Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture

by Forty, Adrian

• ISBN13: 9780500341728
• ISBN10: 0500341729
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-03-01
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc

Summary

The words we use when we talk and write about architecture describe more than just bricks and mortar--they indicate the ways we think of and live with buildings. This original and thoughtful study provides the first thorough examination of the relationship between architecture and language as complex social practices. The first section of the book consists of six rigorously argued essays that investigate the language of modernism, language and drawing, "masculine and feminine" architecture, language metaphors, science in architecture, and the social properties of architecture. The second part provides a vocabulary of key words, providing rich analyses of critical terms such as Character, Form, History, and Space. Each investigation locates a word's modern meaning within a framework of historical enquiry and theoretical discussion, setting out clearly the term's invention and treatment by architects, historians, philosophers, critics, and the people who actually use buildings. This wholly original study changes and enriches the way we think and talk about architecture, and will prove indispensable to anyone concerned with architecture and culture in the modern era.

Author Biography

Adrian Forty is Professor in the History of Architecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College, London.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	6	(1)
Preface	7	(3)
Part One
Introduction	10	(8)
The Language of Modernism	18	(10)
Language and Drawing	28	(14)
On Difference: Masculine and Feminine	42	(20)
Language Metaphors	62	(24)
'Spatial Mechanics'-Scientific Metaphors	86	(16)
'Dead or Alive'-Describing 'the Social'	102	(216)
Part Two
Character	120	(12)
Context	132	(4)
Design	136	(6)
Flexibility	142	(7)
Form	149	(24)
Formal	173	(1)
Function	174	(22)
History	196	(10)
Memory	206	(14)
Nature	220	(20)
Order	240	(9)
Simple	249	(7)
Space	256	(20)
Structure	276	(10)
Transparency	286	(3)
Truth	289	(15)
Type	304	(8)
User	312	(6)
Bibilography	318	(8)
List of Illustrations	326	(4)
Index	330