In this episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast architectural totem, Canadian American architect, professor and writer Witold Rybczynski, Professor Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, spoke with me about his forthcoming book, What Architecture Is, published by Yale University Press on October 27th this year. Rather than the perhaps more expected question – what is architecture? – Witold turns it and us around.
What Architecture Is is composed of seven chapters, riffing on John Ruskin’s Seven Lamps – exploring the value of History, Order, Ornament, Meaning, Beauty, Drawing and Place, but answering too to the critics of his 2013 How Architecture Works: A Humanist’s Toolkit, giving us the readers now the framework to judge buildings, and not just explain them. Grappling again with these, perhaps, architecture can find its public and speak to it again, becoming again the home of our collective memory, meaning and experience.
Witold tells his story, which is a good one, and we approach the what and why of his propositions, after a manner, sploshing around in his lovely prose.
Witold can be found at work and on his own website. The book is linked above.
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Music credits: Bruno Gillick