Sublimely Beautiful Example of Environmental Architecture” The New Republic, 2011.“Valuable China” The New Republic, 2011. China’s urbanization has problems, but we can still learn from what they’re doing right.
  5“How Steve Jobs Turned Design Into a Necessity” The New Republic, 2011.“When Did Architecture’s Top Prize Become So Predictable and Boring?” The New Republic, 2011.The Pritzker Prize Committee needs to take a look at the world.“On Background: Was Architecture Really a Non-factor in Byzantine Art?”, The New Republic, 2010.“Tarnished Stirling” The New Republic, 2010.On “Notes from the Archive: James Fraser Stirling, Architect and Teacher,” Exhibition curated by Anthony Vidler at the Paul Mellon Center for British Art, Yale University.“Stick Stuck” The New Republic, 2009.On “Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling,” at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and the real promise of prefabricated architecture.“Park Here” The New Republic, 2010.On the importance of Great Urban Parks in Chicago, St. Louis, and NewYork City.Winner, Best Article of the Year, American Society of Landscape Architects.“Moshe Safdie” Design Observer, 2010.“Only Skin and Bones” The New Republic, 2007.On the exhibition “Skin + Bones: Parallel Practices in Architecture and Fashion” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.“Place of Grace: Peter Zumthor”The New Republic, 2009.No one does experiential architecture better.“Stopped Making Sense”The New Republic, 2008.SANAA’s Failed New Museum of Contemporary Art in NewYork.“Making Waves: EnriqueMiralles, the Real Frank Gehry”The New Republic, 2008.Miralles’ Scottish Parliament and parks in Barcelonademonstrate his lasting brilliance.“American Collapse”The New Republic, 2007.The alarming decrepitude of American infrastructure.Reprinted in U.S. Infrastructure: The Reference Shelf, edited by Paul McCaffrey, H. W. Wilson, 2011.“Dorm Art”The New Republic, 2006.Student centers by Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects and Morphosisshow a new attitude among architects to landscape.“Extra-Large”The New Republic, 2006.
  6Rem Koolhaas’ brilliant architecture and atrocious urbanism.“For the Birds: Santiago Calatrava’s Moment” The New Republic, 2006.The Ascendance of Kitsch.“Putting Some Pizzazz Back in the Skyline” Op-Ed, New York Times, February 15, 2003.“Our Degraded Public Realm: The Multiple Failures of Architectural Education” Chronicle Review(a weekly publication of the Chronicle of Higher Education), cover story, January 2003.“Kool Houses, Kold Cities” American Prospect, June 2002.“Boring Buildings: Why is American Architecture So Bad ?” TheAmerican Prospect, December2001.“Bringing the Mall Back Home” Architectural Record, September 1985 (published under Sarah Williams”.BookReviewsMark Wigley, White Walls, Designer Dresses, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 1997.Michael J. Lewis and Eugene Johnson, Drawn from the Source: The Travel Sketches of Louis I. Kahn, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 1997.Meredith Clausen, Pietro Belluschi, Modern American Architect, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians,December 1995.Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History, GSD News,Fall 1995.Lawrence J. Vale, Architecture, Power, and National Identity, Design Book Review, Summer/Fall, 1993.Dolores Hayden, Redesigning the American Dream: The Future of Housing, Work and Family Life, Architectural Record, 1984.“The International Style in Israel: From Europe’s Utopian Dreams to the Pragmatism of Palestine,” Architectural Record, 1985.LECTURES, CONFERENCES, APPEARANCES(selected)Inaugural Lecturer, Vincent Scully Series, University of Miami, fall 2017.
  7Speaker, Equality in Design series, Yale University School of Architecture, November 2016.“Dream Big: The Future of Public Libraries”, Cambridge Public Library Foundation, Cambridge, MA, October 2016.Art, Architecture, and Design Keynote: Sarah Williams Goldhagen with Moshe Safdie, Boston Book Festival, 2015.Crystal Bridges Museum, Bentonville, Arkansas, 2015.Panelist on AIANY Global Dialogues, “Viral Voices IV: Storytelling: Media, Representation, and Narrative” Center for Architecture, New York, 2015.“How to Judge a Building: Critical Criteria,” Fay Jones School of Architecture Dean’s Lecture Series, 2015.Speaker, “Neuro Logics: Architecture, Starting with the Brain” symposium, School of Architecture, University of Toronto, 2014. “Re-envisioning New York’s Branch Libraries” panelist, 2014, conference sponsored by Center for an Urban Future, the Revson Foundation, and the Architectural League.“Pritzker Winner Finds Inspiration in Air, Wind, and Water,” WBUR, 2013 (at www.wbur.org).Panelist, Discussion onFritz Lang’s “M”, Forum on Law, Culture, and Society, New York, 2011.“Metaphors We Live In.” École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, 2011. “Metaphors in Architecture.” MIT School of Architecture lecture series, 2011.“Fritz Lang’s Urban Vision: M.” Forum on Law, Culture, and Society at Fordham University, 2011.“Rethinking Kahn.” City College of New York School of Architecture, Dean’s lecture series, 2011.“Moderators of Change: Architecture that Helps,” conversation with Andres Lepik, Van Alen Books, 2010.Moderator, “Civic Infrastructure” panel, Northeastern University School of Architecture, 2009, with Marilyn Jordan Taylor and Charles Waldheim.“A Bridge to Somewhere: the Case for a National Infrastructure Policy.” Architecture,2009.
  8Article on “American Collapse,” The New Republic, 2007.“A Conversation with Critics: Imagining the Future of the City,” panel discussion with Jonathan Glancey, Paul Goldberger, and Blair Kamin, moderated by Edward Lifson, in conjunction with Chicago Architecture Foundation’s Visionary Citiesseries.“Odessey,” Chicago Public Radio, February 2005.“The Museum of Modern Art’s Other Tradition”, “When Modern was Modern” symposium, Yale University School of Architecture, 2004.School of Architecture, SUNY Buffalo, 2004.“Public eye: Sarah Williams Goldhagen saysAmericans would get better architecture if our schools taught us how to look at it.” Q&A Interview conducted by Martin Pederson, Metropolis, 2003.“The Independent Group and its Legacy,” Symposium on the Independent Group and its Legacy,” organized by Anne Massey and Nigel Whiteley, Tate Britain, London, March 23-24, 2007.Dean’s lecture series, School of Architecture, University of Texas at Austin, March 2006.Dean’s lecture series, School of Architecture, Rice University, March 2006.“William Jordy –A Commemorative Symposium,” Department of Art and Art History, Brown University, March 2006.Keynote Speaker, Annual Meeting, Society of Architectural Historians, Southwest Chapter, Fort Worth, Texas, October 2005.“Snapshots: Monumentality in Postwar Architecture,” in“Architecture between Spectacle and Use,” symposium organized by Anthony Vidler, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, Spring 2005.“The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to ModernArchitectural History,” Session Chair, Society of Architecture Historians, Annual Conference, Vancouver, 2005.“Eero Saarinen,Formgiver of the American Century,” School of Architecture, Yale University, March-April, 2005. “Constructing Modernismat MoMA in the 1930s”in “When Modern was Modern” conference,School of Architecture, Yale University, October 2004.Investigation of MoMA’s construction of a more inclusive modernism after “The International Style” exhibition of 1932.
  9Dean’s Lecture Series, School of Architecture, SUNY Buffalo, March 2004.“Kahn and His World,” at “Engaging Louis I. Kahn: A Legacy for the Future,” symposium sponsored by the Yale Center for British Art, the Yale University Art Gallery, and the Yale University School of Architecture, January 2004.School of Architecture, Technical University, Delft, the Netherlands, December 2003.School of Architecture (AHO), Oslo University, Norway, November 2003.Halverson Lecture on American Architecture, Department of Art and Art History, Wellesley College, May 2003.“Monumentality in Postwar Architecture,” in “Monuments to Be Reconsidered: The Raison d’Etre of the Modern Heritage” session, chaired by Maristella Casciato, Society of Architectural Historians annual meeting, 2003.“Trends in Contemporary Architecture,” Board of Trustees, Boston Museum of Science, 2003.Keynote speaker, New England/Society of Architectural Historians annual meeting, 2002.Dean’s Lecture series, School of Architecture, University of Toronto, 2002.Architecture Department Lecture Series, School of Architecture, Northeastern University, 2001.“Modernism and Post-Modernism in Late Twentieth-Century Architecture,” architecture session, Modernist Studies Association, annual conference, 2000.“Reconceptualizing the Modern: Postwar Architectural Culture 1944-1968”Organized a three-stage initiative to open up the field of postwar architectural culture. The first in spring 1998 was a public conference with twenty-four panelists held over two days at the Harvard Design School. The second in spring 1999 was an intensive two-day follow-up workshop with eighteen participants at Canadian Centre for Architecture. The third was the publication of Anxious Modernisms. Sponsored by Harvard Design School, Canadian Centre for Architecture, and Graham Foundation. TEACHINGPOSITIONSHistory or Art, Wellesley College, 2006-2007.Architectural Historyand Theory, Harvard Design School, 1995-2006.Architectural Historyand Theory, School of Architecture, University of Texas at Austin, 1994-1995.
  10Architectural History, Department of Art, Vassar College, 1993-1994.Architectural History, School of Architecture, Columbia University, 1991.Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University, 1988-1991.CoursesArchitectural Theory and Practice After 1960; Seminar, Wellesley College, 2007.Modern American Architecture and Urbanism; Lecture, Wellesley College, 2006.The Architecture and Urbanism of Louis Kahn; Seminar, Wellesley College, 2006; Harvard University, 1996; University of Texas at Austin, 1995.Modernism/Modernity; Seminar, Harvard University, 2005.The Dimensions of Modernism; Lecture, Harvard University, 2002.Buildings, Texts, and Contexts: Case Studies in Modern Architecture; Lecture, Harvard University, 1995-2005 (team taught with K. Michael Hays 1995-2001).Reconceptualizing the Modern (previously entitled The Dissolution of the Modern Movement and the Birth of Team 10); Lecture, Harvard University, 1996-2001.Methodologies of Architectural History; Ph.D. Seminar, Harvard University, 1999 (co-taught with Alice Jarrard, Department of Art and Architectural History).Ideologies of Theory: Architecture and Culture After World War II; Seminar, Harvard University and University of Texas at Austin, 1994-1995.Architecture of the Twentieth Century; Lecture, University of Texas at Austin, 1994-1995.Modern Architecture 1850-1930; Lecture, Vassar College, 1993.The Spread of Modernism, Modernist Critiques: Architecture 1930-1970; Lecture, Vassar College, 1994.Art and Architecture from Prehistory to Postmodernism; Lecture, Vassar College, 1993-1994 (team-taught by the Department of Art).Art Humanities(Monuments of Western Art and Architecture); Lecture/Seminar; Columbia University, 1988-1992.
  11SERVICE, CONSULTING, AND ADVISINGJury, Kohn Pederson Fox student travel award, 2016.Jury, Womens’s Design Awards, sponsored by Architectural Record(2013-present).Reviewer, Yale University Press, MIT Press, University of Minnesota Press, 2010-1995.Reviewer,Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 2000-2009.Member, Committee for Philip Johnson Award, Society of Architectural Historians, 2007.Organizer, Interdepartmental Faculty Colloquium in Architectural History and Theory, Harvard University, 1996-2004.Consultant, Kansas City Design Forum, Kansas City, Missouri, 2004.Consulted the Architect Selection Committee, Museum of Science, Boston, 2002.Consultant to the Architect Selection Committee, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 1999-2000.EDUCATIONPh.D. Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University, 1995.Specialties: Modern and Contemporary Architecture and Contemporary TheoryM.A. Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University, 1987.B.A. Department of English and American Literature, Brown University, 1982.With Honors; Minor in Art History.

• HarperCollins - https://www.harpercollins.com/cr-124297/sarah-williams-goldhagen

  Sarah Williams Goldhagen

  Sarah Williams Goldhagen
  Biography
  Sarah Williams Goldhagen taught at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design for ten years and was the New Republic’s architecture critic until recently. Currently a contributing editor at Art in America and Architectural Record, she is an award-winning writer who has written about buildings, cities, and landscapes for many national and international publications, including the New York Times, the American Prospect, and Harvard Design Magazine. She lives in New York City.

• Sarah Williams Goldhagen - http://sarahwilliamsgoldhagen.com/about/

  ABOUT

  authorArchitecture and landscapes, cities and urban design, infrastructure and public art — all these constitute the built environment. That’s what I write about. The things of the world that outlast us. For me, also, writing well, and authenticity of voice matters.

  My interests range widely. My new book, Welcome to Your World, explores how, precisely, people experience built environments and how they shape our lives. It draws from current scientific research on cognition to demonstrate the centrality of design to well-being. I’ve also written other books, more historical in their approach and subject matter, on the great American architect, Louis Kahn, and on Postwar Modernism.

  Between books, I’ve published a raft of essays for scholarly and general audiences. Currently I’m a contributing editor at Art in America and Architectural Record; before that, I was the New Republic’s architecture critic for many years. Other publications I’ve written for include the New York Times, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Design Observer, the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians.

  Talking about my ideas in public settings is something I’ve always enjoyed. I’ve lectured around the world at colleges, universities, museums and other venues on a wide range of topics pertaining to buildings, landscapes, and people.

  Before devoting myself full-time to writing, I taught for ten years at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and at some other colleges and universities. I liked teaching, but I like writing better.

  My CV gives a more systematic account of it all.

• New Yorker - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/17/the-psychological-insights-of-trump-tower

  How High Dept.
  April 17, 2017 Issue
  The Psychological Insights of Trump Tower
  An architecture critic assesses the high-rise’s atrium, and considers what its aesthetics tell us about the President’s mind.
  By David Owen

  If you’re walking along Madison Avenue and suddenly feel undone by the stress of minding your own business, you can duck into the glass-enclosed atrium of the old I.B.M. Building, at Fifty-sixth Street, and take a seat at one of the many bamboo-shaded café tables. The atrium is one of the city’s five hundred-odd Privately Owned Public Spaces (pops)—areas that developers have created in exchange for the right to build buildings that are bigger than the city would otherwise allow—and it’s such a pleasant place that it makes pops seem like a good idea instead of just another way for weaselly real-estate types to screw everybody else.
  Once you’ve had enough tranquillity, you can cross the atrium to the adjacent high-rise, Trump Tower, which also contains a pops. The difference between the two public spaces is striking. “Trump’s atrium is a multisensory assault,” Sarah Williams Goldhagen said recently, as her purse was X-rayed by security personnel. Goldhagen is an architecture critic and the author of the new book “Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives.” In it, she argues that buildings affect us in ways that go deeper than even most architects realize. They also provide windows into the minds that conceived them. “What can you learn about Trump from Trump’s aesthetics?” she asked. “Quite a lot.”
  The Trump atrium is five stories tall, and most of its jutting corners and vertical surfaces are covered with mirrors, fake-gold panels, or marble tiles the color of gastrointestinal inflammation. “Where to begin?” she said, and laughed. “First of all, just listen. There are all these highly reflective surfaces and jagged edges, which are shooting the noise back at you and intruding into what is already a compressed vertical chute. It’s an unbelievably aggressive space. At every moment, it’s elbowing its way to the front of your attention.”
  Goldhagen has short grayish-blond hair and had to raise her voice to be heard above the roar of the atrium’s most conspicuous feature: a sixty-foot-high waterfall. (Trump adds waterfalls to golf courses, too.) She also had to compete with the echoing hubbub of a herd of visiting high-school students, who had taken over the only public seating on the main floor, a single row of bus-station-style benches, pressed against the wall opposite the elevators.
  “Originally, there was a stone bench,” Goldhagen said. “Trump put plants on it, and the city objected, because his zoning permit required him to have public seating.” Trump removed the plants—but then also removed the bench, and for years used the space to sell Trump-themed merchandise. The city went after him again. “Finally,” Goldhagen continued, “he put in these benches.” You can still buy Trump-themed merchandise, however; there’s a Trump Store around the corner from Trump Grill. The items for sale there include Trump Bath Crystals, Trump Body Butter, and Trump tennis balls, as well as a T-shirt that says, “Shut the Fake Media Up.”
  Goldhagen rode an escalator to another escalator, then another to another. “Look at all the mirrored surfaces,” she said, as she ascended. “There’s no place you can look where you don’t see large numbers of people moving around.” Viewed from the highest level, the real and reflected figures streaming in all directions in the red depths of the lower atrium resembled Saruman’s orcs toiling in the caverns of Isengard.
  Trump’s pops includes, in theory, two public gardens, on outdoor terraces near the top, but only one of them was unlocked. Affixed to a wall near the door leading outside was a plaque enumerating exactly how many trees, seats, chairs, and tables the space is required to contain—requirements that Trump has sometimes ignored. A handful of people were sitting at tables. Elements of the building’s H.V.A.C. system hummed loudly.
  Back inside, Goldhagen pointed out shoddy construction details: mismatched reflective panels, misaligned molding joints, a wall from which half-dollar-size pieces of wood veneer had fallen away, revealing the particleboard beneath. “I know that Trump doesn’t know anything about aesthetics,” she said. “But the architect—how could anyone actually do this?” ♦
  This article appears in other versions of the April 17, 2017, issue, with the headline “Gilt.”

• Surface - http://www.surfacemag.com/articles/architecture-sarah-williams-goldhagen-critic-new-book/

  Feeling Sad? Blame the Building
  In her new book, architecture critic Sarah Goldhagen sets out to quantify how the built environment affects our lives.
  INTERVIEW BY CHLOE FOUSSIANES
  PHOTOS BY TAWNI BANNISTER
  April 12, 2017
  Sarah Williams Goldhagen lives in a church. Well, a former teen-pregnancy center, in East Harlem, that was once a Pentecostal church. Either way, there is an ecclesiastical feeling inside.

  The revered American architecture critic and former professor sits opposite me at the head of her dining room table. It’s the day after an early March blizzard hit the northeast, and as rays of morning sun filter through cathedral windows, their intensity is magnified by a carpet of snow on the ground outside. The natural light illuminates the entire double-height space, but Goldhagen anchors the room with her quiet poise—even as she picks at a gluten-free bundt cake. She’s bespectacled and dressed all in black, a look I’ve come to associate with austere Chelsea gallerists. Her warm smile, though, breaks through the seemingly hard-edged facade.

  The reason for our meeting is to discuss her new book, Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives (Harper), the first major work of hers to be written for the lay reader—a departure from two academic tomes she penned in the early aughts, Louis Kahn’s Situated Modernism (Yale University Press) and Anxious Modernisms (The MIT Press). Welcome to Your World, which was published last month, pulls from new research in psychology and neuroscience to explain exactly what its subtitle suggests.

  Goldhagen’s home, which she shares with her husband and children, is a perfect prototype for the design her book lobbies for: a tasteful mix of organic materials, natural light, and greenery. I pause my scanning of the room to take a sip of tea. Maybe it’s just because my feet are snug inside a pair of Goldhagen’s slippers, but I feel at ease. (At her home, guests are provided with sanctioned footwear.) She would contend, however, that my comfy toes aren’t the half of it.

  In Welcome to Your World, Goldhagen manages to summarize a wealth of new research on the environment’s effects on the individual. What once seemed hopelessly nebulous—the importance of aesthetics, the impact of the arts, and so on—can now be scientifically proven. Patients convalescing in hospitals recover faster when they can see nature from the window. Test-taking in a room with a sky-blue ceiling leads to a higher score. Welcome to Your World gives designers the language to communicate the importance of their trade—a task they’ve been attempting for centuries, but with little success.

  Having spent her whole life studying and analyzing architecture, Goldhagen is relieved to finally have proof of what she’s been saying all along. From her nine-year tenure as The New Republic’s architecture critic to the decade she spent teaching at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Goldhagen has never ceased to advocate for the necessity of good design. And now, sitting in her ethereal home, holding a forkful of bundt, she is certainly not going to stop.

  In this book, you’re pushing back against a culture that doesn’t value architecture. What do you think has contributed to this apathy?

  Design isn’t highly valued in the United States, and there is a kind of self-perpetuating quality to that. Because it’s not highly valued, people think it’s not important. Another reason is that people tend to think of architecture as a fine art, which would mean it’s something very expensive and available only to the elite. That’s simply wrong. As a friend of mine said, “Thinking about architecture as an art is category mistake.” That doesn’t mean that an artistic sensibility isn’t important, but it’s not art—it’s a public good.

  Being an editor at a design magazine makes me biased, but I’d have to say I agree.

  My sister once said to me that hiring an architect is just a way to waste money. Can you believe that? My sister!

  My brother is studying engineering and thinks very little of my art history degree.

  In part, it’s a failure of education. In most countries in Europe and Asia, people get a general education in the built environment. For example, in the Netherlands a lot more people are trained in the basics of the built environment than in the United States and more of them end up being architects. Here, you’re lucky if you get it in college.

  What about architecture schools? Are they effectively teaching students what they need to know?

  One of the principal targets of my book was architectural education. Having come out of teaching history and theory in architecture schools, I found a lot of people making assertions about what architecture should be that were pretty unsupportable. There’s a lot of stuff we can point to that designers need to know that they’re not being taught, and I don’t understand why. Well, I do understand why. Because until I wrote the book, no one had presented it as a body of knowledge.

  What would you say to people who claim that it’s a monetary problem? That if everyone could afford it, we’d all invest in design?

  I was once asked a question at the Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas. It’s a little politically conservative out there. Someone said, “Well, you know they’re building a post office in Bentonville. It’s a public building, so it has to be functional and inexpensive. What would you say about that?” And I said, “It costs just as much money to design a bad building as it does to design a good one.” I think that at any level of investment, you can make better decisions or worse decisions, and if you’re not making good decisions, you’re making bad ones.

  One of the worries that I had when I was reading your book is that you rely heavily on data and hard evidence to prove your point. If there’s anything I’ve learned this past year, it’s that the truth isn’t always enough to convince people.

  First of all, just because Donald Trump was elected doesn’t mean that data goes out the window. What I’ve realized is that people are susceptible to big paradigm shifts. For example, we used to think that the brain developed into your mid-twenties and it was kind of set. Now, we know none of that is true. That is an easily comprehensible idea that someone can get: “Oh, the brain is changing all the time.” Yes, there’s an ocean of studies that I’ve read and researched, but the central idea is really very simple and communicable, which is that we can know things about how people experience environments.

  Was it different to write about scientific studies, rather than observations and interviews?

  This is by far the most difficult project that I have ever done. That’s in part because I was crossing a lot of different disciplines, from cognitive neuroscience to environmental psychology to all these branches of psychology that I didn’t even know of before. I had a long correspondence with a cognitive neuroanthropologist from Florida. He’s actually very interesting. Who knew?

  How has the cognitive neuroanthropologist and everyone else reacted to the book?

  The scientists love it. Terry Sejnowski, who blurbed the book—he’s the Francis Crick Professor at The Salk Institute—came up to me and said, “You’re right on target. This is exactly right.” He actually wanted to publish it in the Journal of Computational Neurology, which he edits. I said it didn’t sound like the right fit.

  Do you think this is the future of the humanities? To integrate with the sciences?

  It’s happening in other fields. It’s a big thing in the study of literature. Some people think this is a bad direction in the humanities because it drains away the humanism of the arts. But I’m a big believer in information—I think more information is better.

  Are there any architects you believe are doing a good job now?

  I do. One more general point is I think that technologies have been developed in the last fifteen years that allow for large-scale interpretations of mass customization. It makes it much easier for architects to inflect moments in their buildings in an experiential way.

  That’s interesting, because many critics of architects such as Zaha Hadid and Frank Gehry have credited those technological developments for their creations.

  I think Zaha Hadid was a terrible architect. I haven’t been in every one of her buildings, but in the ones I have, the craftsmanship is awful. The moment-to-moment experience of these buildings is just nonexistent, because they’re these large-scale conceptualizations that end up getting built that way. But the technology’s not to blame—it’s how you use it.

  If not the technology, what do you think has enabled the system that supports architects in that vein?

  Constant self-promotion and the awards commissions coming to the same short list—this phenomenon happened within twenty to twenty-five years. I don’t see it changing that much because the market forces keeping the “starchitecture” system in place are so powerful that it’s going to be hard to contravene them.

  What would have to change to alter that system?

  I do think clients need to be better educated—they need to hold whoever they hire to a much higher standard. Part of the problem in the commissioning of architecture is that [the end product] is very difficult for people to visualize as clients so they don’t know what they’re buying a lot of the time. Architects need to be better at communicating what they’re thinking.

  Funny. Architects will tell you the clients do too much talking as it is.

  This is part of what I’m trying to break down. I ended up not putting this in the book, but there are studies that show how differently architects look at buildings than non-architects do.

  Makes you think about how many bad buildings are under construction right now.

  Exactly, and the amount of building that’s going to take place in the next fifty years is just staggering.

  You see time lapses of cities being built in China and the pace is unbelievable.

  Actually one of the things I’m pleased about is that the preeminent business publisher in China bought my book, and they’re expecting to sell a bazillion copies. Yes, China needs my book.

  Hopefully they listen. If there’s one thing I gleaned from Welcome to Your World, it’s that architects have more power than they know.

  You’re right, [my book] gives architects, landscape architects, urban designers, and everyone else involved in the built environment an awareness of their immense power. They can either make human experience or really fuck it up.

Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture
Stanley Abercrombie
Interior Design. 72.4 (Apr. 2001): p177.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2001 Sandow Media, LLC
http://www.interiordesign.net/
Listen
Full Text:
Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture edited by Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Rejean Legault Cambridge, MA, and Montreal: MIT Press and the Canadian Centre for Architecture 355 pages, 96 black and white illustrations, $34.95.

The history of modern design is not, as we all realize, as straightforward as it is often represented to be. Here is a valuable collection of a dozen essays that shine a light into the cracks and beneath the surfaces of the usual accounts. Its figures include those who moved on from the canonical works of the pioneers and attempted to adapt the vision of the '30s to the new conditions after World War II. Important figures include Rudofsky, Neutra, Rudolph, and Saarinen in the U.S., the Smithsons in the U.K., Jacob Bakema in the Netherlands, and the Metabolists in Japan. These essays enlarge our understanding of the genesis of our own design.

Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architecture Culture
Boaz Ben Manasseh
The Architectural Review. 210.1258 (Dec. 2001): p97.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2001 EMAP Architecture
Listen
Full Text:
Edited by Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Rejean Legault. London: MIT Press. 2001. [pounds sterling]23.95

There is a serious problem with this type of book, which editors and publishers should attend to. Goldhagen held a conference at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in 1999 entitled 'Anxious Modernisms: Postwar Architecture Culture, 1943-1968' and this book is the result. Twelve essays based on conference papers, addressing some of the less popularly covered aspects of Modernism, have been turned into an expensive, glossy, hardback.

It doesn't work. The very narrow subject matter of each of the short individual papers is suited to an academic conference, where it would be surrounded by formal debate and chatter, and illustrated with slides; it gets lost when bound in a fancy binding. Timothy Rohan, for example, proposes on the basis of a word used in a letter and of some gossip that Rudolph's Jewett Arts Center is expressive of the architect's homosexuality. This suggestion is, I think, ludicrous without some proper analysis of the building's form, of Rudolph's way of talking about it, and of contemporary homosexual culture. Goldhagen herself is much taken up with the Smithsons, and yet the only building illustrated is the Sugden House, and even that superficially, because Goldhagen doesn't think that the Smithsons were much good at designing.

Academic papers should be published in a cheap, accessible, way; the vanity of a book (with, in this case, a silly name and silly graphics) should be saved for writing that is sufficiently substantial to stand on its own. That substance should probably come from more and detailed descriptions of buildings and projects. Very often here we have critics talking about critics talking about critics -- for example, Felicity Scott on Banham on Rudolfsky: it's not enough. Other contributors have written in such a boring way that their work is virtually unreadable. There are, admittedly, subtle and elegant pieces, in particular by Sandy Isenstadt on Neutra and by Cornelis Wagenaar on Bakema; and Goldhagen's 'Coda' -- which should have been a preface -- shows that she had a clear picture of what she wanted to achieve. She should have bullied her authors and her publishers into something more worthy of their intelligence.

Manasseh, Boaz Ben

Welcome to Your World: How the Built
Environment Shapes Our Lives
Publishers Weekly.
264.6 (Feb. 6, 2017): p61.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives
Sarah Williams Goldhagen. Harper, $40
(384p) ISBN 978-0-06-195780-2
Architecture critic Goldhagen (Anxious Modernisms) makes a passionate, persuasive plea for better design--a built
environment that places humans before the "short-term or parochial interests" that typically drive construction and
renovation of human habitats. This generously illustrated volume takes readers on a tour of the built environments in
which most of us live, work, and play, using concrete examples in each chapter to anchor the author's arguments. The
first two chapters describe the status quo and introduce the concept of "blindsight," a cognitive condition the author
employs as a metaphor to explore the complex role built environment plays in an individual's experience and internal
world. She also discusses the human need for nature and the ways that social environments shape and are shaped by
spatial design, and concludes with suggestions for design that supports, rather than works against, human thriving. The
author has an educator's conviction that bad design is grounded in ignorance, and that if "people understand just how
much design matters, they'd care ... they'd change." Yet much of our built environment is the result of policy and
investment decisions that remain opaque to the average resident of a city apartment complex, visitor to a public park, or
employee in an office building. Because of this, more examples of grassroots organizing for change would have
strengthened the work's final chapters; readers will be justified in wondering whence the political and economic will to
change might spring. Color photos. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives." Publishers Weekly, 6 Feb. 2017, p. 61.
General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA480593886&it=r&asid=25bc6d720774e6000ca5181ec0cd5d15.
Accessed 7 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A480593886
10/7/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1507418006239 2/2
Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in
Postwar Architectural Culture
Paul Glassman
Library Journal.
126.7 (Apr. 15, 2001): p80.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution
permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture. MIT. 2001. 335p. ed. by Sarah W. Goldhagen
& Rejean Legault. illus. index. LC 00-110189. ISBN 0-262-07208-4. $34.95. ARCHITECTURE
Viewing the intersection of architectural theory and practice, each of these 12 essays relates to one or more of editors
Goldhagen (Graduate Sch. of Design, Harvard) and Legault's (CCA Study Ctr.) selected themes: the modern
movement, popular culture and everyday life, anti-architecture, democratic freedom, homo ludens (the personal and
psychological freedom to play), primitivism, authenticity, architecture's history, and regionalism or place. Covering
both the Western European and North American fronts, the essays range in subject from Italian Neorealism to Paul
Rudolph's Jewett Arts Center at Wellesley College. Addressing the latter, Timothy M. Rohan not only points out the
historical equation of ornament with decadence but also equates it, somewhat dubiously, with Rudolph's homosexuality.
Sandy Isenstadt's essay on Richard Neutra's houses in Southern California integrates an examination of two of the
architect's own publications, Survival Through Design and Mystery and Realities of the Site, with his attempts to
provide a sense of nature through enclosure in his smaller houses. The essayists offer original ideas and stimulating
insights on the nature of architectural thinking, even if they only occasionally elucidate the work itself. Recommended
for larger architectural history and theory collections serving an upper-level readership.--Paul Glassman, New York
Sch. of Interior Design
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Glassman, Paul. "Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture." Library Journal, 15 Apr.
2001, p. 80. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA74222554&it=r&asid=a174896eb3698fb94bc94037ecd13fe8.
Accessed 7 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A74222554

Abercrombie, Stanley. "Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture." Interior Design, Apr. 2001, p. 177. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA76551749&it=r&asid=862ce16beaa00e7d0acd237495b7b172. Accessed 7 Oct. 2017. Manasseh, Boaz Ben. "Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architecture Culture." The Architectural Review, Dec. 2001, p. 97. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA81299861&it=r&asid=20c942be80c46b9e3565be0626ddf6e5. Accessed 7 Oct. 2017. "Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives." Publishers Weekly, 6 Feb. 2017, p. 61. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA480593886&it=r. Accessed 7 Oct. 2017. Glassman, Paul. "Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture." Library Journal, 15 Apr. 2001, p. 80. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA74222554&it=r. Accessed 7 Oct. 2017.

• Architect
  http://www.architectmagazine.com/design/exhibits-books-etc/assessing-architecture-through-neuroscience-and-psychology_o
  Word count: 1273

  Assessing Architecture Through Neuroscience and Psychology
  Blaine Brownell reviews "Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives" by architecture critic Sarah Williams Goldhagen
  By BLAINE BROWNELL
  We can do better.

  This is the fundamental message of Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives (Harper, 2017) by architecture critic Sarah Williams Goldhagen. Published this week, the book delivers a forceful indictment about the impoverished state of our constructed world, based on the author’s deep experiences as an itinerant architecture critic for the New Republic and as an instructor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Most importantly, Goldhagen’s argument is not merely a matter of opinion; rather, it is based on enlightening studies in neuroscience and cognitive psychology that reinforce the consequential relationship between our buildings and ourselves.

  Courtesy Sarah Williams Goldhagen
  The impetus to write Welcome to Your World can be traced to Goldhagen’s 2001 American Prospect article, "Boring Buildings." “It is a truism to state that architecture composes the immediate physical environment of our lives,” she argued. “But in this country, we too often forget that high-quality architecture is also a social good, one that more than repays the investment.” In her new book, Goldhagen expands on her critique of culturally, aesthetically, and environmentally impoverished buildings with examples that she calls “four sorry places.”

  Such settings include the slum dwellings, where one-third of the world’s urban residents live; the soul-sucking suburbs in which many middle-class Americans reside; schools for wealthy families that ignore best design practices for learning environments; and starchitect-designed landmark projects that fail to recognize basic aspects of human behavior. Refreshingly, the expansive sweep of Goldhagen’s condemnation eschews favoritism towards particular groups—such as renowned architects or vernacular builders. Rather, she focuses on what science tells us about good and bad design, regardless of socioeconomic level or geographic location. The most compelling moments in the book are those in which the author employs convincing studies to dispel commonly held beliefs, as demonstrated in the following examples.

  Material over Form
  In typical practice, architects privilege form over material. Long before they select particular assemblies or systems for a building, architects will have designed—and redesigned—a project’s siting, massing, and geometry. This emphasis is reflected in academia, where students study the formal aspects of a design over its material constitution. Goldhagen believes our experience of the built environment is the opposite. The brain processes contextual cues based on the nature of surfaces—not overall forms—and evaluates their physical qualities based on the summation of past material experiences. “Our responses to surfaces, consequently, are more likely to powerfully contribute to our holistic experience of place than our responses to forms,” she writes. “In short: form has wrongly been crowned king, because form-based cues elicit less of a whole-body, intersensory, and emotional response than surface-based cues do.” Based on a study

  by Canadian cognitive scientists Jonathan Cant and Melvyn Goodale, this realization suggests that architects should place more emphasis on material considerations in the design process, and at an earlier stage.
  Steve Jobs Theater
  Courtesy Apple
  Steve Jobs Theater
  The Drawbacks of Simplicity
  An acronym associated with architectural practice—among other industries—is KISS, short for “keep it simple, stupid.” This sentiment pervades much of contemporary design culture, which aims to minimize complexity and visual noise—often to extremes. Consider the ultra-refined simplicity of products designed by Apple, or the company’s new ring-shaped building designed by U.K. firm Foster + Partners. This kind of clear intelligibility is a positive effort at the object-level, but can be a detriment at larger scales.

  For example, urban proposals for homogeneous tower blocks and street grids—such as Le Corbusier’s 1924 Ville Radieuse and Ludwig Hilberseimer’s 1944 modern city project—have long received scathing criticism as dehumanizing dystopias. Yet the architect’s goal should not be complexity, as this quality thwarts comprehensibility and accessibility in the built environment. Rather, Goldhagen argues that designers must aspire to achieve "patterned complexity," which approximates how we encounter the natural world—simultaneously intricate and legible. According to the author, architects may achieve this objective via various strategies including “chunking” spatial volumes based on program, introducing visually compelling material languages, and creating surprise by shifting one’s expectations of a particular construction typology.

  A Central Park shadow study published in the Municipal Art Society of New York's “Accidental Skyline” report
  Municipal Art Society of New York
  A Central Park shadow study published in the Municipal Art Society of New York's “Accidental Skyline” report
  Nature in the City
  Big cities are often celebrated as ideal settlement models from an environmental perspective, based on their per capita reduced land area and ecological footprint compared with smaller, more sparsely populated municipalities. The fact that the natural landscape, while appreciated, is often minimized in large metropolises is accepted as an inherent outcome of the intensified demand for space. Generously sized landscapes such as New York’s Central Park or Tokyo’s Imperial Palace grounds are considered luxuries in cities that are otherwise dominated by impervious surfaces. Yet such green spaces are not extravagances but essential provisions, Goldhagen argues. She offers a multitude of scientific evidence for the powerful benefits of nature: medical patients offered views of trees are able to leave the hospital a day earlier than those facing blank walls; children exposed to adequate green spaces demonstrate superior cognitive functioning and reduced stress.

  Despite the overwhelming evidence, green spaces comprise less than 10 percent of many of the world's largest cities—such as Shanghai (2.6 percent) and Los Angeles (6.7 percent). Political will emerges as a critical force here, as evidenced by the fact that cities such as London, Stockholm, and Sydney exhibit 35 percent or more green space due to their local governments’ prioritization of public welfare. Architects can similarly advocate for living landscapes as a fundamental requirement—not in the form of the typical suburban lawn, which Goldhagen denounces as an monocultural afterthought, but in well-designed environments crafted by talented landscape architects.

  Sarah Williams Goldhagen
  Sarah Williams Goldhagen
  Building is Architecture
  The boldest argument in Welcome to Your World is the eradication of the differentiation between architecture and building. This long-held dividing line—which defines architecture as an elevated, higher-level craft in contrast to building as the construction of ordinary shelter—reinforces the elitist, exceptional associations of the former while permitting the latter a “free pass” to meet a minimum set of aspirations. “The distinction between building and architecture, between designing for aesthetic pleasure and designing (or building) for ‘function,’ is misleading, wrongheaded, and defunct,” Goldhagen writes. “Everyone needs better—indeed, good—landscapes, cityscapes, and buildings of all kinds, everywhere.”

  Such a lofty goal may seem overly ambitious; however, the fundamental contribution is the shift in perspective. By expecting more from all aspects of the built environment, as opposed to the comparatively rare moments when architects have the opportunity to design landmark commissions, Goldhagen is issuing a challenge to a much broader audience than just the AEC industry. Given the direct correlation between the constructed world and human development, we all have a reason to advocate for better design.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Blaine Brownell Blaine Brownell
  Blaine Brownell, AIA, is an architect and materials researcher. The author of the three Transmaterial books (2006, 2008, 2010), he is the director of graduate studies in the school of architecture at the University of Minnesota.

• Kirkus
  https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/sarah-williams-goldhagen/welcome-your-world/
  Word count: 397

  WELCOME TO YOUR WORLD
  How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives
  by Sarah Williams Goldhagen
  BUY NOW FROM
  AMAZON
  GET WEEKLY BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS:
  Email Address
  Enter email
  Subscribe
  Email this review
  KIRKUS REVIEW
  A look at how new research in urban space, the built environment, and city planning stresses the importance of well-designed architecture for the betterment of society.

  No art form has a more profound and lasting affect on the public than architecture. As the most widespread and practical artistic medium, architecture is experienced by virtually everyone no matter their location or background, yet there is often little consideration, not least among the public, about how the built environment shapes human experience. For Goldhagen, architecture critic and former professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, this is a critical oversight. As the author points out, new research in cognitive science proves that human interaction with the built environment profoundly affects our ability to understand ourselves and others, particularly how place and memory are connected and how environments shape our understanding of memory and the past. Therefore, the need for thoughtful, human-centered design is an essential component to social progress and the betterment of humanity. But, good design does not simply imply access to resources and wealth. As Goldhagen points out, from a design perspective, there is not much separating a slum dwelling from a McMansion. Richly illustrated with photography supporting Goldhagen’s examples, which range from classical architecture such as the Parthenon to contemporary stadium design, her analysis is practical and accessible, synthesizing scientific research with architectural theory about space and design. Focusing on how the built environment shapes social relations, both public and private, Goldhagen discusses how views of nature and natural elements are essential to good design, as well as breaking down how variable surface types affect human perceptions, among other topics. At times dense and verging on academic, Goldhagen has provided a valuable compendium to design analysis and the benefits of progress in contemporary design.

  An eye-opening look at the ways in which carefully planned and executed design and architecture can expand cognitive faculties and improve daily life.

  Pub Date: April 11th, 2017
  ISBN: 978-0-06-195780-2
  Page count: 384pp
  Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
  Review Posted Online: March 13th, 2017

• A Daily Dose of Architecture
  https://archidose.blogspot.com/2017/07/book-review-welcome-to-your-world.html
  Word count: 705

  Posted by John Hill at 7:00 PM
  Wednesday, July 12, 2017
  Book Review: Welcome to Your World
  Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives by Sarah Williams Goldhagen
  Harper, 2017
  Hardcover, 348 pages

  Welcome to Your World is critic and educator Sarah William Goldhagen's attempt to succinctly and clearly distill voluminous research on neuroscience and architecture toward the improvement of buildings and cities. It's a welcome book that makes an otherwise impenetrable topic accessible to a wider audience.

  But before diving into this book review, a personal aside: Although I didn't know it so well at the time (the first half of the 1990s), the school I attended for undergraduate architecture was particularly strong in environment-behavior studies. Thing is, Deconstructivist architecture was all the rage at the time, and like anywhere, striving to create something new and personal in architecture studio trumped the learning taking place in other classes, be it history, structures, or MEP.

  Kansas State University was, and still is, home to David Seamon, a prolific author on phenomenology, as well as Dick Hoag, whose Environment & Behavior classes were some of my favorites, and Robert Condia, who has delved recently into neuroscience. Although searches for novel forms in studio often took priority, the teachings of these three (and others) have stayed with me over the years, and these days they tend to enter my psyche more frequently. Perhaps this is due to the cyclical nature of architectural practice, which veers back and forth between social and formal considerations; or maybe it's the increasing relevance of (neuro)scientific studies related to architecture, which haven't been as well considered since the 1970s and the short-lived influence of environmental psychology (all of the E&B textbooks seemed to come from that period). Whatever the case, this aside stems from the numerous overlaps found between my undergraduate education and the ideas Goldhagen explores in her book.

  One reason I bring up my architectural background is because Goldhagen argues that, among other things, the design professionals shaping our homes, places of work and play, and so on should "be thoroughly schooled in the evolving body of knowledge in environmental aesthetics and experiential design." Her argument is predicated, first and foremost, on breaking down the barriers between building and architecture (and with it the belief, I presume, that only people paying A LOT of money get the latter, the experientially richer part of the built environment), but then calling on the whole built environment to be designed by people with this "evolving body of knowledge." Like the book, which presents the good and bad of design and argues skillfully why everybody should care, this point reaches for the stars. As I type it here, though, it also comes off as a bit naive; reorienting architectural education seems to be an insurmountable task, especially when considering my education, which had some of that learning already but didn't incorporate it directly (enough, at least) into architectural studio, where so much effort is expended by students.

  That said, many schools are heading in the right direction anyways, particularly through the flowering of design-build programs that expose students not only to construction but also actual clients. Although Goldhagen does not broach this aspect of architectural education (her book is more about arguments for making better environments than dealing with how that actually happens), it's hard to deny the impact of such projects as (to toot KSU's horn again) Design Make Studio's affordable housing at 7509 Pennsylvania Avenue in Kansas City, which capably balances architectural expression and experiential richness like so many other design-build projects around the country.

  Of course, education does not stop at graduation, so there is no reason registered architects, like myself, cannot learn the necessary lessons about "environmental aesthetics and experiential design" in order to apply principles culled from neuroscience and other related fields to practice. Heck, why not make relevant information in this area a subset of the learning units architects need to maintain licensure? Architects need the depth of well-researched studies to better shape our lives, but clients need only pick up Goldhagen's book to be convinced the efforts are worthwhile.

• Huffington Post
  https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sarah-williams-goldhagens-plea-for-a-better-built_us_58ebc6b6e4b0145a227cb733
  Word count: 690

  Thane Rosenbaum, Contributor
  Novelist, essayist and law professor
  Sarah Williams Goldhagen’s Plea for a Better Built World
  04/10/2017 02:15 pm ET Updated Apr 10, 2017

  Rarely does a book come along where its very premise is to stop you in your tracks, compel you to look around, take account of where you are standing, why you are there, and how taking another step in one direction or another may make you feel.
  Sarah Williams Goldhagen’s, Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives, is one of those “stop and smell the roses” experiences, except that Goldhagen is asking readers to do more than simply take stock of their lives—she wants them, and government officials, architects and urban planners, to undertake a radical transformation of our actual housing stock—the built environment of her title—because it is so essential to human life, and so dismally misunderstood.
  An engaging and lively tour guide of global architecture—some irredeemably failed, others ennobling and sublime—Goldhagen, a longtime architecture critic, author and former Harvard professor, has constructed “Welcome to Your World” as both a paean to the design community and a manifesto for a fuller appreciation of what thoughtful design can accomplish.
  She is the town crier on behalf of cities and urban areas screaming for more enlightened design, where soul-deadened residents are forever trapped in aesthetically impoverished places.
  Goldhagen sees eyesores everyone—often well-intentioned and overspent construction that leaves residents and passersby enervated and uninspired. How a building is designed and landscaped has a great effect on how its users will ultimately feel—their actions, emotions and overall experience. Merely having a roof over a human being’s head has very little to do with the cognitive experience that is taking place inside that head, and the sensory experience that links body with mind.
  Relying on the latest scientific research in neuroscience and neuropsychology, Goldhagen makes a convincing case that urban architecture, landscaping and infrastructure—for both the wealthy and poor—must become a priority in public policy because of its direct bearing on public health. Greenery and natural daylight, convenient public transportation, pleasing walkways, curved interiors and furnishings and fixtures comprised of natural materials, all improve cognitive faculties and functioning.
  The full sweep of our sensory and spatial experiences are embedded within the landscapes and cityscapes we occupy, but give very little thought to.
  Along the way we visit the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, the Vertical Forest in Milan, Italy, the High Line in New York City, Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago, Illinois, and the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, Scotland. Even the Parthenon in Greece and Old City in Jerusalem make cameo appearances to demonstrate how ancient builders apparently knew more about the human spatial experience than graduates of modern day architecture schools. With each turn and attention to detail, Goldhagen conveys how our cognitive processes and sensory stimuli respond to the design features that surround us.
  “Welcome to Your World” is, indeed, a greeting, and an invitation, but more urgently, it asks a mystifying question: How did we live so long without this knowledge? We have been walking around blinded to our built environment and blithely unaware of the profound and sometimes debilitating effect it was having. And the problem will only get worse. By 2050, a world population explosion will result in two out of three people living in urban areas. Until all that concrete gets poured, it’s not too late to include the building blocks offered in this book.
  Read “Welcome to Your World” and you will never go anywhere again without being more mindful of how consciously and unconsciously you are influenced, uplifted and degraded by the design decisions of others.
  What Jane Jacobs once did for the neighborhood stoop, Goldhagen has now done for the global metropolis—informing its urban dwellers how much their mood, productivity and welfare depends on the shape and color of its buildings and byways, and how movements around their built environment are neither random nor without consequence.

Word Count