Why Architecture Matters

By Paul Goldberger

As an architecture critic for The New Yorker and a prolific Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Paul Goldberger has brought his well-established journalistic skills to a subject that can often be long-winded and didactic. His latest book, Why Architecture Matters, strikes a gentle balance between insight and explanation. Within its thematic chapters  – on buildings as a source of comfort, as pure object, as a human relationship with space, and as a repository for memory and passing time  – a few big themes emerge: one being that we are not paying enough attention to the “whole” of architecture. The book references the modern hits (Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, the Seagram Building, Guggenheim Bilbao, et al.), but Goldberger is also a champion of the “every building,” the supporting characters behind the drama queens, where most of us actually live our lives. “It is not the obligation of every building to push the art of architecture forward  – and thank goodness for that, since it would make our cities cacophonies of ego,” he writes. At the same time, all too often civic buildings and functional retail spaces fall by the wayside. “Most of the architecture around us we barely see; in architecture, familiarity often breeds not contempt but complacency.”

More than anything, Goldberger aims to remind us of the emotional effects buildings have on us. One of the book’s most effective passages describes the two-family New Jersey house where he spent time as a child, with a divided view of reality shaped by his modernist parents and more traditional grandparents. Why Architecture Matters joins Alain de Botton’s The Architecture of Happiness and Margaret Visser’s The Geometry of Love as a book for a general audience that frames the accrued wisdom on the subject through one person’s point of view.  By Jessica Johnson

Yale University Press   ISBN 978-0-300-14430-7

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Eco House Book

By Terence Conran

Feel free to judge this book by its beautiful cardboard cover; the content serves up an eye-pleasing feast to vindicate proponents of skin-deep appraisal. Just as populist in tone as the Terence Conran brand  – purveyor of product, graphics and architecture, not to mention the ubiquitous design shops  – it offers a little of everything. The Servicing chapter deals with water and energy conservation, while Basic Fabric expounds on which surfaces and furnishings are healthiest for you and the environment. The Design segment discusses retrofits (such as converting unused areas like attics and basements into ­energy-efficient, livable spaces) as well as new builds. Outdoor Spaces not only delves into landscaping and green roofs but also composting; and Maintenance, the final chapter, rounds off the overall nuts-and-bolts approach. Though sometimes pedantic in tone (the author explains such common-knowledge concepts as global warming and condensation), the writing throughout delivers on Conran’s promise of “no ­guilt-inducing doomsday scenarios.” He highlights how attainable eco-friendly living is, and leverages his advice with images of cutting-edge projects. In particular, his 17  Case Studies – from Glenn Murcutt’s Walsh house to Jean-Baptiste Barache’s restored Eco Barn  – offer practical inspiration via a cross-section of building types.  By Elizabeth Pagliacolo

Conran Octopus Ltd.   ISBN 978-1-84091-522-8

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