The Architecture Reader: Essential Writings from Vitruvius to the Present

by A. Krista Sykes (Editor)

Overview

The Architecture Reader brings together for the first time texts written by architects of international esteem.

Encompassing two thousand years of building history, The Architecture Reader includes 40 key texts from Alberti, Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Gropius, Venturi, Gehry, and many more. The writings address persistent concerns in architecture and design, including the role of the architect and the relationship of architecture to nature, art, and science.    

The carefully chosen texts provide a taste of the multiplicity that characterizes historical and contemporary views of architecture. Krista Sykes organizes the selections chronologically and introduces each with a helpful commentary, contextualizing the author and the salient issues covered in the piece. The excerpts appear in a variety of formats, including interviews, manifestos, lectures and treatises, and are representative of the varied—sometimes conflicting—approaches to building and design. In combination, they provide a fascinating overview of significant concepts within the field of architecture. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807615805
Publisher:	Braziller, George Inc.
Publication date:	05/23/2007
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	7.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

A. Krista Sykes holds a Ph.D. in Architectural Theory and History from Harvard University. She is the author of Constructing a New Agenda for Architecture and was Managing Editor of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians.

Table of Contents

Aknowledgments     10
Preface     11
Introduction     14
from The Ten Books on Architecture (ca. 25 B.C.E.)     32
from The Book of Suger, Abbot of St.-Denis, On What Was Done Under His Administration and The Other Little Book on the Consecration of the Church of St.-Denis (1144-49)     42
from On the Art of Building in Ten Books (1846)     48
from The Four Books on Architecture (1570)     60
from Ordonnance for the Five Kinds of Columns after the Method of the Ancients (1683)     66
from Architecture, Essay on Art (1770-84)     73
"Style," from Dictionnaire raisonne (1854-68)     80
"The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered" (1908)     90
"In the Cause of Architecture" (1908)     94
"Ornament and Crime" (1908)     103
"Manifesto of Futurist Architecture" (1944)     110
from The Architecture of Humanism (1914)     117
from Towards a New Architecture (1923)     122
"Five Points cowards a New Architecture" (1926)     133
"Principles of Bauhaus Production" (1926)     136
from The International Style: Architecture since 1922 (1932)     142
"Designing a New Industry" (1946)     152
"The Seven Crutches of Modern Architecture"(1955)     165
"Form and Design" (1961)     172
Untitled Thoughts on Place and Occasion (1962)     178
Editorial from Archigram 3 (1963)     181
from Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966)     188
from The Architecture of the City (1966)     198
"Learning from Pop" (1971)     206
from Architecture for the Poor (1973)     215
"Post-Functionalism" (1976)     222
"Why Post-Modernism?" (1978)     230
"Classicism Is Not a Style" (1983)     236
"The Geometry of Feeling: The Phenomenology of Architecture" (1985)     241
"De-, Dis-, Ex-" (1989)     246
"Bigness, or the Problem of Large" (1993)     256
"Proof of Things Invisible" (1997)     264
from Animate Form (1999)     269
"The Architecture of the Future" (1999)     276
"The Hero of Hale County" (2001)     280
"This Book Is Not a Tree," from Cradle to Cradle (2002)     286
"General Agreement on Architecture and Related Matters" (2003)     294
"Architecture and Intuition" (2003)     302
"Going Public" (2003)     306
"The Poisonous Mixture" (2004)     315
Suggestions for Further Reading      321