Book description
Architecture, good and bad, is shaped by emotions. In Why We Build
Rowan Moore shows how buildings are driven by human emotions and desires
- such as hope, power, money, sex, and the idea of home - and how
buildings then shape our experiences. He explores the making of
buildings from conception to inhabitation, and reveals the paradoxical
power of architecture: it looks fixed and solid, but is always changing,
in response to the lives around it. Moore takes us on a personal
journey, moving freely across the globe and through history, through
works of folly, beauty, spectacle, and subtlety. He uncovers the doomed
mansion of an Atlanta multimillionaire, the phenomenally successful High
Line in New York, and the remarkable Museu de Arte in São Paulo. He
discusses baroque churches and Egyptian pyramids alongside works of the
moment. We meet extraordinary characters: Sheikh Mohammed of Dubai, the
lecherous Stanford White, and Lina Bo Bardi, the most underrated
architect of the twentieth century. Refusing to bow to fashion or
reputation, Moore gives a provocative and iconoclastic view of what
makes architecture, why it matters, and why we find it fascinating.
After reading Why We Build you will never look at a building in the same
way again.
