Architecture After Delusion

How Architecture Can Matter Again
1. Auflage 2027
ISBN: 978-1-041-44042-0
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 284 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm

Architecture After Delusion is an argument with architecture from inside the discipline. It begins with a simple suspicion: architecture has spent too long mistaking self-importance for value. Architects have exaggerated both their own agency and the capacity of individual buildings to change the world, while overlooking the wider systems through which places are actually made. The book also turns its attention to the culture that sustains this inflation: awards, publication, social media, professional status and the endless circulation of claims through which architects reassure one another that what they do is important.

At its heart is a different question for architecture: not simply what does a building look like, or what does the architect claim it means, but what does it actually do? What does it enable or obstruct? Can it be repaired, adapted and claimed by others? Does it support ordinary dignity, public life, local knowledge or collective action?

Architects still matter because spatial questions matter, but architecture alone cannot save the world, own the outcome or be the sole cause of change in order to matter. However, architecture’s soft knowledge and dependence on a web of relation is what makes it interesting and useful

This is not an argument for less architecture, or for less ambition. It is an argument for less vanity, less overclaiming and less dependence on the mirror of architectural culture.

Zielgruppe

Professional Practice & Development and Professional Reference

Autoren/Hrsg.

Taylor, Piers

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Architektur Architekten & Architekturbüros
• Geisteswissenschaften Architektur Gestaltung, Darstellung, Bautechnik
• Geisteswissenschaften Architektur Ökologische Aspekte in der Architektur
• Geisteswissenschaften Architektur Gebäudetypen
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Enzyklopädien, Nachschlagewerke, Wörterbücher
• Geisteswissenschaften Architektur Architektur: Berufspraxis
• Geisteswissenschaften Architektur Architektur: Allgemeines
• Technische Wissenschaften Technik Allgemein Technik: Berufe & Ausbildung

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Part I - The Conceit  1. The Invention of the Hero Architect 2. The Fiction of Autonomy 3. The Business of Believing It 4. The Building Is Not the World 5. Image, Form and Moral Alibi  Part II – What Architecture Denies  6. Occupation, Adaptation and the Life of Buildings 7. The City, the Territory, the Settlement 8. Making, Labour and the Myth of Control 9. Extraction, Scarcity and Material Consequence 10. Participation, Power and the Distribution of Agency  Part III - What Architecture Might Become  11. From Author to Host 12. Infrastructure and Stewardship (What Capacity Requires)  13. Actions, Not Just Objects 14. A Modest Profession, or Why Architects Might Matter Again Conclusion: Letting Go of the False Dream

Über Autor(innen)

Piers Taylor is an architect, academic and Professor of Knowledge Exchange in Architecture at the University of the West of England. He leads the Architecture Research Group at UWE, supporting a diverse portfolio of practice-based and interdisciplinary research across design, material processes, representation and social engagement. Taylor’s work operates across academia and professional practice. Through both roles he is interested in how architecture can engage with local conditions, collective processes and material intelligence to produce socially and environmentally responsible outcomes. His book, Learning from the Local (RIBA Publishing, 2025), reflects on these themes through a series of built projects, research initiatives and pedagogical experiments. Taylor is also principal of Invisible Studio, an award-winning architecture practice. The practice focuses on hands-on material experimentation, community collaboration and design-build methodologies. Notable projects include, East Quay, Watchet, Westonbirt Wolfson Tree Management Centre, Room 13 & Hooke Park Assembly Workshop (with AA Design & Make). Taylor is also founder and convenor of Studio in the Woods, an annual design/make summer school.