Description
St Martins Press Secret Lives of Buildings by Edward Hollis
A strikingly original beautifully narrated history of Western architecture and the cultural transformations that it representsConcrete marble steel brick: little else made by human hands seems as stable as immutable as a building. Yet the life of any structure is neither fixed nor timeless. Outliving their original contexts and purposes buildings are forced to adapt to each succeeding age. To survive they must become shapeshifters.In an inspired refashioning of architectural history Edward Hollis recounts more than a dozen stories of such metamorphosis highlighting the way in which even the most familiar structures all change over time into something rich and strange. The Parthenon that epitome of a ruined temple was for centuries a working church and then a mosque; the cathedral of Notre Dame was restored to a design that none of its original makers would have recognized. Remains of the Berlin Wall meanwhile which was once gleefully smashed and bulldozed are now treated as precious relics.With The Secret Lives of Buildings Edward Hollis recounts the most enthralling of these metamorphoses and shows how buildings have come to embody the history of Western culture.show more