The Man in the Street: Polemic on Urbanism (Pelican) Book

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Shadrach Woods was an American architect, urban planner and theorist. Schooled in engineering at New York University and in literature and philosophy at Trinity College, Dublin, Woods joined the Paris office of Le Corbusier in 1948. Assigned to the project for the Unité d'Habitation in Marseille, France, Woods met Greek architect George Candilis, with whom he later formed a lasting partnership.Woods designed and built housing throughout North Africa during his tenure as head of the Casablanca office of ATBAT-Afrique. In 1954, he won a French public housing competition, Opération Million, and was commissioned by the welfare state to design thousands of suburban housing units. In 1956 Woods and Candilis joined with the Yugoslavian architect Alexis Josic to create the firm Candilis-Josic-Woods. Among the firm's projects were extension of village Bagnols-sur-Cèze & development of the quarter of Le Mirail in Toulouse France and, with Manfred Schieldhelm, the Free University in Berlin. Candilis and Woods participated in Team X, a group of architects that emerged from the meetings of CIAM in the postwar years. Woods Perhaps best known as a thinker and writer, Woods published numerous essays on urban themes that explain his concepts of "stem" and "web". He participated in the 1968 Milan Triennale at the invitation of the Italian architect and fellow Team X member Giancarlo de Carlo.After the breakup of the firm in 1969, Woods returned to New York City. He taught at Harvard and Yale universities and lectured widely. Until his untimely death in 1973, he continued to work as an architect and urban planner on such projects as the Lower Manhattan Expressway and the renovation of the SoHo neighborhood. His book The Man in the Street: A Polemic on Urbanism was published by Penguin in 1975. Woods' architectural drawings and papers are now held by the Drawings and Archives Department of Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University.Read More