Willem Marinus Dudok (1884-1974) is regarded internationally as one of the most important Dutch architects. As director of Public Works and City Architect to Hilversum, Dudok realized in that municipality not only his world-famous City Hall but also a welter of smaller projects including public baths, a library, housing, schools, a sports park and a cemetery. It was in this period that Dudok developed his own idiom, marked by compositions of cubic volumes. Besides his Hilversum buildings, others he built in Rotterdam, Paris and Velsen have been the subject of great interest. They are regarded as exemplifying an architecture that appeals not only to the professional world but also to the public at large. This compact though lavishly illustrated volume gives a complete overview of the major works by this architect who succeeded in striking a unique balance between modernism and tradition.
The work of Herman Hertzberger is the subject of wide international esteem. 1991 first saw publication of Hertzberger's Lessons for Students in Architecture, an elaborated version of lectures he had given since 1973 at Delft University of Technology. This immensely successful book has gone through many reprints and has also been published in Japanese, German, Italian, Portuguese, Taiwanese, Dutch, Greek, Polish, Iranian, Korean and Chinese. Space and the Architect is the second book written by Hertzberger. It charts the backgrounds to his work of recent years and the ideas informing it, drawing on a wide spectrum of subjects and designs by artists, precursors, past masters and colleagues, though with his own work persistently present as a reference. Space is its principal theme, physical space but also the mental or intellectual regions the architect calls upon during the process of designing. Once again Hertzberger's broad practical experience, his ideas and his seemingly inexhaustible 'library' of images are a major source of inspiration for anyone whose concern is the design of space.
Gives a broad insight into Hertzberger's "library" and a stimulating impression of one of the most important Dutch architects alive today. Rather than supplying the reader with design recipes, Hertzberger has provided an essential source of inspiration to everyone involved with the design process.
Herman Hertzberger designs schools to function like cities. Schools and cities, he contends, can be read in many ways and are challenging, inspirational and inviting. School is where you can withdraw and adopt a position with respect to others, where you learn to take a place in society. Besides a presentation of Hertzberger's 30-plus built schools and a number of unbuilt ones, the sociologist Abram de Swaan addresses Hertzberger's work in an essay, discussing how school architecture impacts the social development of children. De Swaan pays tribute to Hertzberger as a pre-eminently 'sociological' architect.
China’s role in international peacekeeping has greatly expanded during the leadership of Hu Jintao, and China has since become a significant contributor to peacekeeping operations (PKOs) in Africa. The importance of the book is expressed in the view that peacekeeping intervention is a tool that strengthens or fulfills policy goals in the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), the UN Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), and the UN Mission in Darfur (UNAMID). China has considerable interests at stake in Africa, in terms of promoting economic cooperation or gaining access to natural resources. In order to maintain these efforts, it is imperative that a secure and stable environment is created, not only to maintain diplomatic relations with its African partners, but also to express the harmonious worldview and peaceful development concepts, which rose to prominence under the presidency of Hu Jintao. The purpose of this book is therefore to examine the extent to which peacekeeping intervention contributes to China’s relations with these countries. Two models are employed to shed light on this thesis. The rational actor model (RAM) developed by Graham Allison is used in the first instance to explain the goals for each country, the options considered to reach the goals, the consequences or outcomes of choice that will ensure whether a particular option is chosen, and then selecting the option that has the consequences that rank the highest in the leadership’s payoff function. However, the leadership in policy formulation does not always act in a unitary fashion and often needs the input of governmental actors to produce results in decision making. Therefore, the bureaucratic politics model (BPM) of Allison is used in the second instance to indicate the bargaining, influencing and compromising positions of the bureaucracy that has reinforced the rational decisions of the leadership. The main findings are that peacekeeping interventions serve as a mechanism to facilitate cooperation, is significant to China’s goals in the mission countries, and influence and shape bargaining that occur between bureaucratic actors regarding peacekeeping.
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