The Le Corbusier Guide, 3rd edition ,Princeton Architectural Press, 2006
1st edition 1986, second edition 1999, translated into Italian,Spanish, Japanese. The Le Corbusier Guide has been in continuous print since it was first published in 1986. It has given generations of students and practitioners an appreciation of the buildings in situ. This appreciation of the relation of the buildings to their landscapes is just now becoming a subject of popular study, as evidenced by the recent exhibit at MOMA Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscape .
Introduction to Le Corbusier: Talks With Students, Princeton Architectural Press, 2005
This volume is a translation of an essay Le Corbusier wrote intended toward students prefaced by an essay by Deborah Gans that sets the detailed political and cultural context for the talk and for Le Corbusier’s thinking toward the end of his life.
Extreme Sites: Greening the Brownfield, Architectural Design AD London 2004
Editor with Claire Weisz and contributing author
This collection of essays and projects from a range of disciplines including architects Renzo Piano, the artist Andy Goldsworthy and the engineer Himanshu Parihk, as well as research on refugee camps by Gans , tackles green issues on a large scale from the perspective of damaged sites or brownfields. It investigates how natural ecology can be balanced with redevelopment for human activity.
The Organic Approach,Wiley/Academy Editions, London 2003
Edited with Zehra Kuz, International AIA Book Awards, Honorable Mention 2003, Graham Foundation Grant 2002
With its promise of environmental symbiosis, the idea of the organic has re-emerged as a design force. The book is a multi-disciplinary investigation in the context of ecology, social and physical infrastructures and digital technologies. It brings together outstanding figures in various disciplines engineers Mahadav Raman of Arup, computer graphic technologist Tom Brigham and architect Volker Giencke and historian Kenneth Frampton. The volume intentionally highlights faculty from Pratt Institute such as John Johansen to celebrate to school’s important legacy in this approach
Bridging the Gap: Rethinking the Relation of Architect and Engineer, Van Nostrand/Reinhold, NY 1991
Managing Editor, Honored: AIA International Book Awards 1992
This book was based on a symposium of the same name organized by Gans with Building Arts Forum at the Guggenheim Museum as conversations among extraordinary architects and engineers Peter Rice, Joerg Schlaich, architects Santiago Calatrava and Richard Roger and historians David Billington and Kenneth Frampton’s regarding the schisms among architectural design, engineering and development that were rampant in the 1980s. Besides being the first time hat a young Calatrava spoke in the United States, It was an early event in redressing the need for the fruitful collaborations we see today, including those concerning sustainability