What do you think?
Rate this book
Built upon Love: Architectural Longing After Ethics And Aesthetics
The forced polarity between form and function in considerations of architecture -- opposing art to social interests, ethics to poetic expression -- obscures the deep connections between ethical and poetical values in architectural tradition. Architecture has been, and must continue to be, writes Alberto Pérez-Gómez, built upon love. Modernity has rightly rejected past architectural excesses, but, Pérez-Gómez argues, the materialistic and technological alternatives it proposes do not answer satisfactorily the complex desire that defines humanity. True architecture is concerned with far more than fashionable form, affordable homes, and sustainable development; it responds to a desire for an eloquent place to dwell -- one that lovingly provides a sense of order resonant with our dreams. In Built upon Love Pérez-Gómez uncovers the relationship between love and architecture in order to find the points of contact between poetics and ethics -- between the architect's wish to design a beautiful world and architecture's imperative to provide a better place for society. Eros, as first imagined by the early lyric poets of classical Greece, is the invisible force at the root of our capacity to create and comprehend the poetic image. Pérez-Gómez examines the nature of architectural form in the light of eros, seduction, and the tradition of the poetic image in Western architecture. He charts the ethical dimension of architecture, tracing the connections between philia -- the love of friends that entails mutual responsibility among equals -- and architectural program. He explores the position of architecture at the limits of language and discusses the analogical language of philia in modernist architectural theory. Finally, he uncovers connections between ethics and poetics, describing a contemporary practice of architecture under the sign of love, incorporating both eros and philia.
- GenresArchitectureArtTheory
247 pages, Hardcover
First published March 31, 2006
8 people are currently reading
133 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 9, 2011
I really liked the idea and purpose behind this book, but it lost some stars with me. Let me explain why:
-1 Star (Limited Scope). As someone who reads a lot of stuff about the kind of people we used to call "primitive" and their myths and cosmologies, I find that APG here just sort of glosses over the whole issue. He never even explains anything about how buildings and cosmology are related (well, maybe with one or two disjointed words for every fifty or a hundred he spends reiterating his interest in Plato). Or, if you will, he treats it as something that should be obvious. Moreover, there’s no openness later in the book to modern examples. It might be interesting to include how people have started trying to modify urban environments because they found them too formulaic and sterile. Both of these would have supported his points with concrete examples, but he wants nothing to do with either.
-1 Star (Boring). This book is boring for a lot of reasons. First and foremost for me, the formatting is tight, and most of the pages in the first half not only look the same, but are about the same things. I had some serious issues finding where I was. Secondly, despite the fact that the book was about architecture, and there’s a lot of information about engravings and paintings, there’s not a picture of be found. I’m not saying that a book on theory needs to include pictures…that’d be a bit silly…but it does help when you’re talking at length about visual things. It would especially help break up the morass that the second quarter of the book turns into. As was, it was sort of like a tour guide saying “there’s some really interesting stuff over there, but eh, f--k it, let’s go look at this tax code.”
Maybe this is just a long winded way of saying I got bored and that I found that annoying and that it was compounded by my not finding the text very accessible. But I still think there’s something in that – I read a lot of “boring” and “inaccessible” things and I felt several times while reading this that I wouldn’t be able to finish it.
On the upside, the second half is pretty good.
-1 Star (Limited Scope). As someone who reads a lot of stuff about the kind of people we used to call "primitive" and their myths and cosmologies, I find that APG here just sort of glosses over the whole issue. He never even explains anything about how buildings and cosmology are related (well, maybe with one or two disjointed words for every fifty or a hundred he spends reiterating his interest in Plato). Or, if you will, he treats it as something that should be obvious. Moreover, there’s no openness later in the book to modern examples. It might be interesting to include how people have started trying to modify urban environments because they found them too formulaic and sterile. Both of these would have supported his points with concrete examples, but he wants nothing to do with either.
-1 Star (Boring). This book is boring for a lot of reasons. First and foremost for me, the formatting is tight, and most of the pages in the first half not only look the same, but are about the same things. I had some serious issues finding where I was. Secondly, despite the fact that the book was about architecture, and there’s a lot of information about engravings and paintings, there’s not a picture of be found. I’m not saying that a book on theory needs to include pictures…that’d be a bit silly…but it does help when you’re talking at length about visual things. It would especially help break up the morass that the second quarter of the book turns into. As was, it was sort of like a tour guide saying “there’s some really interesting stuff over there, but eh, f--k it, let’s go look at this tax code.”
Maybe this is just a long winded way of saying I got bored and that I found that annoying and that it was compounded by my not finding the text very accessible. But I still think there’s something in that – I read a lot of “boring” and “inaccessible” things and I felt several times while reading this that I wouldn’t be able to finish it.
On the upside, the second half is pretty good.
Displaying 1 of 1 review