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Architecture: A Very Short Introduction provides a highly original and sophisticated look at architecture and helps us to understand the cultural significance of the buildings that surround us. It avoids the traditional style-spotting approach in favour of giving an idea of what it is about buildings that moves us, and what it is that makes them important artistically and culturally. The VSI begins by looking at how architecture acquires meaning through tradition, and concludes with the exoticism of the recent avant garde. Illustrations of particular buildings help to anchor the general points with specific examples, from ancient Egypt to the present day.Less

Landscape architecture plays an important role in shaping the places in which we live and work. But what is it? Landscape architects are involved in the layout of business parks, the reclamation of derelict industrial sites, the restoration of historic city parks, and the siting and design of major pieces of infrastructure such as motorways, dams, power stations, and flood defences, as well as the planning of parks and gardens. Landscape Architecture: A Very Short Introduction looks at both the roots of landscape architecture and the people that established it. It also explores some of the misconceptions about landscape architecture and considers the discipline’s origins in landscape gardening.Less

Modern Architecture: A Very Short Introduction explores the technical innovations that opened up the cultural and intellectual opportunities for modern architecture to happen. It shows how the invention of steel and reinforced concrete radically altered possibilities for shaping buildings, transforming what architects were able to imagine, as did new systems for air-conditioning and lighting. Focusing on a selection of modern buildings that also symbolize bigger cultural ideas, this VSI discusses what modern architecture was like, why it was like that, and how it was imagined. It also demonstrates how modern architecture owes much to the work of some of the historians and critics who helped to shape the field.Less