This beautifully illustrated guide celebrates some of the most significant award winning public spaces in major cities in the UK and Ireland over the last ten years.Dealing with a range of contemporary and innovating designed landscapes from urban spaces to public parks, this book focuses on those that have been awarded the highest design accolade from the Royal Institute of British Architects, The Royal Town andPlanning Institute, The Landscape Institute and The Civic Trust. Focusing on designs in ten major cities, and providing a snappy synopsis of each of the spaces in terms of its design statement, function, location, design team and award commentary, It illustrates tothe reader what makes 'good design' in the public realm, providing both information and inspiration.

The supposed rationality of the urban planning of the Modern Movement encompassed a variety of attitudes towards history, technology and culture, from the vision of Berlin as an American metropolis, through the dispute between the urbanists and disurbanists in the Soviet Union to the technocratic and austere vision of Le Corbusier. After the Second World War, architects attempted to reconcile these utopian visions to the practical problems of constructing - or reconstructing - urban environments, from Piero Bottoni at the Quartiere Trienale 8 in Milan in 1951 to Lucio Costa at Bras'lia in 1957. In the 1970s, the collapse of Modernism brought about universial condemnation of Modern urbanism; urban planning,and rationality itself, were thrown into doubt. However, such a wholesale condemnation hides the complex realities underlying these Modern cities. The contributors define some of the theoretical foundations of Modern urban planning, and reassess the successes and the failures of the built results. The book ends with contrasting views of the inheritance of Modern urbanism in the United States and the Netherlands.