Overview

Ever since anthropology has existed as a discipline, anthropologists have thought about architectural forms. This book provides the first overview of how anthropologists have studied architecture and the extraordinarily rich thought and data this has produced.With a focus on domestic space - that intimate context in which anthropologists traditionally work - the book explains how anthropologists think about public and private boundaries, gender, sex and the body, the materiality of architectural forms and materials, building technologies and architectural representations. Each chapter uses a broad range of case studies from around the world to examine from within anthropology what architecture 'does' - how it makes people and shapes, sustains and unravels social relations.An Anthropology of Architecture is key reading for students of anthropology, material culture, geography, sociology, architectural theory, design and city planning.

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With this excellent book, Victor Buchli reminds us of the multitude of ways in which architecture becomes meaningful to us, whoever we are and wherever we live. Informative, insightful and engaging, it should be essential reading for all those interested in the anthropological study of architecture. Marcel Vellinga, Reader in Anthropology of Architecture, Oxford Brookes University, UK This book presents a long overdue and much needed synthesis of anthropological approaches to the study of architecture. Professor Buchli situates a wide variety of ethnographic case studies in historically and philosophically grounded theoretical frameworks with which he provocatively challenges anthropologists to reconsider the materiality of the built environment. Denise Lawrence-Zuniga, Professor, Department of Architecture, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, California, USA .Buchli's study is a very useful summary of the history and current status of the anthropology of architecture, achieved at a high level of philosophical analysis. Most importantly, it accomplishes its goal of attesting to the novel material forms and registers by which architecture makes people (p. 186). From now on, anthropologists must include the agentive objects of houses and other physical forms and possessions in their studies of culture. -- Jack David Eller Anthropology Review Database In this volume, an impressive breadth of anthropological studies of architecture - modern, pre-modern, vernacular and rarefied - are drawn together to offer a surprisingly diverse range of approaches to this cross-cutting issue ... The originality of the book comes in its extremely comprehensive and adept gathering of anthropological sources from widely-flung corners - traditional tribal anthropology, studies of Soviet Russian housing, interpretations of modern property markets, hospitals, ruins and so on - constantly reassessing the overarching issues of change, process, occupation, adaptation and all the soft material flows imbricated in the daily lives of buildings. -- John Bingham-Hall, The Bartlett School of Graduate Studies, UCL The Journal of Space Syntax Victor Buchli's interesting new book is ... a highly ambitious work, the first direct attempt to provide such a detailed anthropology of architecture as a subject. [...] An excellent piece of analysis. -- Luke McDonagh, University of Cardiff, UK LSE Review of Books Architecture is far more than the materials and designs used in construction for, as anthropologist Buchli (Univ. College London) states in his first sentence, buildings make people. Ethnographic glimpses range from Mongolian yurts to the sick building syndrome of certain London high-rises. Buchli's volume is an anthropology, and deliberately idiosyncratic. His prose is not easily followed, and allusions may elude those lacking knowledge of the literatures to which he turns; still, intellectual rewards abound in Buchli's pages. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, faculty. -- A. F. Roberts, University of California, Los Angeles CHOICE

With this excellent book, Victor Buchli reminds us of the multitude of ways in which architecture becomes meaningful to us, whoever we are and wherever we live. Informative, insightful and engaging, it should be essential reading for all those interested in the anthropological study of architecture. Marcel Vellinga, Reader in Anthropology of Architecture, Oxford Brookes University, UK This book presents a long overdue and much needed synthesis of anthropological approaches to the study of architecture. Professor Buchli situates a wide variety of ethnographic case studies in historically and philosophically grounded theoretical frameworks with which he provocatively challenges anthropologists to reconsider the materiality of the built environment. Denise Lawrence-Zuniga, Professor, Department of Architecture, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, California, USA

With this excellent book, Victor Buchli reminds us of the multitude of ways in which architecture becomes meaningful to us, whoever we are and wherever we live. Informative, insightful and engaging, it should be essential reading for all those interested in the anthropological study of architecture. Marcel Vellinga, Reader in Anthropology of Architecture, Oxford Brookes University, UK This book presents a long overdue and much needed synthesis of anthropological approaches to the study of architecture. Professor Buchli situates a wide variety of ethnographic case studies in historically and philosophically grounded theoretical frameworks with which he provocatively challenges anthropologists to reconsider the materiality of the built environment. Denise Lawrence-Z iga, Professor, Department of Architecture, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, California, USA .Buchli's study is a very useful summary of the history and current status of the anthropology of architecture, achieved at a high level of philosophical analysis. Most importantly, it accomplishes its goal of attesting to the novel material forms and registers by which architecture makes people (p. 186). From now on, anthropologists must include the agentive objects of houses and other physical forms and possessions in their studies of culture. -- Jack David Eller Anthropology Review Database

With this excellent book, Victor Buchli reminds us of the multitude of ways in which architecture becomes meaningful to us, whoever we are and wherever we live. Informative, insightful and engaging, it should be essential reading for all those interested in the anthropological study of architecture. Marcel Vellinga, Reader in Anthropology of Architecture, Oxford Brookes University, UK This book presents a long overdue and much needed synthesis of anthropological approaches to the study of architecture. Professor Buchli situates a wide variety of ethnographic case studies in historically and philosophically grounded theoretical frameworks with which he provocatively challenges anthropologists to reconsider the materiality of the built environment. Denise Lawrence-Zuniga, Professor, Department of Architecture, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, California, USA .Buchli's study is a very useful summary of the history and current status of the anthropology of architecture, achieved at a high level of philosophical analysis. Most importantly, it accomplishes its goal of attesting to the novel material forms and registers by which architecture makes people (p. 186). From now on, anthropologists must include the agentive objects of houses and other physical forms and possessions in their studies of culture. -- Jack David Eller Anthropology Review Database

Author Information

Victor Buchli is Reader in Material Culture at the Department of Anthropology, University College London, UK, and Editor of Home Cultures.

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