This is Architecture: Writing on Buildings

(Hardback)

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We all consume architecture its the one artform we cant avoid. So its hardly surprising that the finest writers have applied their minds to it. Most of them arent architects, but their powers of perception are such that what they say gets under the skin of a building and gives us a lesson in how to look at architecture. Youll be entertained and enlightened as you find out why Goethe went from being dismissive of Strasbourg Cathedral to being an awed admirer; why Ruskin was offended by decorated shopfronts; why D.H. Lawrence loved Etruscan temples; why Tom Wolfe ridiculed the Seagram Building; why Vita Sackville-West saw Chatsworth as an alien interloper; why Rose Macaulay was passionate about ruins; And what Evelyn Waugh thought of Gaud. The answers, and plenty more, are all here. Knowing them will transform the way you see buildings and deepen your understanding of architecture.

Author Bio

Stephen Bayley is a critic, columnist, consultant, broadcaster, debater and curator, as well as a prolific author on design and architecture whose books include Design: Intelligence Made Visible and Ugly: The Aesthetics of Everything. With Terence Conran he created the V&A Boilerhouse Project, Londons most successful exhibition space during the 1980s and forerunner of the influential Design Museum. Previously art critic of the Listener and architecture critic of the Observer, he is now design critic of The Spectator. He chairs the Royal Fine Art Commission Trust and is Honorary Visiting Professor at Liverpool University School of Architecture.