Why Architecture Matters

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Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2011, 2009, English

Nonfiction, Architecture

5.25 x 7.75 inches, paperback, 304 pages, 54 black-and-white illustrations

ISBN: 9780300168174

Suggested Retail Price: $16.00

From the Publisher. Not a work of architectural history or a guide to the styles or an architectural dictionary, though it contains elements of all three. The purpose of Why Architecture Matters is to “come to grips with how things feel to us when we stand before them, with how architecture affects us emotionally as well as intellectually”—with its impact on our lives. “Architecture begins to matter,” writes Paul Goldberger, “when it brings delight and sadness and perplexity and awe along with a roof over our heads.” He shows us how that works in examples ranging from a small Cape Cod cottage to the “vast, flowing” Prairie houses of Frank Lloyd Wright, from the Lincoln Memorial to the highly sculptural Guggenheim Bilbao and the Church of Sant’Ivo in Rome. . . . Based on decades of looking at buildings and thinking about how we experience them, Goldberger raises our awareness of fundamental things like proportion, scale, space, texture, materials, shapes, light, and memory.

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Paul Goldberger

On list of Books by Paul Goldberger

Calvin Tsao

On Calvin Tsao’s Book List

Paul Goldberger’s great service to architecture has been in his abiding commitment to helping the general public make sense of the built environment and understand the role that architects have in shaping it. Architects, too, benefit from his insights, especially in this new book, which emphasizes the imperative of poetics in architecture.

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