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World Architecture: The Masterworks
“One of the many appealing aspects of World Architecture is its gathering between two covers of disparate but remarkable buildings from across the centuries, many of them in exquisite full-page photographs.”― Wall Street Journal Will Pryce unveils a world of beauty and genius in this unparalleled, specially photographed survey of the world’s architectural master- pieces. More than 350 color photographs celebrate the finest buildings from over two thousand years of Hagia Sophia, the Gothic cathedrals of Europe, Islamic masterworks at Isfahan, the Taj Mahal, the Palace of Westminster, Gehry’s iconic Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, and much more.
There are some eighty buildings featured, more than forty of which receive in-depth attention in detailed photo essays. Pryce’s accompanying texts and commentaries provide an extra dimension of understanding for the contexts in which they were created, and of the evolution of architecture through history. 350 color photographs
There are some eighty buildings featured, more than forty of which receive in-depth attention in detailed photo essays. Pryce’s accompanying texts and commentaries provide an extra dimension of understanding for the contexts in which they were created, and of the evolution of architecture through history. 350 color photographs
320 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
November 23, 2010
This book makes me sad.
1) Everywhere should be like the places in here. Look at these brilliant creations, these towering dancing spires and naves, the ribbed domes and the fantastic tracery, the meringues of stone and the souffles of marble, the pools, the shaded courtyards, the inlays of amethyst, the buildings you just want to eat. I want to live in all of these places, all the time. I want all my Goodreads friends to be there too. (And my real life friends too. Not to say that you all aren't real. But - oh - you know what I mean.)
2) Only three kinds of people got to live in these places - a) ******* rich gits, b) god botherers, c) the servants of the first two.
3) If I got in my time machine (it's in the shed, and it still worked the last time I tried it) and I explained to everybody in The Past that religion is oppression and the rich are the true vampires and that they should throw off these grisly yokes and declare themselved FREE, what then? It grieves me to say so but I think we'd be living in a world with no basilicas, no Ely cathedral, no Agra Fort, no Chatsworth, no Santa Maria della Salute... you get the picture.
4) Architecture is the fusion of arrogance and beauty.
1) Everywhere should be like the places in here. Look at these brilliant creations, these towering dancing spires and naves, the ribbed domes and the fantastic tracery, the meringues of stone and the souffles of marble, the pools, the shaded courtyards, the inlays of amethyst, the buildings you just want to eat. I want to live in all of these places, all the time. I want all my Goodreads friends to be there too. (And my real life friends too. Not to say that you all aren't real. But - oh - you know what I mean.)
2) Only three kinds of people got to live in these places - a) ******* rich gits, b) god botherers, c) the servants of the first two.
3) If I got in my time machine (it's in the shed, and it still worked the last time I tried it) and I explained to everybody in The Past that religion is oppression and the rich are the true vampires and that they should throw off these grisly yokes and declare themselved FREE, what then? It grieves me to say so but I think we'd be living in a world with no basilicas, no Ely cathedral, no Agra Fort, no Chatsworth, no Santa Maria della Salute... you get the picture.
4) Architecture is the fusion of arrogance and beauty.
April 3, 2021
Nearly all the world’s major architectural traditions originally evolved in response to the needs of religious practice. Buildings not only provided practical places to worship in groups but also gave symbolic form to religious values and history.
While architectural history based upon a narrative favours buildings that are built of a piece by a single author, buildings like St Peter's in Rome are often considered lesser masterworks for neighbouring the product of generations of architects. Certainly French High Gothic architecture is tremendously exciting because of the clarity and integrity of a single idea, as many of France's most significant cathedrals were built in a relatively short period of time. The attraction of English Cathedrals is quite the opposite: most have been altered over many years in different styles and it is their heterogeneous appearance that is attractive. The octagon of Ely Cathedral, like the dome of Florence Cathedral, were later solutions to practical problems. Not quite happy accidents, but the harmonious amalgamation of different styles from different periods. No one today seriously looks across the Backs at Cambridge and considers the over-scaled and Gothic King's College Chapel an eyesore, as they did in the 18th century. Historical distance has given us the capacity to appreciate harmonies and juxtapositions that Fischer von Erlach would almost certainly have considered absurd.
Unlike Jewish and Islamic Middle East or Hindi and Buddhist Asia, the European architectural tradition began with the polytheistic cultures of the ancient world prior to the establishment of monotheistic Christianity. The architecture of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome together constitute what is known as the Classical tradition; which had been an enormous influence upon the architecture or Christian Europe. The first Christian churches, simple basilicas, drew on the Greek and Roman traditions; but also introduced new forms and plans to fit the Christian liturgy. In time many churches also took on the form of a cross, with transepts, recalling the Cross upon which Christ died. After the split of the Roman Empire into east and West, a fascinating new architectural language appeared in Byzantium. Much later on, in the high Middle Ages, the Christian church also began to be seen as a conscious evocation fo the Heavenly Jerusalem - a place where the saved would go after the Last Judgment. Up until 1500 all churches laid greatest emphasis upon the altar - the place where the miracle of the Eucharist was re-enacted. This was normally set facing east, with the priest celebrating the Eucharist facing away from the congregation; therefore, the main entrance, often with a grand facade and portals, was placed in the west.
In the Western Roman Empire, major building works ceased altogether until the reign of Charlemagne, a Frankish king who expanded his kingdom from Rome to the English Channel and northwards beyond the River Elbe. Charlemagne consciously conceived of his empire as not only a political entity but also as a cultural recreation of the Roman Empire. He sought to do this by reviving the culture of Ancient Rome. Crowned emperor in Rome by Pope Leo III in 800, Charlemagne drew Christian scholars to his court, establishing high standards of Classical and Biblical studies for the first time since Constantine. His imposition of the Roman liturgy across his German territories generated the need for new buildings, including imperial residences, cathedrals and monasteries. A few extraordinary buildings from this period survive, the most significant being the chapel of Charlemagne's own palace at Aachen.
Charlemagne provided Europe with political stability and the rule of law after centuries of unrest. His descendants would augment this hegemony to establish the Holy Roman Empire and during the 11th century it would play a major part in the development of the first major pan-European building programme since the Roman Empire. It also occasioned the creation of a new architectural style whose name suggests its intention, if not the practice, of following Ancient Roman architecture as its model: the Romanesque. The buildings of this style are a product of various factors. The creation of the Holy Roman Empire and the empire of the Norman kings created cross-European political entities. the Norman kings controlled not only Normandy, but also England, Sicily and to a lesser extent, the Holy Land. They embraced the use of the the style, particularly in England after the Conquest in 1066. The Romanesque also reflected the popularity of the pilgrimage, where Christians travelled across Christendom taking ideas with them, and the importance of the papacy.
Romanesque architecture has no single definitive characteristic, though the round-headed arch is commonly found. It is most easily understood as involving a distinct emphasis on the articulation of a building into separate architectural elements. Everything from the most important structural elements to the smallest decorative detail are easy to identify separately and can also be seen to be subordinate to eh broader idea of the building.
Unlike Romanesque architecture, where varied regional types appeared at a similar time, the finest Gothic buildings have a clear genealogy derived from an innovative series of structures built in the Ile-de-France during the 12th century. The phrase "Gothic" was originally coined during the Renaissance by Classical architects as a pejorative description of these northern European buildings - a reference to the Goths who sacked Rome in the 5th century. Today, more specifically, it refers to those structures that employed the pointed arch, the rib-vault and the flying buttress to create a wholly original and impressive series of churches and cathedrals.
Traditionally the great French churches of around 1190-1230 - Chartes, Reims, Amiens and Bourges - are considered the highpoint of Gothic architecture. This view regards the greater homogeneity of the later Rayonnant phase as a symptom of decline. Perhaps this is due as much as anything else to the Modernist preference for the products of "primitive" as opposed to "classic" periods of art.
As with many 13th-century Gothic buildings throughout Europe, the architects looked to, or possibly came from, France. Over time, a distinctly Castilian Gothic style emerged, one primarily concerned with widespread sculptural and ornamental decoration.
Western historians use the turn of the 16th century as a convenient date fo the start of the "modern" era. This is because in Europe during the first half of the century the intellectual and cultural movement known as the Renaissance coincided with the religious revolution known as the Reformation. The combination of a wholesale revisiting of the art and thought of the Classical period and a profound questioning of the authority of the Roman Catholic Church paved the way for the birth of the secular, scientific Western world. The immediate impact of the Renaissance upon architecture was the application of the Classical language of forms, which by 1600 had definitively superseded Gothic across Europe.
The Western Renaissance prefigured the religious doubts of the Reformation period by reintroducing a pre-Christian view of the relative status of mankind, a status made manifest in their architecture. renaissance churches are entered by fine west fronts, no longer the vehicle for didactic images of the Last Judgment but rather a grand and balanced expression of man's nobility and civilization. The European Renaissance, then, was characterized in large part by its emphasis on Humanism. As much as this, however, it was defined by what it was not -- that is, Gothic. This conscious distinction was made as early as Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists of 1550, in which he referred to a rebirth of art starting in the 14th century and meaning that "good art" had re-emerged after the ignorance o the medieval period. From this point on, art would once again be based on the empirical world, as it was in Antiquity - unlike the sculptures that adorned Chartres Cathedral, which instead sought to describe a priori ideas such as sanctity or sainthood. It marked the beginning of a gradual shift from a theocentric to an anthropocentric worldview.
The result of this philosophical shift was the most radical break from tradition in Western architectural history. There was no gradual, blurred transition as there had been from Romanesque to Gothic. Architects were quite suddenly faced with the task of inventing a completely new image of what a building, sacred or secular, should look like. The architectural language of the ancient world - Classicism - had to be customized for contemporary building types. In terms of church building this meant turning to the Greek and Roman temple as the source of inspiration. But more important than the application of the Classical orders was the introduction of Classical proportional systems. The width of Classical buildings is defined in proportion to their height. The enormous but ultimately arbitrary heights of French Gothic cathedrals were replaced by a more horizontal architecture of carefully considered proportions. this can already be seen at the beginning of the 15th century in the work of the architect Filippo Brunelleschi, first in the dome of Florence Cathedral and then more fully in his churches of Santo Spirito and Santa Maria Novella.
During the 16th century the Classical style spread rapidly from its origins in Italy across Europe, along the way mutating and responding to regional traditions. This is perhaps most notable in France, Spain and England. This response to local tastes was accompanied by changes in patterns of patronage. These countries were now governed by increasingly centralized and powerful monarchies. Other parts of Europe remained isolated from Classical architecture until much later.
The dispersal of Renaissance forms throughout Europe coincided with the Reformation, which began in German in the 1520s. This movement against the authority of the Catholic Church had a far-reaching effect on architecture. Protestant countries such as England and Germany turned against the representation of saints and divine persons in sculpture, painting and stained glass, seeing them as idolatry. With the suppression of images, churches became plain and severe, and this effect spread even to secular buildings. The reaction of Catholic countries to this threat was deliberately spectacular. The "Counter" or "Catholic" Reformation, particularly in Italy and Spain, promoted an art of spiritual ecstasy, the worship of relics and the innovation of saints, and led, directly or indirectly, to the style known as Baroque.
As time went on, Europe empires also continued to grow, but social hierarchies were changing. One key development in industrializing nations was the growth of a middle class. These were educated people who took an interest in culture, and who required a particular type of dwelling. As a result a new form of architecture was developed, invariable in "Neoclassical" style. Neoclassicism became a truly international style throughout Europe and North America in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. By the early 19th century European architecture had reached an impasse. Knowledge of exotic and historical styles became so widespread and discipline so far relaxed that architects could do virtually whatever they pleased.
Only one revived style, Neo-Gothic, gained general currency. Most dominant in churches and cathedrals, it was also widely used for public buildings. Certainly the 19th century saw great structural breakthroughs -the most important quite possibly being the invention of the steel frame, which opened up the opportunity fo building higher than ever before, giving impetus to the first sky scrapers.
The early champions of the Modern Movement, such as Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, believed that once their experiments had borne fruit, all buildings would be subject to the same iron laws of necessity and logic and would necessarily look the same. to some extent this happened. Government buildings, theatres, libraries, museums, hospitals, prisons, hotels, banks, warehouses, department stores, factories, blocks of flats and universities increasingly resembled each other. One logical conclusion to this trend was the tit would be better to design multipurpose buildings that cuold be adapted to any use.
More recently a familiar process seems to be repeating itself. After the imposition of the strictest orthodoxy, the urge towards freedom has become once more irresistible and we have witnessed a plethora of architectural styles all of whose practitioners would describe themselves as "Modernists". Indeed, if there is a consistent theme it seems to be that the more exuberant the form of a structure the more likely it will receive enough publicity to one day be considered "great architecture".
Timeline of architectural styles:
Gothic -- Renaissance -- Tudor -- High Renaissance -- Mannerism -- Baroque -- Russian Baroque -- Neoclassicism -- Gothic Revival -- Victorian -- Romanesque Revival -- Modernism -- Post Modernism
While architectural history based upon a narrative favours buildings that are built of a piece by a single author, buildings like St Peter's in Rome are often considered lesser masterworks for neighbouring the product of generations of architects. Certainly French High Gothic architecture is tremendously exciting because of the clarity and integrity of a single idea, as many of France's most significant cathedrals were built in a relatively short period of time. The attraction of English Cathedrals is quite the opposite: most have been altered over many years in different styles and it is their heterogeneous appearance that is attractive. The octagon of Ely Cathedral, like the dome of Florence Cathedral, were later solutions to practical problems. Not quite happy accidents, but the harmonious amalgamation of different styles from different periods. No one today seriously looks across the Backs at Cambridge and considers the over-scaled and Gothic King's College Chapel an eyesore, as they did in the 18th century. Historical distance has given us the capacity to appreciate harmonies and juxtapositions that Fischer von Erlach would almost certainly have considered absurd.
Unlike Jewish and Islamic Middle East or Hindi and Buddhist Asia, the European architectural tradition began with the polytheistic cultures of the ancient world prior to the establishment of monotheistic Christianity. The architecture of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome together constitute what is known as the Classical tradition; which had been an enormous influence upon the architecture or Christian Europe. The first Christian churches, simple basilicas, drew on the Greek and Roman traditions; but also introduced new forms and plans to fit the Christian liturgy. In time many churches also took on the form of a cross, with transepts, recalling the Cross upon which Christ died. After the split of the Roman Empire into east and West, a fascinating new architectural language appeared in Byzantium. Much later on, in the high Middle Ages, the Christian church also began to be seen as a conscious evocation fo the Heavenly Jerusalem - a place where the saved would go after the Last Judgment. Up until 1500 all churches laid greatest emphasis upon the altar - the place where the miracle of the Eucharist was re-enacted. This was normally set facing east, with the priest celebrating the Eucharist facing away from the congregation; therefore, the main entrance, often with a grand facade and portals, was placed in the west.
In the Western Roman Empire, major building works ceased altogether until the reign of Charlemagne, a Frankish king who expanded his kingdom from Rome to the English Channel and northwards beyond the River Elbe. Charlemagne consciously conceived of his empire as not only a political entity but also as a cultural recreation of the Roman Empire. He sought to do this by reviving the culture of Ancient Rome. Crowned emperor in Rome by Pope Leo III in 800, Charlemagne drew Christian scholars to his court, establishing high standards of Classical and Biblical studies for the first time since Constantine. His imposition of the Roman liturgy across his German territories generated the need for new buildings, including imperial residences, cathedrals and monasteries. A few extraordinary buildings from this period survive, the most significant being the chapel of Charlemagne's own palace at Aachen.
Charlemagne provided Europe with political stability and the rule of law after centuries of unrest. His descendants would augment this hegemony to establish the Holy Roman Empire and during the 11th century it would play a major part in the development of the first major pan-European building programme since the Roman Empire. It also occasioned the creation of a new architectural style whose name suggests its intention, if not the practice, of following Ancient Roman architecture as its model: the Romanesque. The buildings of this style are a product of various factors. The creation of the Holy Roman Empire and the empire of the Norman kings created cross-European political entities. the Norman kings controlled not only Normandy, but also England, Sicily and to a lesser extent, the Holy Land. They embraced the use of the the style, particularly in England after the Conquest in 1066. The Romanesque also reflected the popularity of the pilgrimage, where Christians travelled across Christendom taking ideas with them, and the importance of the papacy.
Romanesque architecture has no single definitive characteristic, though the round-headed arch is commonly found. It is most easily understood as involving a distinct emphasis on the articulation of a building into separate architectural elements. Everything from the most important structural elements to the smallest decorative detail are easy to identify separately and can also be seen to be subordinate to eh broader idea of the building.
Unlike Romanesque architecture, where varied regional types appeared at a similar time, the finest Gothic buildings have a clear genealogy derived from an innovative series of structures built in the Ile-de-France during the 12th century. The phrase "Gothic" was originally coined during the Renaissance by Classical architects as a pejorative description of these northern European buildings - a reference to the Goths who sacked Rome in the 5th century. Today, more specifically, it refers to those structures that employed the pointed arch, the rib-vault and the flying buttress to create a wholly original and impressive series of churches and cathedrals.
Traditionally the great French churches of around 1190-1230 - Chartes, Reims, Amiens and Bourges - are considered the highpoint of Gothic architecture. This view regards the greater homogeneity of the later Rayonnant phase as a symptom of decline. Perhaps this is due as much as anything else to the Modernist preference for the products of "primitive" as opposed to "classic" periods of art.
As with many 13th-century Gothic buildings throughout Europe, the architects looked to, or possibly came from, France. Over time, a distinctly Castilian Gothic style emerged, one primarily concerned with widespread sculptural and ornamental decoration.
Western historians use the turn of the 16th century as a convenient date fo the start of the "modern" era. This is because in Europe during the first half of the century the intellectual and cultural movement known as the Renaissance coincided with the religious revolution known as the Reformation. The combination of a wholesale revisiting of the art and thought of the Classical period and a profound questioning of the authority of the Roman Catholic Church paved the way for the birth of the secular, scientific Western world. The immediate impact of the Renaissance upon architecture was the application of the Classical language of forms, which by 1600 had definitively superseded Gothic across Europe.
The Western Renaissance prefigured the religious doubts of the Reformation period by reintroducing a pre-Christian view of the relative status of mankind, a status made manifest in their architecture. renaissance churches are entered by fine west fronts, no longer the vehicle for didactic images of the Last Judgment but rather a grand and balanced expression of man's nobility and civilization. The European Renaissance, then, was characterized in large part by its emphasis on Humanism. As much as this, however, it was defined by what it was not -- that is, Gothic. This conscious distinction was made as early as Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists of 1550, in which he referred to a rebirth of art starting in the 14th century and meaning that "good art" had re-emerged after the ignorance o the medieval period. From this point on, art would once again be based on the empirical world, as it was in Antiquity - unlike the sculptures that adorned Chartres Cathedral, which instead sought to describe a priori ideas such as sanctity or sainthood. It marked the beginning of a gradual shift from a theocentric to an anthropocentric worldview.
The result of this philosophical shift was the most radical break from tradition in Western architectural history. There was no gradual, blurred transition as there had been from Romanesque to Gothic. Architects were quite suddenly faced with the task of inventing a completely new image of what a building, sacred or secular, should look like. The architectural language of the ancient world - Classicism - had to be customized for contemporary building types. In terms of church building this meant turning to the Greek and Roman temple as the source of inspiration. But more important than the application of the Classical orders was the introduction of Classical proportional systems. The width of Classical buildings is defined in proportion to their height. The enormous but ultimately arbitrary heights of French Gothic cathedrals were replaced by a more horizontal architecture of carefully considered proportions. this can already be seen at the beginning of the 15th century in the work of the architect Filippo Brunelleschi, first in the dome of Florence Cathedral and then more fully in his churches of Santo Spirito and Santa Maria Novella.
During the 16th century the Classical style spread rapidly from its origins in Italy across Europe, along the way mutating and responding to regional traditions. This is perhaps most notable in France, Spain and England. This response to local tastes was accompanied by changes in patterns of patronage. These countries were now governed by increasingly centralized and powerful monarchies. Other parts of Europe remained isolated from Classical architecture until much later.
The dispersal of Renaissance forms throughout Europe coincided with the Reformation, which began in German in the 1520s. This movement against the authority of the Catholic Church had a far-reaching effect on architecture. Protestant countries such as England and Germany turned against the representation of saints and divine persons in sculpture, painting and stained glass, seeing them as idolatry. With the suppression of images, churches became plain and severe, and this effect spread even to secular buildings. The reaction of Catholic countries to this threat was deliberately spectacular. The "Counter" or "Catholic" Reformation, particularly in Italy and Spain, promoted an art of spiritual ecstasy, the worship of relics and the innovation of saints, and led, directly or indirectly, to the style known as Baroque.
As time went on, Europe empires also continued to grow, but social hierarchies were changing. One key development in industrializing nations was the growth of a middle class. These were educated people who took an interest in culture, and who required a particular type of dwelling. As a result a new form of architecture was developed, invariable in "Neoclassical" style. Neoclassicism became a truly international style throughout Europe and North America in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. By the early 19th century European architecture had reached an impasse. Knowledge of exotic and historical styles became so widespread and discipline so far relaxed that architects could do virtually whatever they pleased.
Only one revived style, Neo-Gothic, gained general currency. Most dominant in churches and cathedrals, it was also widely used for public buildings. Certainly the 19th century saw great structural breakthroughs -the most important quite possibly being the invention of the steel frame, which opened up the opportunity fo building higher than ever before, giving impetus to the first sky scrapers.
The early champions of the Modern Movement, such as Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, believed that once their experiments had borne fruit, all buildings would be subject to the same iron laws of necessity and logic and would necessarily look the same. to some extent this happened. Government buildings, theatres, libraries, museums, hospitals, prisons, hotels, banks, warehouses, department stores, factories, blocks of flats and universities increasingly resembled each other. One logical conclusion to this trend was the tit would be better to design multipurpose buildings that cuold be adapted to any use.
More recently a familiar process seems to be repeating itself. After the imposition of the strictest orthodoxy, the urge towards freedom has become once more irresistible and we have witnessed a plethora of architectural styles all of whose practitioners would describe themselves as "Modernists". Indeed, if there is a consistent theme it seems to be that the more exuberant the form of a structure the more likely it will receive enough publicity to one day be considered "great architecture".
Timeline of architectural styles:
Gothic -- Renaissance -- Tudor -- High Renaissance -- Mannerism -- Baroque -- Russian Baroque -- Neoclassicism -- Gothic Revival -- Victorian -- Romanesque Revival -- Modernism -- Post Modernism
August 19, 2012
Beautiful! A stunning book for anyone interested in architecture.
February 2, 2022
First of all, the photographs are just stunning, they are the main selling point of this book!
The selection of the presented buildings is quite large, so the text does not go into too much details for every individual building. It is more of a large overview, which is fine for a book like this.
The focus lies very heavily on European architecture (the classic Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque churches you see in every book on religious architecture), with some Russian orthodox churches and Asian and Near Eastern buildings, mainly Islamic, Hinduistic and Buddhistic. The title World Architecture: The Masterworks, is a little bit misleading in this regard. I expected a greater and more diverse selection of architecture from all around the world. There are no buildings from classical antiquity, no Ethiopian, Georgian or Armenian churches, no Precolumbian architecture, no synagogues etc. Religious architecture is also the main focus of the book, so there are hardly any palaces/castles/fortifications or other types of secular architecture like belfries, Medieval cloth and city halls etc. A little less Western European churches would have created more room for a greater diversity in my opinion.
Overall the book is great and especially the photographs make it worthwhile. However, I would say that the title does not really cover the content. The focus lies too much on just a few regions, architectural styles and building types.
The selection of the presented buildings is quite large, so the text does not go into too much details for every individual building. It is more of a large overview, which is fine for a book like this.
The focus lies very heavily on European architecture (the classic Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque churches you see in every book on religious architecture), with some Russian orthodox churches and Asian and Near Eastern buildings, mainly Islamic, Hinduistic and Buddhistic. The title World Architecture: The Masterworks, is a little bit misleading in this regard. I expected a greater and more diverse selection of architecture from all around the world. There are no buildings from classical antiquity, no Ethiopian, Georgian or Armenian churches, no Precolumbian architecture, no synagogues etc. Religious architecture is also the main focus of the book, so there are hardly any palaces/castles/fortifications or other types of secular architecture like belfries, Medieval cloth and city halls etc. A little less Western European churches would have created more room for a greater diversity in my opinion.
Overall the book is great and especially the photographs make it worthwhile. However, I would say that the title does not really cover the content. The focus lies too much on just a few regions, architectural styles and building types.
December 7, 2020
Glorious photographic feast of the 40 greatest hits of pre-twentieth century architecture. Stunning interior and exterior photos, with the book quality these photos deserve (big, lots of full-page and double-page spreads, high-quality glossy paper). The accompanying text is not great, but it doesn’t really matter. As another reviewer noted, it would have helped if a few pages up front showed diagrams of common building types (the cathedral and mosque, in particular), to help general readers understand the architectural terms used throughout the book. There are only a few brief and idiosyncratic selections of twentieth-century buildings, but that subject really needs a book all its own, as concrete and steel changed the rules for building. Nothing from the pre-Columbian New World (Mayan buildings, in particular) here either. But if your taste runs to gawking at the prettiest European cathedrals, Islamic mosques, and Hindu temples, you’ll find it hard to best this book.
January 6, 2022
The pictures within this book are truly breathtaking, and many of the "masterworks" are famous buildings I have heard from. I did hope for more of a variety, however. Most of the works are sorely based in Europe, with only a handful set in India and Asian countries like Cambodia. None were built in the Americas or Africa. Only one is set in China, which arguably has as many masterworks as countries like England. I would have liked to see more variety, even if the wonders featured are beautiful examples of architecture.
March 27, 2011
I wouldn't quite say that I read this book, as much as browsed it. I picked it up from my library and thumbed through it in a few evenings.
The book is divided into two parts: Before 1500 and After 1500. That should give you some idea that this book leans heavily on old archtecture from the Old World. Indeed, I think there are only a dozen or fewer works from North America, and about as many from the 20th Century. The emphasis here is definitely on the Great Masterworks of History.
It's a huge, enormous volume with hundreds of photos. The photography is breathtaking, and the selections are intriguing. For an armchair architecture fan like me, the book was definitely educational and enlightening; I learned about a lot of classic architecture which I had not previously been familiar.
The book is divided into two parts: Before 1500 and After 1500. That should give you some idea that this book leans heavily on old archtecture from the Old World. Indeed, I think there are only a dozen or fewer works from North America, and about as many from the 20th Century. The emphasis here is definitely on the Great Masterworks of History.
It's a huge, enormous volume with hundreds of photos. The photography is breathtaking, and the selections are intriguing. For an armchair architecture fan like me, the book was definitely educational and enlightening; I learned about a lot of classic architecture which I had not previously been familiar.
August 27, 2014
This book fulfills the promise of its title with more than 300 pages of color photographs. There are not just exterior but also interior views, enough to give me a glimpse -- never really as much as I'd like, but at least a glimpse -- of quite a few buildings I'd never heard of as well as the big traditional favorites. Some historical perspective comes with the photos, about half the book showing constructions before 1500 and about half after, and an appropriate amount of accompanying text.
This is a fine first sweeping survey of the architecture of several great cultures of the world.
I do have one suggestion and that is that a small "you are here" diagram would have been helpful with a lot of the buildings. Often I see pictures of one interior angle or a particular exterior facade and really can't figure out what part of the building or complex I'm looking at.
This is a fine first sweeping survey of the architecture of several great cultures of the world.
I do have one suggestion and that is that a small "you are here" diagram would have been helpful with a lot of the buildings. Often I see pictures of one interior angle or a particular exterior facade and really can't figure out what part of the building or complex I'm looking at.
May 12, 2012
Yes, the pictures are beautiful. But from what I can tell, this book's extremely broad and superficial review of a large amount of old buildings indicates that it was intended for the general population who knows nothing about architecture. However, the author employs so much technical jargon, that much of the text is gibberish unless you are already so knowledgeable about architecture that you would be bored with the book. This is basically the fault of the editor. Had I been editing the book, I would have insisted that the author write a short first chapter using diagrams to explain all the technical jargon, rather than just relying on an unsatisfactory glossary in the back that explains jargon using other jargon.
August 17, 2016
Preface
Introduction to Part One, Before 1500
Introduction to Part Two, After 1500
--World Architecture: The Masterworks
Acknowledgments
Glossary
Index
Introduction to Part One, Before 1500
Introduction to Part Two, After 1500
--World Architecture: The Masterworks
Acknowledgments
Glossary
Index
June 16, 2012
okay, so i didn't actually "read" this book. i'm not that interested in architecture. but it has some breathtaking photos that i fully enjoyed.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews