Every building is an argument about how people should live. This book traces that argument from the first mud-brick walls of Jericho to the glass towers of the twenty-first century. It covers the pyramids and the Parthenon, Gothic cathedrals built to capture heaven's light, and the Renaissance return to classical proportion. It follows the iron and steel that made the modern city possible and the modernists who declared ornament a crime. Along the way it shows how climate, power, faith and technology have shaped the spaces we inhabit, and how those spaces shape us in return. Clear, engaging and wide-ranging, A Brief History of Architecture is the ideal introduction to the art we live inside every day.
Every building is an argument about how people should live. This book traces that argument from the first mud-brick walls of Jericho to the glass towers of the twenty-first century. It covers the pyramids and the Parthenon, Gothic cathedrals built to capture heaven's light, and the Renaissance re...