How to Read a Building

Architecture is all around us – it is part of our lives, and its development is a central theme in the history of mankind. Learning to read a building is the route to understanding a major part of our cultural inheritance.

Collins Need to Know? How to Read a Building shows you how to analyse and interpret architectural features with confidence.

Have you ever wanted to be able to tell the difference between tudor and mock-tudor? Want to learn what components make a building gothic? Ever wondered what has influenced how our towns and cities were built? Want to understand the major traditions of architecture?

Collins Need to Know? How to Read a Building takes the reader through the process of learning more about the built environment. Starting with the basics of analysing the home, then moving onto looking at public buildings and larger and more well-known structures, Timothy Brittain-Catlin shows the reader how features are inherited and copied, as well as adapted with each new generation.

Whether you live in a small flat or detached house, you can find traces of architectural history – and learn to interpret the features you see and put them into the wider context of your surroundings. This book will help you start to uncover fascinating aspects of architectural style and history from the buildings you pass every day.

Contents:
Introduction: Architecture is for everyone
Chapter 1: The elements of architecture
Chapter 2: The Classical tradition
Chapter 3: The Gothic tradition
Chapter 4: The Nineteenth century
Chapter 5: Architecture since 1900
Chapter 6: Thinking Architecturally

Also contains comprehensive glossary of terms and quick reference ID guides.

About the author

Timothy Brittain-Catlin is an architectural historian, architect and writer on architecture. He teaches at the Kent School of Architecture, University of Kent, at Canterbury. He has worked in Israel on urban renewal schemes, and taught at the Israeli Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem. He contributes to the Architectural Review, writes regular features for the World of Interiors, and also designed his own house, the Millennium Villa.