Looking Around

From the opening sentences of his first book on architecture, Home, Witold Rybczynski seduced readers into a new appreciation of the spaces they live in. He also introduced us to "an unerringly lucid writer who knows how to translate architectural ideas into layman's terms" (The Dallas Morning News). Rybczynski's vast knowledge, his sense of wonder, and his elegantly uncluttered prose shine on every page of his latest meditation on the art of building.

Looking Around is about architecture as an art of compromise—between beauty and function, aspiration and engineering, builders and clients. It is the story of the Seagram Building in New York and the Wexner Center for the Visual Arts in Columbus, Ohio—a museum that opened without a single painting on view, so that critics could better appreciate its design. But what of the visitors who want a building that displays art well? What of those who work in the building? Looking Around explores the notion of the architect as superstar and assesses giants from Palladio to Michael Graves, styles from classicism to high tech. It demonstrates how architecture actually works—or doesn't—in corporate headquarters, airports, private homes, and the special buildings designed to represent our civilization.

For all its erudition, Looking Around is also bracingly straightforward. Rybczynski looks closely and critically at structures that may once have dazzled us with their ostentation and expense, and sees them as triumphs or failures—of aesthetic ideals and of lasting function. This is a fascinating and illuminating book about an art form integral to our lives.

Introduction
I. Homes and Houses
Home, Sweet Bungalow Home
Good Housekeeping
The Androgynous Home
Looking Back to the Future
If a Chair Is a Work of Art, Can You Still Sit on It?
Getting Away from It All
As American as Blue-Jeans and Sweat Shirts
From Mao's House to Our House
Habitat Revisited
Hot Housing Buttons
Living Smaller
Should Suburbs Be Designed?
Our Town
II. Special Places
A Place Map
Art Inside the Walls
Airports
At the Mall
Curious Shrines
The Birthplace of Postmodernism
A National Gallery
A National Billboard
A Homemade House
III. The Art of Building
Little Architects, Little Architecture
"But Is It Art"?
How to Pick an Architect
Fame
Low-Cost Classicism
A Decade of Disorientation: 1910-19
High Tech
Will the Real California Architecture Please Stand Up?
Shaping Chicago's Future
God Isn't in the Details, After All
The Seven Implants of Postmodern Architecture
Listen to the Melody

Reprise: The Art of Building, or the Building of Art?
Index

"Informative and provocative, an excellent companion in plance, train, living room, kitchen, or porch"
—The Washington Post

"You only have to look around to see how thought-provoking these essays are."
—The New York Times

"His best work to date."
—The Boston Sunday Globe

Witold Rybczynski of Polish parentage, was born in Edinburgh in 1943, raised in Surrey, and attended Jesuit schools in England and Canada. He received Bachelor of Architecture (1960) and Master of Architecture (1972) degrees from McGill University in Montreal. He has written for the Atlantic, New Yorker, New York Review of Books, and the New York Times, and has been architecture critic for Saturday Night, Wigwag, and Slate. His book include Taming the Tiger, Paper Heroes, The Most Beautiful House in the World, Waiting for the Weekend, and Looking Around: A Journey Through Architecture, City Life and Charleston Fancy. He lives with his wife, Shirley Hallam, in Philadelphia and is Emeritus Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania.