Descripciones mejoradas de Syndetics:

In an era of brash, expensive, provocative new buildings, a prominent critic argues that emotions--hope, power, sex, our changing relationship to the idea of home--are the most powerful force behind architecture, yesterday and (especially) today.

We are living in one of the most dramatic periods in modern architectural history: a time when cityscapes are being redrawn on a yearly basis, architects are testing the very idea of what a building is, and whole cities are being invented overnight, both here in the United States and in exotic locations around the world.

In this bold and wide-ranging new work, Rowan Moore--former director of the Architecture Foundation, now a leading architecture critic--explores the reasons behind these changes in our built environment, and how they in turn are changing the way we live in the world. Taking as his starting point dramatic examples such as the High Line in New York City and the outrageous island experiment of Dubai, Moore then reaches far and wide: back in time to explore the Covent Garden brothels of eighteenth-century London and the fetishistic minimalism of Adolf Loos; across the world to assess a software magnate's grandiose mansion in Atlanta and Daniel Libeskind's failed design for the World Trade Center site; and finally to the deeply naturalistic work of Lina Bo Bardi, whom he celebrates as the most underrated architect of the modern era.

Provocative and personal, iconoclastic and transforming, Why We Build is that rarest of things: a book about architecture that is also, on every page, a book about people--those chosen few who design buildings, and the rest of us, who use them every day.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• 1 Desire Shapes Space, and Space Shapes Desires(p. 1)
• 2 The Fixed and Wandering Home(p. 32)
• 3 The True Fake(p. 67)
• 4 The Inconstant Horizon, or Notes on the Erotic in Architecture(p. 106)
• 5 Power and Freedom(p. 148)
• 6 Form Follows Finance(p. 191)
• 7 The Rapacity of 'Hope'(p. 235)
• 8 Eternity is Overrated(p. 273)
• 9 Life, and the Look of Life(p. 314)
• 10 Indispensable as Bread(p. 358)
• Selected Bibliography(p. 371)
• Acknowledgements(p. 379)
• Index(p. 381)

Reseñas proporcionadas por Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Most recently the architecture critic for the Observer (London), Moore (Building Tate Modern: Herzog & De Meuron) leads the reader on an eclectic and far-ranging tour of the history of architecture. Along the way, he demonstrates a keen understanding of architecture and history by interweaving contemplations of design, form, and function-from ancient Rome to cathedrals of the European Middle Ages to the Louvre, and Soviet-era buildings. Moore even compares the functionality of two unique Massachusetts Institution of Technology buildings built 40 years apart and with significantly different impacts upon the users of these structures. A trained architect, the author explores the relationship between the act of building and the human condition over many centuries, infusing architectural design and construction with the wide variety of emotions resident in those who have designed lasting edifices. Through Moore's eyes, one sees that buildings survive beyond the days of their designers, builders, and residents and that architecture is not simply a synthesis of reason and function but an expression of human desire. VERDICT An excellent in-depth study of the connection between human feeling and desire in the design of magnificent buildings that affect entire societies and civilizations, this title will appeal most to academic readers and to serious students of architectural history.-John Creech, Central Washington Univ. Lib., Ellensburg (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Architecture is about activated emotion and desire, argues Observer architecture critic Moore in this wide-ranging, informative, and impassioned narrative of why architecture is fascinating, unstable, and a necessary poetry of the everyday. The book's aim, he argues, is not to "instruct" but to reveal the actual intent behind building so as to correct what Moore defines as the central failure of development and architecture: disguising emotional choices as practical ones. Structuring his narrative thematically, Moore begins his lively account with the subject of desire, taking contemporary architectural forms in Dubai as his central example, a city whose mythology, he suggests, was created before the city itself came into existence, where buildings' functionalities are subservient to illusion and speculation. Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi's Glass House also exemplifies the dreamlike and poetic qualities that Dubai developers insist their buildings embody. Moore's other themes are equally grand: architecture as persuasion, propaganda, and power; building as a sometimes deceptive and hopeful vision of the future; the relationship between building, financial value, and social values; architecture, death, and the eternal. Moore's deftly chosen and analyzed examples range from Alberti's Tempio Malatestiano and Jamaa el Fna "square" in Marrakesh to Manhattan's High Line. This is a highly engaging if at times overbroad vision of architecture's emotive and pragmatic powers. B&w photos throughout. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

Architecture resides at the intersection of wealth, power, and art. No wonder then, that it can result in hubris. In this account of why architects and, to some extent, their clients build what they do, architecture critic Moore never shies from skewering those whose designs were left wanting. He praises favorite designs, such as Zaha Hadid's London Architecture Foundation (Moore was director of the foundation) and Lina Bo Bardi's inspired Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo, and accompanying photographs help drive home his points. Moore provides a world junket of architecture, from Dubai's palm-shaped islands and massive towers to Paris' Pompidou Centre, London's exclusive One Hyde Park, Barcelona's Casa Mila, and New York City's World Trade Center. Only Chicago gets short shrift, unless you consider the Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe in Plano, Illinois, part of Chicago. One chapter covers why architects are frequently hypersexual. Perhaps, as Moore later claims, Architecture was the lubricant for the penetration of the skyline. It's brash, and opinion at times overtakes the book's premise. But what could be more appropriate?--Borman, Laurie Copyright 2010 Booklist