Alexandra Lange Bücher

Als die achtzehnjährige Alexandra den gut aussehenden Marcellino trifft, ist es die berühmte Liebe auf den ersten Blick. Nur wenige Monate nach ihrer ersten Begegnung heiraten die beiden. Doch schon kurz nach der Hochzeit entpuppt sich der vermeintliche Traummann als brutaler Tyrann. Er schlägt Alexandra, er vergewaltigt sie, er hält sie wie eine Sklavin. Mehrfach flieht sie vor ihm, aber wegen der Kinder kehrt sie immer wieder zurück. Eines Tages schließlich eskaliert die Situation. Marcellino würgt Alexandra, die nun in Todesangst um ihr Leben kämpft ...

An eye-opening exploration of how children's playthings and surroundings impact their development reveals that parents often focus on playdates and education while overlooking the significance of toys, classrooms, and neighborhoods. These elements reflect evolving ideas about child-rearing. Choices between wooden, plastic, or digital toys raise questions about what children sacrifice when safety takes precedence over play. How can the built environment foster self-reliance? Parents, educators, and children find themselves navigating these debates. Prominent design critic Alexandra Lange uncovers the surprising histories of the human-made aspects of children's lives, illustrating how these seemingly innocuous items influence behavior, values, and health in subtle ways. Her investigation highlights how decisions by toymakers, architects, and urban planners have shaped American children’s paths toward independence. Through Lange's perspective, everything from sandboxes to streets is imbued with deeper meaning. This book is essential for parents, educators, and design enthusiasts, offering a transformative view of the world by revealing it through the eyes of children.

Few places have been as nostalgized, or as maligned, as malls. Since their birth in the 1950s, they have loomed large as temples of commerce, the agora of the suburbs. In their prime, they proved a powerful draw for creative thinkers such as Joan Didion, Ray Bradbury, and George Romero, who understood the mall's appeal as both critics and consumers. Yet today, amid the aftershocks of financial crises and a global pandemic, as well as the rise of online retail, the dystopian husk of an abandoned shopping center has become one of our era's defining images. Conventional wisdom holds that the mall is dead. But what was the mall, really? And have rumors of its demise been greatly exaggerated?In her acclaimed The Design of Childhood, Alexandra Lange uncovered the histories of toys, classrooms, and playgrounds. She now turns her sharp eye to another subject we only think we know. She chronicles postwar architects' and merchants' invention of the mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. In Lange's perceptive account, the mall becomes newly strange and rich with contradiction: Malls are environments of both freedom and exclusion--of consumerism, but also of community. Meet Me by the Fountain is a highly entertaining and evocative promenade through the mall's story of rise, fall, and ongoing reinvention, for readers of any generation.

Extraordinary architecture addresses so much more than mere practical considerations. It inspires and provokes while creating a seamless experience of the physical world for its users. It is the rare writer that can frame the discussion of a building in a way that allows the reader to see it with new eyes. Writing About Architecture is a handbook on writing effectively and critically about buildings and cities. Each chapter opens with a reprint of a significant essay written by a renowned architecture critic, followed by a close reading and discussion of the writer's strategies. Lange offers her own analysis using contemporary examples as well as a checklist of questions at the end of each chapter to help guide the writer. This important addition to the Architecture Briefs series is based on the author's design writing courses at New York University and the School of Visual Arts. Lange also writes a popular online column for Design Observer and has written for Dwell, Metropolis, New York magazine, and The New York Times. Writing About Architecture includes analysis of critical writings by Ada Louise Huxtable, Lewis Mumford, Herbert Muschamp, Michael Sorkin, Charles Moore, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Jane Jacobs. Architects covered include Marcel Breuer, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Field Operations, Norman Foster, Frank Gehry, Frederick Law Olmsted, SOM, Louis Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright.