That’s A Beautiful Function
Making sense of architecture is no easy task. While we can recognize famous buildings and spaces, making sense of why they are important can be very difficult. Even harder is understanding how good architecture comes to be.
Rowan Moore, an architect who gave it all up to become an architectural journalist, tackles these questions and more in Why We Build: Power and Desire in Architecture. Moore does so from an inspired and thoughtful perspective. He focuses on people: the people who build and the people who experience the built environment. He grasps that human experience is critical to comprehending a structure and turning it into architecture.
The book is funny, insightful, and a bit of a kaleidoscope. Moore is not bound by a single set program or argument. He tries this approach and that, sprinkling delightful language as he travels the globe. How does a place so like Dubai, so over the top, so showy and yet so empty, happen? Why are the works of Lina Bo Bardi, an Italian architect who build in Brazil, so effective? What explains the interplay of architecture and desire? We read about imagined immortality and seduction, of Loos and Norman Foster, about the World Trade Center and the Freedom Tower, and about follies of design and true fakes (Pompidou Centre).
Moore served as director of the Architecture Foundation, where he worked with Zaha Hadid. His viewpoint is both as architect, patron, and critic. Moore tells us that eternity is overrated and form will follow finance.
I came away with a greater appreciation of the magic in a well-conceived and well-executed design, and gratitude to Moore, who writes about architecture critically in a way that makes me think.
David Potash