The Culture of Building [Hardcover]

Howard Davis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 6, 2000

All buildings are ultimately the products of building cultures--complex systems of people, relationships, rules, and habits in which design and building are anchored. In this book of thirteen chapter-essays, Davis uses historical, contemporary and cross-cultural examples to describe the structure of such cultures and how they are reflected in the form of buildings and cities. His aim is to show that special insights about the improvement of the contemporary built world come from looking at the building culture as a whole, not merely the individual acts of architects and city planners. The book is illustrated with over 260 historic and contemporary photographs, drawings and prints.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"I find this book to be wonderful and refreshing. It describes, for the first time, a new point of view in which the overall system and process of construction of the buildings in the world--all of them together--is viewed as a single system: and that system is analyzed for its capacity to create a living world, or not, in different traditional and modern societies. The depth of the examples, the beautiful detail that describes individual instances of building process from culture after culture, and the analytical insight in the hundreds of examples, make this book a landmark. The Culture of Building, if taken as I think it must be taken, heralds a new era in our thinking about architecture."--Christopher Alexander

"With this insightful work, Howard Davis brings a refreshing breeze to ventilate our stuffy attics of architectural thought. He draws our attention away from the tired, singular icons of architectural history and directs it toward the omnipresent urban fabric that shapes our everyday experience. Through his words and photographs, we learn to recognize (and hopefully to replicate) the qualities of a built environment that is healthy for our minds and souls as well as our bodies."--Edward Allen, author of How Buildings Work: The Natural Order of Architecture

"In this innovatory and challeging work, Howard Davis explores the relationships between the institutions and operations of building design and construction in practical and human terms. Drawing upon a remarkably broad frame of reference, Davis cites examples from his own studies in Japan, India, North Africa, and elsewhere, in addition to focused examination of the building culture of the past and present in Europe and the United States. This unprecedented book should be essential reading, not merely for architects and students of architecture, but for all who are seriously engaged in the production of buildings now, and in the future."--Paul Oliver, Director, Centre for Vernacular Architecture, Oxford Brookes University

About the Author

Howard Davis, Professor of Architecture, University of Oregon.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (January 6, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195112946
• ISBN-13: 978-0195112948
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 7.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,774,240 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Building Culture, January 23, 2000

By 

Renner (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Culture of Building (Hardcover)

For years, I have been waiting for an honest discussion about the interface between development, design, construction and history. The Culture of Building helps to answer some of those nagging questions of why the built world of America looks the way that it does. Davis skillfully compares the evolution and habits of several building cultures to help illuminate our own. It is an important book for my education as an architect.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Why We Build What We Do?, November 2, 2001

By 

Halyna Tataryn (Calgary, AB Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Culture of Building (Hardcover)

An excellent introduction to why we build the way we do. Davis explains the role of conflicting forces and institutions in shaping the buildings we build. He recommends improvements which our culture and architects needs to make in order to build healthy communities.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Real ****, July 1, 2011

By 

Javier Ruiz - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Culture of Building (Paperback)

This book is absolutely vital, should be a 101 sort of book for every person involved in construction, and certainly part of every architecture school curriculum. As an architect, I am consistently bombarded with images of flash amazing buildings and projects, but as a person, I see the world is composed of perhaps 2%, if that, of such things. The great depth and breadth of architecture is forged in a manner that has very little to do with Detail or Dwell or Architectural Record (or Architizer these days). This book fills in that 98% and why things are as they are, why great built environments come from a shared base of knowledge and a healthy 'culture of building', rather than particularly potent designers noted in magazines and art history texts that we tend to fixate upon in the same way that celebrity dominates most fields of human endeavor. (Wow, such a run-on sentence, good thing I am not an author!) Highly recommended, one of my favorite books concerning my profession.