Author: Gregor Hohpe
Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."
ISBN: 1492077496
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 282
Book Description
As the digital economy changes the rules of the game for enterprises, the role of software and IT architects is also transforming. Rather than focus on technical decisions alone, architects and senior technologists need to combine organizational and technical knowledge to effect change in their company’s structure and processes. To accomplish that, they need to connect the IT engine room to the penthouse, where the business strategy is defined. In this guide, author Gregor Hohpe shares real-world advice and hard-learned lessons from actual IT transformations. His anecdotes help architects, senior developers, and other IT professionals prepare for a more complex but rewarding role in the enterprise. This book is ideal for: Software architects and senior developers looking to shape the company’s technology direction or assist in an organizational transformation Enterprise architects and senior technologists searching for practical advice on how to navigate technical and organizational topics CTOs and senior technical architects who are devising an IT strategy that impacts the way the organization works IT managers who want to learn what’s worked and what hasn’t in large-scale transformation
The Software Architect Elevator
Author: Gregor Hohpe
Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."
ISBN: 1492077496
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 282
Book Description
As the digital economy changes the rules of the game for enterprises, the role of software and IT architects is also transforming. Rather than focus on technical decisions alone, architects and senior technologists need to combine organizational and technical knowledge to effect change in their company’s structure and processes. To accomplish that, they need to connect the IT engine room to the penthouse, where the business strategy is defined. In this guide, author Gregor Hohpe shares real-world advice and hard-learned lessons from actual IT transformations. His anecdotes help architects, senior developers, and other IT professionals prepare for a more complex but rewarding role in the enterprise. This book is ideal for: Software architects and senior developers looking to shape the company’s technology direction or assist in an organizational transformation Enterprise architects and senior technologists searching for practical advice on how to navigate technical and organizational topics CTOs and senior technical architects who are devising an IT strategy that impacts the way the organization works IT managers who want to learn what’s worked and what hasn’t in large-scale transformation
Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."
ISBN: 1492077496
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 282
Book Description
As the digital economy changes the rules of the game for enterprises, the role of software and IT architects is also transforming. Rather than focus on technical decisions alone, architects and senior technologists need to combine organizational and technical knowledge to effect change in their company’s structure and processes. To accomplish that, they need to connect the IT engine room to the penthouse, where the business strategy is defined. In this guide, author Gregor Hohpe shares real-world advice and hard-learned lessons from actual IT transformations. His anecdotes help architects, senior developers, and other IT professionals prepare for a more complex but rewarding role in the enterprise. This book is ideal for: Software architects and senior developers looking to shape the company’s technology direction or assist in an organizational transformation Enterprise architects and senior technologists searching for practical advice on how to navigate technical and organizational topics CTOs and senior technical architects who are devising an IT strategy that impacts the way the organization works IT managers who want to learn what’s worked and what hasn’t in large-scale transformation
An Architect's Journey
Author: Larry Wolff
Publisher: Bookbaby
ISBN: 9780578315065
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 690
Book Description
An Architect's Journey - Mastering Future Trends in the Anthropocene is a journey into the future of architecture and mastering the Anthropocene's dangerous forces. The book demonstrates how architects and building professionals can lead the way to overcome climate change and the related perils of the Anthropocene by mastering future trends in the design domain. Captivating narratives show how architects can shift their emphasis from aesthetic object-making to meaningful and extraordinary achievement by understanding society's needs and expectations as they critically address the book's thesis. Can architecture shift from its resource-consumptive nature to become a productive, regenerative project that supports urban agriculture and reforestation, serves as a potable water source, produces net positive renewable energy, captures carbon, recycles and converts waste streams into usable materials, while allowing unlimited opportunities for developing new architectural forms and features that increase human and environmental performance without sacrifice to artistic expression and creative experimentation? An Architect's Journey provides new tools, methods, and strategies necessary to make architecture vitally more significant and instructs readers how to apply more aggressive sustainable practices to their work while achieving new modes of artistic expression. The future directions defining the next few decades support a long-range forecast of unlimited opportunity mixed with turbulence, uncertainty, and peril. To succeed, architects and building professionals must strive for positions of leadership, contradict the status quo, expand conventional thinking, behave un-conventionally, abandon exclusive theories, innovate from a framework of multiple perspectives, and skillfully navigate the consequences of difficult choices and actions through informed, collaborative, and integrated practices as forecast by An Architect's Journey.
Publisher: Bookbaby
ISBN: 9780578315065
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 690
Book Description
An Architect's Journey - Mastering Future Trends in the Anthropocene is a journey into the future of architecture and mastering the Anthropocene's dangerous forces. The book demonstrates how architects and building professionals can lead the way to overcome climate change and the related perils of the Anthropocene by mastering future trends in the design domain. Captivating narratives show how architects can shift their emphasis from aesthetic object-making to meaningful and extraordinary achievement by understanding society's needs and expectations as they critically address the book's thesis. Can architecture shift from its resource-consumptive nature to become a productive, regenerative project that supports urban agriculture and reforestation, serves as a potable water source, produces net positive renewable energy, captures carbon, recycles and converts waste streams into usable materials, while allowing unlimited opportunities for developing new architectural forms and features that increase human and environmental performance without sacrifice to artistic expression and creative experimentation? An Architect's Journey provides new tools, methods, and strategies necessary to make architecture vitally more significant and instructs readers how to apply more aggressive sustainable practices to their work while achieving new modes of artistic expression. The future directions defining the next few decades support a long-range forecast of unlimited opportunity mixed with turbulence, uncertainty, and peril. To succeed, architects and building professionals must strive for positions of leadership, contradict the status quo, expand conventional thinking, behave un-conventionally, abandon exclusive theories, innovate from a framework of multiple perspectives, and skillfully navigate the consequences of difficult choices and actions through informed, collaborative, and integrated practices as forecast by An Architect's Journey.
An Architect's Cookbook
Author: Glen Coben
Publisher: Oro Editions
ISBN: 9781939621979
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
"Coben has had the distinct pleasure of working with some of the greatest chefs and the deification of chefs into rock stars. What has remained consistent is that the challenge of opening a restaurant has not become any easier. Whether the restaurant is a burger restaurant, a dive bar and taqueria, or a four-star grand Italian destination, the stakes are always high for each restaurateur or chef. They have investors, budgets, schedules and the desire to deliver their own vision of service and cuisine. Each design project is a journey to discover the soul of each project--to tell its story in an appropriate tone of voice that compliments each chef's vision."--Provided by publisher.
Publisher: Oro Editions
ISBN: 9781939621979
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
"Coben has had the distinct pleasure of working with some of the greatest chefs and the deification of chefs into rock stars. What has remained consistent is that the challenge of opening a restaurant has not become any easier. Whether the restaurant is a burger restaurant, a dive bar and taqueria, or a four-star grand Italian destination, the stakes are always high for each restaurateur or chef. They have investors, budgets, schedules and the desire to deliver their own vision of service and cuisine. Each design project is a journey to discover the soul of each project--to tell its story in an appropriate tone of voice that compliments each chef's vision."--Provided by publisher.
Starting an Architecture Firm
Author: Timothy Ung
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781790608331
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 115
Book Description
Starting an Architecture Firm is a beginner's guide for architects who are ready to start a practice. This eBook covers the essential information that an architect will need to start their business, manage the firm's finances, understand the basics of contracts, develop a brand, and develop relationships with clients.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781790608331
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 115
Book Description
Starting an Architecture Firm is a beginner's guide for architects who are ready to start a practice. This eBook covers the essential information that an architect will need to start their business, manage the firm's finances, understand the basics of contracts, develop a brand, and develop relationships with clients.
Adapt As An Architect
Author: Randy Deutsch
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000375757
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 239
Book Description
Adapt As An Architect: A Mid-Career Companion is the only book that helps design professionals to navigate the vast heart of the architect’s journey. It serves as a roadmap: a career GPS that provides options for architects getting from where they are today to where they really want to be. The focus of this optimistic, engaging book is on continued relevance, professional engagement, perseverance, and career longevity. It argues that mid-career is the lynchpin of the architect’s career, and provides the guidance and support that practices themselves are missing for emerging professionals, who are often left to their own devices to find their way as they approach the middle of their career. This book means architects don’t need to navigate these years on their own.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000375757
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 239
Book Description
Adapt As An Architect: A Mid-Career Companion is the only book that helps design professionals to navigate the vast heart of the architect’s journey. It serves as a roadmap: a career GPS that provides options for architects getting from where they are today to where they really want to be. The focus of this optimistic, engaging book is on continued relevance, professional engagement, perseverance, and career longevity. It argues that mid-career is the lynchpin of the architect’s career, and provides the guidance and support that practices themselves are missing for emerging professionals, who are often left to their own devices to find their way as they approach the middle of their career. This book means architects don’t need to navigate these years on their own.
Becoming an Architect
Author: Lee W. Waldrep
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118857194
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 370
Book Description
“Becoming an Architect will inspire future architects, career consultants, and human resources professionals alike, providing all the information you’ll need to make intelligent decisions about careers in architecture.” —From the Foreword by Helene Combs Dreiling, FAIA, 2014 AIA National President Starting a career as an architect is an exciting prospect, but it's important to do your research before you take the plunge. The third edition of Becoming an Architect is an update to the best-selling guide and highlights the risks and rewards on the path to a career as an architect. You'll find new insight and tons of helpful resources, as well as a complete outline of the trajectory of an architect's early career, from higher education through internship and licensure. More than thirty-two new interviews and profiles from architecture students, emerging, and established professionals give the resource a truly personal feel, and help get you acquainted with real-life scenarios from architects from varying backgrounds and specialties. With a highly accessible approach, this guide provides a complete overview of the profession, including educational requirements, design specialties, registration requirements, and the paths of a career in architecture. Whether you're a high school student, a college undergraduate, a career counselor, or a human resource professional, Becoming an Architect offers much-needed advice and information to anyone interested in career development for architects. Covers recent changes to the Intern Development Program (IDP) Provides advice on obtaining professional experience while studying to be an architect Considers career paths in a myriad of work environments, such as government agencies, education, and research Includes helpful appendixes with resources for further information, such as career-related associations, websites, and recommended reading Obtain a solid introduction to a career as an architect, and plan your own path with the guidance and advice of dozens of others who have already started this process.
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118857194
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 370
Book Description
“Becoming an Architect will inspire future architects, career consultants, and human resources professionals alike, providing all the information you’ll need to make intelligent decisions about careers in architecture.” —From the Foreword by Helene Combs Dreiling, FAIA, 2014 AIA National President Starting a career as an architect is an exciting prospect, but it's important to do your research before you take the plunge. The third edition of Becoming an Architect is an update to the best-selling guide and highlights the risks and rewards on the path to a career as an architect. You'll find new insight and tons of helpful resources, as well as a complete outline of the trajectory of an architect's early career, from higher education through internship and licensure. More than thirty-two new interviews and profiles from architecture students, emerging, and established professionals give the resource a truly personal feel, and help get you acquainted with real-life scenarios from architects from varying backgrounds and specialties. With a highly accessible approach, this guide provides a complete overview of the profession, including educational requirements, design specialties, registration requirements, and the paths of a career in architecture. Whether you're a high school student, a college undergraduate, a career counselor, or a human resource professional, Becoming an Architect offers much-needed advice and information to anyone interested in career development for architects. Covers recent changes to the Intern Development Program (IDP) Provides advice on obtaining professional experience while studying to be an architect Considers career paths in a myriad of work environments, such as government agencies, education, and research Includes helpful appendixes with resources for further information, such as career-related associations, websites, and recommended reading Obtain a solid introduction to a career as an architect, and plan your own path with the guidance and advice of dozens of others who have already started this process.
How to Architect
Author: Doug Patt
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262516993
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 138
Book Description
The basics of the profession and practice of architecture, presented in illustrated A-Z form. The word "architect" is a noun, but Doug Patt uses it as a verb—coining a term and making a point about using parts of speech and parts of buildings in new ways. Changing the function of a word, or a room, can produce surprise and meaning. In How to Architect, Patt—an architect and the creator of a series of wildly popular online videos about architecture—presents the basics of architecture in A-Z form, starting with "A is for Asymmetry" (as seen in Chartres Cathedral and Frank Gehry), detouring through "N is for Narrative," and ending with "Z is for Zeal" (a quality that successful architects tend to have, even in fiction—see The Fountainhead's architect-hero Howard Roark.) How to Architect is a book to guide you on the road to architecture. If you are just starting on that journey or thinking about becoming an architect, it is a place to begin. If you are already an architect and want to remind yourself of what drew you to the profession, it is a book of affirmation. And if you are just curious about what goes into the design and construction of buildings, this book tells you how architects think. Patt introduces each entry with a hand-drawn letter, and accompanies the text with illustrations that illuminate the concept discussed: a fallen Humpty Dumpty illustrates the perils of fragile egos; photographs of an X-Acto knife and other hand tools remind us of architecture's nondigital origins. How to Architect offers encouragement to aspiring architects but also mounts a defense of architecture as a profession—by calling out a defiant verb: architect!
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262516993
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 138
Book Description
The basics of the profession and practice of architecture, presented in illustrated A-Z form. The word "architect" is a noun, but Doug Patt uses it as a verb—coining a term and making a point about using parts of speech and parts of buildings in new ways. Changing the function of a word, or a room, can produce surprise and meaning. In How to Architect, Patt—an architect and the creator of a series of wildly popular online videos about architecture—presents the basics of architecture in A-Z form, starting with "A is for Asymmetry" (as seen in Chartres Cathedral and Frank Gehry), detouring through "N is for Narrative," and ending with "Z is for Zeal" (a quality that successful architects tend to have, even in fiction—see The Fountainhead's architect-hero Howard Roark.) How to Architect is a book to guide you on the road to architecture. If you are just starting on that journey or thinking about becoming an architect, it is a place to begin. If you are already an architect and want to remind yourself of what drew you to the profession, it is a book of affirmation. And if you are just curious about what goes into the design and construction of buildings, this book tells you how architects think. Patt introduces each entry with a hand-drawn letter, and accompanies the text with illustrations that illuminate the concept discussed: a fallen Humpty Dumpty illustrates the perils of fragile egos; photographs of an X-Acto knife and other hand tools remind us of architecture's nondigital origins. How to Architect offers encouragement to aspiring architects but also mounts a defense of architecture as a profession—by calling out a defiant verb: architect!
It Architect Series
Author: VCDX-236 MELISSA. PALMER
Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
ISBN: 9781483473642
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 274
Book Description
IT Architect Series: The Journey is for anyone with an interest in information technology architecture. Whether youÕre a working professional or simply interested in the field, the guide explains what an IT architect does, how to become one, and how to excel once youÕve established yourself. Part OneÑÒBefore We GoÓÑhelps you develop the right mindset and find the tools you need to begin your journey to become an IT architect. Part TwoÑÒOn Our WayÓÑdives deeper into the core skills required to become an IT architect and why they are important. Part ThreeÑÒYouÕre Almost ThereÓÑfocuses on gaining different types of experiences once youÕve mastered core skills. The guide also includes appendices to help you along your IT architecture journey, including a self-assessment, instructions to create your first IT architecture design, and ideas for gaining knowledge on your journey.
Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
ISBN: 9781483473642
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 274
Book Description
IT Architect Series: The Journey is for anyone with an interest in information technology architecture. Whether youÕre a working professional or simply interested in the field, the guide explains what an IT architect does, how to become one, and how to excel once youÕve established yourself. Part OneÑÒBefore We GoÓÑhelps you develop the right mindset and find the tools you need to begin your journey to become an IT architect. Part TwoÑÒOn Our WayÓÑdives deeper into the core skills required to become an IT architect and why they are important. Part ThreeÑÒYouÕre Almost ThereÓÑfocuses on gaining different types of experiences once youÕve mastered core skills. The guide also includes appendices to help you along your IT architecture journey, including a self-assessment, instructions to create your first IT architecture design, and ideas for gaining knowledge on your journey.
Between Memory and Invention
Author: Robert A.M. Stern
Publisher: The Monacelli Press, LLC
ISBN: 1580935893
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 521
Book Description
"A capsule history of American architecture since 1960.”—Wall Street Journal Architect, historian, and educator Robert A. M. Stern presents a personal and candid assessment of contemporary architecture and his fifty years of practice. For more than fifty years, Robert A. M. Stern has designed extraordinary buildings around the world. Founding partner of Robert A. M. Stern Architects (RAMSA), Stern was once described as “the brightest young man I have ever met in my entire teaching career” by Philip Johnson and recently called “New York City’s most valuable architect” by Bloomberg. Encompassing autobiography, institutional history, and lively, behind-the-scenes anecdotes, Between Memory and Invention: My Journey in Architecture surveys the world of architecture from the 1960s to the present and Robert A. M. Stern’s critical role in it. The book chronicles Stern’s formative years, architectural education, and half-century of architectural practice, touching on all the influences that shaped him. He details his Brooklyn upbringing, family excursions to look at key twentieth-century buildings, and relationships with prominent teachers—Paul Rudolph and the legendary Vincent Scully among them. Stern also recounts the origins of RAMSA and major projects in its history, including the new town of Celebration, Florida, the restoration of Times Square and 42nd Street, 15 Central Park West, Benjamin Franklin and Pauli Murray Colleges at Yale, and the George W. Bush Presidential Center, as well as references the many clients, fellow architects, and professional partners who have peopled his extraordinary career. By turns thoughtful, critical, and irreverent, this accessible, informative account of a life in architecture is replete with personal insights and humor. Stern’s voice comes through clearly in the text—he details his youthful efforts to redraw house plans in real estate ads, his relationship to Philip Johnson, which began at Yale and was sustained through countless lunches at the Four Seasons, his love of Cole Porter and movies from the 1930s and 1940s, his struggle to launch an architecture practice in the 1970s in the midst of a recession, and his complex association with Disney and Michael Eisner. Unsurprisingly, New York City plays a big role in Between Memory and Invention. Stern has a deep commitment to the city and recording its past—he is the lead author of the monumental New York book series, the definitive history of architecture and urbanism from the late nineteenth century to the present—and shaping its future. Though now a global practice, RAMSA residential towers rise throughout Manhattan to enrich the skyline in the tradition of the luxurious apartment buildings of the 1920s and 1930s. Supported by a lively mix of images drawn from Stern's personal archive and other resources, this much-anticipated memoir is interspersed with personal travel slides, images of architectural precedents and the colleagues that have shaped his thinking, and photographs of the many projects he discusses. With a thoughtful afterword by architectural historian Leopoldo Villardi that delves into Stern’s process of putting together this extraordinary autobiographical work, Between Memory and Invention is a personal candid assessment of a foremost practitioner, historian, instructor, and advocate of architecture today.
Publisher: The Monacelli Press, LLC
ISBN: 1580935893
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 521
Book Description
"A capsule history of American architecture since 1960.”—Wall Street Journal Architect, historian, and educator Robert A. M. Stern presents a personal and candid assessment of contemporary architecture and his fifty years of practice. For more than fifty years, Robert A. M. Stern has designed extraordinary buildings around the world. Founding partner of Robert A. M. Stern Architects (RAMSA), Stern was once described as “the brightest young man I have ever met in my entire teaching career” by Philip Johnson and recently called “New York City’s most valuable architect” by Bloomberg. Encompassing autobiography, institutional history, and lively, behind-the-scenes anecdotes, Between Memory and Invention: My Journey in Architecture surveys the world of architecture from the 1960s to the present and Robert A. M. Stern’s critical role in it. The book chronicles Stern’s formative years, architectural education, and half-century of architectural practice, touching on all the influences that shaped him. He details his Brooklyn upbringing, family excursions to look at key twentieth-century buildings, and relationships with prominent teachers—Paul Rudolph and the legendary Vincent Scully among them. Stern also recounts the origins of RAMSA and major projects in its history, including the new town of Celebration, Florida, the restoration of Times Square and 42nd Street, 15 Central Park West, Benjamin Franklin and Pauli Murray Colleges at Yale, and the George W. Bush Presidential Center, as well as references the many clients, fellow architects, and professional partners who have peopled his extraordinary career. By turns thoughtful, critical, and irreverent, this accessible, informative account of a life in architecture is replete with personal insights and humor. Stern’s voice comes through clearly in the text—he details his youthful efforts to redraw house plans in real estate ads, his relationship to Philip Johnson, which began at Yale and was sustained through countless lunches at the Four Seasons, his love of Cole Porter and movies from the 1930s and 1940s, his struggle to launch an architecture practice in the 1970s in the midst of a recession, and his complex association with Disney and Michael Eisner. Unsurprisingly, New York City plays a big role in Between Memory and Invention. Stern has a deep commitment to the city and recording its past—he is the lead author of the monumental New York book series, the definitive history of architecture and urbanism from the late nineteenth century to the present—and shaping its future. Though now a global practice, RAMSA residential towers rise throughout Manhattan to enrich the skyline in the tradition of the luxurious apartment buildings of the 1920s and 1930s. Supported by a lively mix of images drawn from Stern's personal archive and other resources, this much-anticipated memoir is interspersed with personal travel slides, images of architectural precedents and the colleagues that have shaped his thinking, and photographs of the many projects he discusses. With a thoughtful afterword by architectural historian Leopoldo Villardi that delves into Stern’s process of putting together this extraordinary autobiographical work, Between Memory and Invention is a personal candid assessment of a foremost practitioner, historian, instructor, and advocate of architecture today.
Writing Architecture
Author: Roger Connah
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
ISBN: 9780262031646
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 462
Book Description
In this tantalizing work, Roger Connah explores the peculiar odyssey of twentieth-century architecture through the buildings and writings of Finlands iconoclastic architect, Reima Pietila. Among architects, Pietila is a cult figure, a respected but often misunderstood outsider and "arctic shaman," only recently granted the international acclaim and appreciation that are his due. Pietila's complex, geomorphic structures have been compared to the work of Gaudi and Bruce Goff and variously labeled surrealistic, romantic, or expressionistic. Writing Architecture positions Pietila at the heart of contemporary architectural debates - the carnival of conflicting isms, modern post-modern, post-structuralist, deconstructive. From his relative isolation in Helsinki, he is thrust into the community of this century's most revolutionary artists and thinkers, including Wittgenstein, Einstein, Beckett, Borges, Magritte, and McLuhan. Through Pietila Connah reflects on architecture's progress and excess in this century, tracing a path through multiple meanings and intellectual adventures. More metaphysical inquiry than conventional monograph, this extraordinary study draws from various sources to "read" architecture as Pietila does, as a form of cultural composition in which all theory, literature, music, art, or natural phenomena are potential sources for architectural meaning. Like the existential detective in the pulp crime novels on Fantomas, the elegant French philosopher-thief, Connah offers fragmentary clues, contradictory solutions, and digressive speculations on the particular mystery, misery, and miracle that is modern architecture, but wisely leaves the final verdict up to his discerning readers. Roger Connah's extensive collaboration with Reima Pietila has provided him with a unique opportunity to trace the architect's inimitable approach to architecture and culture. Since 1986 the author has been living in India working as a freelance writer; he is visiting Professor at The National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad and The Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi.
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
ISBN: 9780262031646
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 462
Book Description
In this tantalizing work, Roger Connah explores the peculiar odyssey of twentieth-century architecture through the buildings and writings of Finlands iconoclastic architect, Reima Pietila. Among architects, Pietila is a cult figure, a respected but often misunderstood outsider and "arctic shaman," only recently granted the international acclaim and appreciation that are his due. Pietila's complex, geomorphic structures have been compared to the work of Gaudi and Bruce Goff and variously labeled surrealistic, romantic, or expressionistic. Writing Architecture positions Pietila at the heart of contemporary architectural debates - the carnival of conflicting isms, modern post-modern, post-structuralist, deconstructive. From his relative isolation in Helsinki, he is thrust into the community of this century's most revolutionary artists and thinkers, including Wittgenstein, Einstein, Beckett, Borges, Magritte, and McLuhan. Through Pietila Connah reflects on architecture's progress and excess in this century, tracing a path through multiple meanings and intellectual adventures. More metaphysical inquiry than conventional monograph, this extraordinary study draws from various sources to "read" architecture as Pietila does, as a form of cultural composition in which all theory, literature, music, art, or natural phenomena are potential sources for architectural meaning. Like the existential detective in the pulp crime novels on Fantomas, the elegant French philosopher-thief, Connah offers fragmentary clues, contradictory solutions, and digressive speculations on the particular mystery, misery, and miracle that is modern architecture, but wisely leaves the final verdict up to his discerning readers. Roger Connah's extensive collaboration with Reima Pietila has provided him with a unique opportunity to trace the architect's inimitable approach to architecture and culture. Since 1986 the author has been living in India working as a freelance writer; he is visiting Professor at The National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad and The Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi.