Overview

A strikingly original, beautifully narrated history of Western architecture and the cultural transformations that it represents Concrete, marble, steel, brick: little else made by human hands seems as stable, as immutable, as a building. Yet the life of any structure is neither fixed nor timeless. Outliving their original contexts and purposes, buildings are forced to adapt to each succeeding age. To survive, they must become shape-shifters. In an inspired refashioning of architectural history, Edward Hollis recounts more than a dozen stories of such metamorphosis, highlighting the way in which even the most familiar structures all change over time into something rich and strange. The Parthenon, that epitome of a ruined temple, was for centuries a working church and then a mosque; the cathedral of Notre Dame was restored to a design that none of its original makers would have recognized. Remains of the Berlin Wall, meanwhile, which was once gleefully smashed and bulldozed, are now treated as precious relics. Altered layer by layer with each generation, buildings become eloquent chroniclers of the civilizations they've witnessed. Their stories, as beguiling and captivating as folktales, span the gulf of history.

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9780805087857

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Scintillating... Every so often, works on the building art capture the public imagination. Now Tracy Kidder and Witold Rybczynski are joined by Edward Hollis, whose new book, The Secret Lives of Buildings, offers an advanced seminar for graduates of Rybczynski's introductory courses... Provides the ground for a reinvigorated public discourse on the role of architecture in contemporary society... Worthy of wide consideration. <br>-- Martin Filler, The New York Review of Books What a happy tingle of discovery to come across a book that differs sharply from all the others in its field!... Hollis thinks with such originality and writes with such flair that he is a pleasure to read. <br>--Stanley Abercrombie, The American Scholar A fantasia from the real and the imagined... An unusual sort of speculative history, almost a work of experimental fiction. The buildings, which are its nominal subjects, are only MacGuffins on which Hollis hangs a series of short stories on the themes o

&#8220;Scintillating&#8230; Every so often, works on the building art capture the public imagination. Now Tracy Kidder and Witold Rybczynski are joined by Edward Hollis, whose new book, The Secret Lives of Buildings, offers an advanced seminar for graduates of Rybczynski&#8217;s introductory courses&#8230; Provides the ground for a reinvigorated public discourse on the role of architecture in contemporary society&#8230; Worthy of wide consideration.&#8221;<br>&#8212; Martin Filler, The New York Review of Books &#160;&#8220;What a happy tingle of discovery to come across a book that differs sharply from all the others in its field!&#8230; Hollis thinks with such originality and writes with such flair that he is a pleasure to read.&#8221;<br>&#8212;Stanley Abercrombie, The American Scholar &#160;&#8220;A fantasia from the real and the imagined&#8230; An unusual sort of speculative history, almost a work of experimental fiction. The buildings, which are its nominal subjects, are onl

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