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Introduction: sports stadia and modern urbanism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2010

NIKOLAUS KATZER
NIKOLAUS KATZER*
Affiliation:
Helmut-Schmidt-University, Universität der Bundeswehr, Hamburg, Holstenhofweg, 22403 Hamburg, Germany
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Extract

Despite the fact that sporting spaces reflect key shifts in thinking about town planning, sports architecture is still an underexplored area in the historiography of urban design. The architects, engineers and designers attempting to regenerate and rejuvenate cities after World War II were aware of the popular interest in competitive sports. Stadia and landscape design were intended to help erase the negative urban images of nationalism and totalitarianism. By starting a dialogue with the past, town planners questioned the grandeur and monumentalism prevalent in architecture since the late nineteenth century. They sought to rediscover and redefine the modern.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , August 2010 , pp. 249 - 252
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

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