2BLOWHARDS

December 20, 2004

Architecture Books for the Holidays

Nothing in recent years beats the latest from Nikos Salingaros, "Anti-Architecture and Deconstruction" (Solingen, Germany: Umbau-Verlag). I plan to post further on this remarkable book. For now, suffice it to say that Nikos writes architecture criticism of the highest order.

I say ''criticism'' rather than ''theory'' because for me his genius lies in his ability to build from the specific to the general, which is the opposite of the tendency of academic theorists of architecture. A few critics in my experience have the ability to describe a building so as to explain how its parts add up to an emotional experience. Ian Nairn could do it. Gavin Stamp can do it, as for example in an amazing essay he wrote in the Spectator in praise of John Simpson's addition to the Queen's Gallery -- an addition that is one of the great works of architecture of our time. Lewis Mumford could, from a viewpoint very different from my own, do it. Nikos does it. His commentary on Libeskind, on Tschumi, on Derrida, on Charles Jencks is definitive.

Interestingly, of these critics, only Stamp had or has professional training in architecture or architectural history. Salingaros is a mathematician, Nairn was trained as a mathematician, and Mumford possessed no academic degree at all. A bonus of Nikos's book is that the introduction and chapter annotations were written by someone named Michael Blowhard. The book contains contributions as well from some of the best commentators on architecture: James Stevens Curl, Christopher Alexander, Michael Mehaffy, Lucien Steil, Hillel Schocken, and others -- a veritable dream team.

Francis Morrone