Homes for Henry and Hanna -- and for the rest of us

DOUGLAS BELL

Room for Thought:Rethinking Homeand Community DesignBy Avi FriedmanPenguin Canada, 237 pages, $24There's a certain style of critical writing about architecture and urban design that leaves me cold. This from former architecture critic for The New York Times Herbert Mushcamp's take on that city's thwarted plans for an Olympic village: "Mr. Mayne's and Ms. Hadid's projects do not stem solely from Le Corbusier. They also embody Oscar Niemeyer's concept of the poetic urban object and the sculptural tradition that has been carried forward in recent years by Frank Gehry. These designs are right-brain poetry, not the precisely calibrated gridscapes of modernism's cold, objective truth. The forms are sensuous, playful, sinewy, as if the buildings had incorporated nature into themselves instead of standing apart from it."