Saratoga: George Ranalli (Single Building) - Hardcover

Ranalli, George

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 098146288X ISBN 13: 9780981462882

Publisher: Oro Editions, 2009

Synopsis

In Saratoga (2009), author/ architect George Ranalli documents the Saratoga Avenue Community Center in Brownsville, Brooklyn -- a city-agency sponsored project to reorganize, renovate, and expand an isolated inner-city housing block. Saratoga looks an in-depth look at Ranalli's innovative approaches to producing abeautiful, durable, adaptable, and sustainable work of architecture, on a rock-bottom budget, that connects an urban community to new green spaces,and light-filled interiors, both functional and lovely. Ranalli provides plenty of contextual and programmatic information alongside vivid color images from photographer Paul Warchol, and reproductions of architectural sketches, renderings, plans, and other details documenting every phase of the life cycle of the project. Acclaimed architecture critic Ms. Huxtable credits Saratoga for breaking every rule of conventional civic architecture. On the architecture itself, Ms. Huxtable writes, "Mr. Ranalli adheres to the logic of modernist practice, integrating itsmechanical, material and structural realities with details drawn fromearlier sources to create an integral ornament of abstract lineargeometry. His purpose is to move modernism into an enriched and moredeeply referenced style."  -- Breaking All The Rules With New York's Public-Building Design by Ada Louise Huxtable, WSJ, May 13, 2009

About this title

From the Author:

George Ranalli: "Rather than seeking to heighten any contrast between the new and the existing built environment, the design for Saratoga Avenue Community Center, for the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), seizes upon the opportunity to contribute a dignified work of architecture befitting the activities of education, contemplation, and recreation that shape our daily lives."

From the Back Cover:

In Brownsville, Brooklyn, the Saratoga Community Center is a beacon of public architecture attached to Saratoga Village, a public housing complex. Internationally renown architect George Ranalli has created an extraordinary experimental work of public architecture - a distinctive brand of ornamentation and design representative of civic buildings - for the New York City Housing Authouity (NYCHA). Ranalli designed a 5,000 square-foot community center to expand the program of a city sponsored recreation and meals program, linked to newly landscaped green areas and existing public park spaces, thereby re-imagining the modern housing super-block and communal public interior space.

The internationally celebrated firm of George Ranalli, Architect is known for work in historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places, and settings rich in the traditions of design and craft. Mr. Ranalli's contemporary design for new buildings and expansions of existing buildings  are creative, and blend seamlessly into historic settings.

In addition to photographic documentation by Paul Warchol, the book contains images of Mr. Ranalli's sketches, presentation and technical drawings, and digital media.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oro Editions
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 098146288X
• ISBN 13: 9780981462882
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 111
• Editor: Ojeda Oscar Riera