In The Architecture of Urbanity: Designing for Nature, Culture, and Joy, Vishaan Chakrabarti explores how the design of our communities can create a more equitable, sustainable, and promising future for all. Chakrabarti examines architecture and urban planning’s relationship to our greatest social, technological and environmental dilemmas––and how living in cities just might save the world.

Chakrabarti is an architect and the founder of the New York-based studio Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU). The new publication follows his 2013 book, A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America, also designed by Pentagram. For the new book, published by Princeton University Press, the Pentagram team drew on the strong type of the visual identity they created for PAU. Chapter openers in black and white feature expressive typographic treatments that riff on the titles.

The challenge for the designers was establishing a visual structure and rhythm for a book densely packed with information and richly illustrated with examples from history, art and popular culture. Architectural drawings of various locations are followed by a fuller picture of images and illustrations. The renderings, diagrams and infographics were all contributed by PAU. 

The book is divided into two main sections, DESPAIR and HOPE, accented with red and cyan blue, respectively. DESPAIR considers challenges like global warming and political division, and argues that our environments are part of the problem when we no longer live in shared communities where we actually know our neighbors. Cars further erase cities, exacerbated by the induced demand of widening roads into more lanes that seldom reduces traffic.

By contrast, HOPE looks at how urban planning can be a force for good, presenting Chakrabarti’s vision for better cities. Work by an array of practicing architects demonstrates how innovative design can dramatically improve life in big cities and small settlements around the world, from campuses and refugee camps to mega-cities like Sao Paulo, Lima, Los Angeles, New York, Paris and Tokyo. 

The book concludes with “The Tau of PAU,” a series of case studies of work by Chakrabarti’s firm, including the new New York Penn Station; an illustrated portfolio of the iconoclastic public spaces he admires, like Place Georges Pompidou in Paris and Washington Square in New York; and a final section covering best practices for urban design.

A timeline of urban morphology is presented in a gatefold. Two manifestos appear on black pages to stand apart; the designers imagined these might be ripped out and tacked to a studio wall.

In lieu of a dust jacket, the cover is laminated with a silver metallic sheen. The end papers feature detailed architectural drawings from the book, rendered in silver ink. The primary typefaces are Druk and Lyon, both used in the PAU studio identity (and both from Commercial Type).