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Alexandra Lange

Writing About Architecture: Mastering the Language of Buildings and Cities (Architecture Briefs) Paperback – February 29, 2012

by Alexandra Lange (Author), Jeremy M. Lange (Photographer)

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Part of: Architecture Briefs (13 books)

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Writing About Architecture: Mastering the Language of Buildings and Cities, the latest addition to the Architecture Briefs series, is a handbook on how to write effectively and critically about the contemporary city. The book offers works by some of the best architecture critics of the twentieth century including Ada Louise Huxtable, Lewis Mumford, Herbert Muschamp, Michael Sorkin, Charles Moore, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Jane Jacobs to explains some of the most successful methods with which to approach architectural criticism. Each chapter opens with a reprint of a historically significant essay (and organized by typology such as the skyscraper, the museum, and parks) discussing a specific building or urban project. The author, Alexandra Lange, then offers a close reading of that essay, as well as her own analysis through contemporary examples, to further enlighten the reader about how to write an effective piece of architectural criticism.

This book, based on lessons learned from the author's courses at New York University and the School of Visual Arts, could serve as the primary text for a course on criticism for undergraduates or architecture and design majors. Architects covered include Marcel Breuer, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Field Operations, Norman Foster, Frank Gehry, Frederick Law Olmsted, SOM, Louis Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Print length

192 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Princeton Architectural Press
Publication date

February 29, 2012
Dimensions

7.25 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10

1616890533
ISBN-13

978-1616890537
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"In Writing About Architecture, Lange recognizes the stakes inherent in the act of describing place. While she certainly is pushing writers, readers and her students to aim for clarity in criticism, Lange goes much further, arguing that architecture critics be invested intellectually and emotionally in the world that surrounds them. The iconic critics Lange celebrates enliven the spaces they write about - whether they love them or hate them. They notice things. They're steeped in history, in context and provenance. They take their time. They make the reader want to experience the spaces described." --- Allison Arieff, The New York Times

"It's not only a delight to read - Jacobs' vivid 1961 description of the everyday ballet on Manhattan's Hudson Street alone is worth the $24.95 price of admission - but an instructive treatise on how great criticisms come to be." -- Architects + Artisans

"Nothing short of miraculous.... Lange's book goes into the "nuts-and bolts" level of wordsmithing architectural experiences with a poetic lyricism and technical precision as no book before it. Use it often and you'll never think of the word "critic" pejoratively again." ---ArchNewsNow

"Lange analyzes her key texts with great care and perceptiveness, and happily she is wide ranging in her taste... She understands that the purpose of writing about architecture is to build a constituency for better design, to help people see, to help them feel more agency over the built environment-and to help them take joy in architecture's great moments. She's good at doing that herself, and this book will help others do it, too." --- Paul Goldberger, The Architect's Newspaper

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Princeton Architectural Press; Illustrated edition (February 29, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 192 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1616890533
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1616890537
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.04 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.25 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #68,257 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #15 in Architectural Criticism
- #20 in Urban & Land Use Planning (Books)
- #400 in Fiction Writing Reference (Books)

Customer Reviews:
38 ratings

About the author

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Alexandra Lange

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Alexandra Lange is the architecture critic for Curbed. Her essays, reviews, and profiles have appeared in Architect, Domus, Dwell, Medium, MAS Context, Metropolis, New York Magazine, the New Yorker, and the New York Times. She has been a featured writer at Design Observer and an Opinion columnist at Dezeen. She has taught design criticism at the School of Visual Arts and New York University. She was a 2014 Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

She is the author of Writing About Architecture: Mastering the Language of Buildings and Cities (Princeton Architectural Press, 2012), a primer on how to read and write architecture criticism, as well as the e-book The Dot-Com City: Silicon Valley Urbanism (Strelka Press, 2012), which considers the message of the physical spaces of Facebook, Google, and Apple. She has long been interested in the creation of domestic life, a theme running through Design Research: The Store that Brought Modern Living to American Homes (Chronicle Books, 2010), which she co-authored with Jane Thompson, as well as her contributions to Formica Forever (Metropolis Books, 2013) and Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future (Yale University Press, 2006).

Customer reviews

5 star		65%
4 star		21%
3 star		7%
2 star		6%
1 star 0% (0%)		0%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Joongwon Lee

Ways of Seeing and Ways of Writing

Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2014

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I like this book a lot.

The book has three weaving threads that bind interesting issues.

The first thread is introduction of multiple writers (Mumford, Huxatable,
Muschamp, Goldberger, Sorkin, Kamin, Sullivan, Jacobs, etc);
The second thread is introduction of diverse urban and architectural perspectives;
and the third thread is, in showing first and second, Prof. Lange was able to show
how each writer's perspective shaped the style of ones writing and
the constructs of ones writing.

I guess good writings help us to shape a new perspective about the subject matter.
This book does this job diligently. Not only does this book help us to write
clearly about architecture, but also it helps us to categorize viewpoints of each writer
and their writing style.

By selecting a certain piece of writing of each writer,
Prof. Lange illustrates her ways of seeing physical environment and
effective ways (paragraph constructs, sentence tones, and vocabulary selections, etc)
of delivering that perspective.

If a prospect reader is an avid architecture reader, all the sample writings
are pretty familiar, hence, such reader will enjoy more about Prof. Lange's
analysis on each critics' viewpoints and their corresponding writing style.
That is the real beauty of this book.

I personally enjoyed Prof. Lange's writings more than the great writers of
past and present.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Kindle Customer

A deeper look at your own community

Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2014

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A diverse selection of previously published articles by some of the nation's foremost critics accompanied by thematic essays compel readers to think about architecture and its impact on communities more deeply. The book assembles, deconstructs, analyzes, and explains in a manner that encourages readers not only to look at buildings and landscapes more critically but to write about them in order to create better communities.

2 people found this helpful

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MEH

Beautiful

Reviewed in the United States on May 25, 2018

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This book is written quite eloquently and brings the romanticism to architecture that is often felt by architects who are in it out of passion.

One person found this helpful

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haydee

Great book

Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2020

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A really great book if you are looking to learn about writing on architecture, highly recommended, easy to read and very informative!

Reviewed in the United States on October 7, 2015

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OK, but predictable

One person found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Four Stars

Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2015

Verified Purchase

Good book, recommend to students and teachers of architectural history

One person found this helpful

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Andj

nice

Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2012

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I expected it to be a different format, but it still seems informative to have the critical essay, and then an elaboration of the view point that the exemplified critical essay covered.

2 people found this helpful

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italiana#1

good book

Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2013

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This is a very good book I would recommend to all architecture students... and to some professionals as well!!! Digital copy is a must have!

2 people found this helpful

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