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Architecture displays the values involved in its inhabitation, construction, procurement and design. It traces the thinking of the individuals who have participated in it, their relationships, and their involvement in the cultures where they lived and worked. In this way, buildings, their details, and the documents used to make them, can be read closely for cultural insights.

Introducing the idea of reading buildings as cultural artefacts, this book presents perceptive readings by eminent writers which demonstrate the power of this approach.

The chapters show that close readings of architecture and its materials can test commonplace assumptions, help architects to appreciate the contexts in which they work, and indicate ways to think more astutely about design. The readings collected in this innovative and accessible book address buildings, specifications and photographs. They range in time from the fifteenth century - examining the only surviving drawing made by Leon Battista Alberti - to the recent past - projects completed by Norman Foster in 2006 and Herzog and De Meuron in 2008. They range geographically from France to Puerto Rico to Kazakhstan and they range in fame from buildings celebrated by critics to house extensions and motorway service areas.

Taken together, these essays demonstrate important research methods which yield powerful insights for designers, critics and historians, and lessons for students.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• List of illustrations(p. vii)
• Illustration credits(p. xi)
• Notes on contributors(p. xiii)
• Acknowledgements(p. xvii)
• Introduction(p. 1)
• Opening(p. 13)
• 1 Breathing walls(p. 15)
• Part 1 Extraordinary buildings, divergent readings(p. 29)
• 2 An augury of collapse: Herzog and De Meuron's CaixaForum in Madrid(p. 31)
• 3 Fostering relations in Kazakhstan(p. 46)
• 4 Reading the site at Sverre Fehn's Hamar Museum(p. 62)
• 5 A hellish cloud and a very clear air: industry, nature and weather in early eighteenth-century England(p. 74)
• Part 2 Familiar buildings, unfamiliar readings(p. 93)
• 6 Extension stories(p. 96)
• 7 Lounge space: the home, the city and the service area(p. 106)
• 8 The architecture of urban life: 67 rue des Meuniers(p. 121)
• 9 The setting and the social condenser: transitional objects in architecture and psychoanalysis(p. 136)
• Part 3 Redolent details, insightful documents(p. 151)
• 10 Four lines(p. 154)
• 11 'God is in the details'/'The detail is moot': a meeting between Mies and Koolhaas(p. 165)
• 12 Specifying transparency: from 'best seconds' to 'new glass performances'(p. 179)
• 13 Making plans: Alberti's ichnography as cultural artefact(p. 197)
• 14 How the mind meets architecture: what photography reveals(p. 211)
• Epilogue(p. 223)
• 15 An architectural good-life can be built, explained and taught only through storytelling(p. 224)
• Select bibliography(p. 235)
• Index(p. 239)

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Adam Sharr is Professor of Architecture at Newcastle University, Principal of Adam Sharr Architects, Co-Editor of Architectural Research Quarterly (Cambridge University Press) and Series Editor of Thinkers for Architects (Routledge).