Joseph Rykwert entered his field when post-war modernist architecture was coming under fir

e for its alienating embodiment of outmoded social ideals. Think of the UN building in New York, the city of Brasilia, the UNESCO building in Paris, the blocks of housing "projects" throughout the world. These tall, uniform. boxes are set back from the street, isolated by windswept plazas. They look inward to their own functions, presenting no "face" to the inhabitants of the city, no "place" for social interaction. For Mr. Rykwert, who rejects the functionalist spirit of the Athens Charter of 1933, a manifesto for much post-war building, such facelessness destroys the human meaning of the city. Architectural form. should not rigidly follow function, but ought to reflect the needs of the social body it represents.

Like other forms of representation, architecture is the embodiment of the decisions that go into its making, not the result of impersonal forces, market or history. Therefore, says Mr. Rykwert, adapting Joseph de Maistre's dictum that a nation has the government it deserves, our cities have the faces they deserve.

In this book, Mr. Rykwert. a noted urban historian of anthropological love, offers a flaneur's approach to the city's exterior surface rather than an urban history from the conceptual inside out. He does not drive, so his interaction with the city affords him a warts-and-all view with a sensual grasp of what it is to be a "place".

His story of urbanization begins, not surprisingly, with the industrial revolution when populations shifted and increased, exacerbating problems of housing and crime. In the 19th century many planning programs and utopias (Ebenezer Howard's garden city and Charles Fourier's "phalansteries" among them) were proposed as remedies. These have left their mark on 20th-century cities, as did Baron Hausmann's boulevards in Paris, Eugene Viollet-le-Duc's and Owen Jones's arguments for historical style, and Adolf Loos's fateful turn-of-the-century call to abolish ornament which, in turn, inspired Le Corbusier's bare functionalism. The reader will recognize all these ideas in the surfaces of the cities that hosted them: New York, Paris, London, and Vienna.

Cities changed again after the Second World War as populations grew, technology raced and prosperity spread. Like it or not, today's cities are the muddled product, among other things, of speed, greed, outmoded social agendas and ill-suited postmodern aesthetics. Some lament the old city's death; others welcome its replacement by the electronically driven "global village". Mr. Rykwert has his worries, to be sure, but he does not see ruin or chaos everywhere. He defends the city as a human and social necessity. In Chandigarh, Canberra and New York he sees overall success; in New Delhi, Paris and Shanghai, large areas of falling. For Mr. Rykwert, a man on foot in the age of speeding virtual, good architecture may still show us a face where flaneurs can read the story of their urban setting in familiar metaphors.

An argument made by supporters of functionism is that______.

A．post-war modernist architecture was coming under fire

B．UN building in New York blocks the housing projects

C．windswept plazas present "face" to the inhabitants of the city

D．functionism reflects the needs of the social body