What Is Architecture? Beste Prijs

British architect and critic Paul Shepheard is a fresh new voice in current postmodern debates about the history and meaning of architecture. In the wonderfully unorthodox quasi-novelistic essay, What is Architecture? An Essay on Landscapes, Buildings, and Machines, complete with characters and dialogue (but no plot), Paul Shepheard draws a boundary around the subject of architecture, describing its place in art and technology, its place in history, and its place in our lives now.

At a time when it is fashionable to say that architecture is everything – from philosophy to science to art to theory – Paul Shepheard boldly and irreverently sets limits to the subject, so that we may talk about architecture for what it is. He takes strong positions, names the causes of the problems, and tells us how bad things are and how they can get better.

Along the way he marshals some unlikely but plausible witnesses who testify about the current state of architecture.