Thomas A. Markus

Using language - speaking and understanding it - is a defining ability of human beings, woven into all human activity. It is therefore inevitable that it should be deeply implicated in the design, production and use of buildings. Building legislation, design guides, competition and other briefs, architectural criticism, teaching and scholarly material, and the media all produce their characteristic texts. The authors use texts about such projects as Berlin's new Reichstag, Scotland's new Parliament, and the Auschwitz concentration camp museum to clarify the interaction between texts, design, critical debate and response.

Using language - speaking and understanding it - is a defining ability of human beings, woven into all human activity. It is therefore inevitable that it should be deeply implicated in the design, production and use of buildings. Building legislation, design guides, competition and other briefs, architectural criticism, teaching and scholarly material, and the media all produce their characteristic texts. The authors use texts about such projects as Berlin's new Reichstag, Scotland's new Parliament, and the Auschwitz concentration camp museum to clarify the interaction between texts, design, critical debate and response.

The material and cultural world in which we now live perhaps represents the end of a process created out of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. The battles fought over class, ideology and language are represented most clearly in the explosion of new building types during the Century of Revolutions. Lavishly illustrated with photographs, drawings, maps and plans, Buildings and Power analyses architectural form, function and space to explore the reproduction and the subversion of power in the modern city.

The material and cultural world in which we now live perhaps represents the end of a process created out of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. The battles fought over class, ideology and language are represented most clearly in the explosion of new building types during the Century of Revolutions. Lavishly illustrated with photographs, drawings, maps and plans, Buildings and Power analyses architectural form, function and space to explore the reproduction and the subversion of power in the modern city.