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The Secret Lives of Buildings: From the Parthenon to the Vegas Strip in Thirteen Stories
Edward Hollis
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Description for The Secret Lives of Buildings: From the Parthenon to the Vegas Strip in Thirteen Stories
paperback. Takes us from the colossal achievements of antiquity to their ersatz rebuilding in Las Vegas, telling stories about buildings and the ways they change. Num Pages: 448 pages, 10 integrated half-tones. BIC Classification: AMX. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 196 x 127 x 27. Weight in Grams: 374.
The plans are drawn up, a site is chosen, foundations are dug: a building comes into being with the expectation that it will stay put and stay for ever. But a building is a capricious thing: it is inhabited and changed, and its existence is a tale of constant and curious transformation. In this radical reimagining of architectural history, Edward Hollis tells the stories of thirteen buildings, beginning with the 'once upon a time' when they first appeared, through the years of appropriation, ruin and renovation, and ending with a temporary 'ever after'. In spell-binding prose, Hollis follows his buildings ... Read morethrough time and space to reveal the hidden histories of the Parthenon and the Alhambra, Gloucester Cathedral and Haghia Sofia, Sans Souci and Notre Dame de Paris, Malatesta's Tempio and Loreto, and explores landmarks of our own time, from Hulme's legendary crescents to the Berlin Wall and the fibre-glass theme parks of Las Vegas. Show Less
Product Details
Publisher
Portobello Books
Place of Publication
London, United Kingdom
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 2 to 4 working days
About Edward Hollis
Born in London in 1970, EDWARD HOLLIS studied Architecture at the universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh before joining a practice, working first on ruins and follies in Sri Lanka and then on villas, breweries and town halls in Scotland. He now teaches at Edinburgh College of Art and this is his first book.
Reviews for The Secret Lives of Buildings: From the Parthenon to the Vegas Strip in Thirteen Stories
Hollis is magical on the layers of myth and history in the classical world - this is an engaging, erudite and readable book
Edwin Heathcote
Financial Times
[A] tremendous book ... Hollis recounts the stories of 13 structures with passion and panache ... His book [is] a rare thing: non-fiction you can reread
Scotland on Sunday ... Read more
Accessible and ambitious ... Hollis has the gift of making these buildings seem real and alive
The Times
Hollis brings together an iconoclastic attitude and a lively writing style to create a kind of counter-history of architecture, one that starts where the original designers left off and narrates the subsequent biography of the wonderful and chimeric monsters that buildings are
Kirk Savage
Washington Post
Scintillating ... Every so often, works on the building art capture the public imagination. Now Tracy Kidder and Witold Rybczynski are joined by Edward Hollis, whose new book ... [is] worthy of wide consideration
Martin Fuller
New York Review of Books
An accessible and ambitious exploration of the nature and meanings of architecture ... Hollis has the gift of making these buildings seem real and alive without recourse to illustrations, but his aim lies beyond the physical fabric, in the contested values that architecture can embody. Moral preoccupations are never far away
Simon Bradley
Sunday Times
A fantasia from the real and the imagined... An unusual sort of speculative history, almost a work of experimental fiction. The buildings, which are its nominal subjects, are only MacGuffins on which Hollis hangs a series of short stories on the themes of love, loss, and time.
Ian Volner
Time Out New York
What a happy tingle of discovery to come across a book that differs sharply from all the others in its field ... Hollis thinks with such originality and writes with such flair that he is a pleasure to read
Stanley Abercrombie
The American Scholar
A beautifully wrought book: a kind of illuminated manuscript with words taking the place of pictures ... Here are wondrous stories writ in stone, and Edward Hollis has written about them very well indeed.
Guardian
A new and entertaining view of the context in which historic structures have existed ... Recommended to readers interested in architecture, the ideas of space and place, and intellectually stimulating historical tales
Valerie Nye
Library Journal
Hollis moves gracefully through both buildings and historical periods with an impressive command of detail and a sensitivity to the people involved ... A strong, satisfying exploration of the history, beauty, and wonder of Western architecture
Kirbus Reviews
Not confined to world-famous monuments, Hollis's attractive approach attends to vernacular structures as well ... He writes history electrically, informatively, and entertainingly
Booklist
Any architecture or history buff would be pleased to find The Secret Lives of Buildings under the tree ... Through the eyes of first-time author Edward Hollis, an architect who specializes in restoring historic buildings, readers will discover that iconic structures like the Parthenon, the Berlin Wall, and even the Vegas Strip have led more storied lives than we realize. Hollis shares them with a fairy-tale charm ... We at BookPage enjoyed this book so much that it made it onto our list of 2009's Top 10 Non-fiction Books
BookPage
An intriguing collection of essays ... Hollis takes his material seriously, and his bibliography and footnotes reflect his thorough research. His informal tone makes his essays more approachable for the novice ... This volume is ideal for general readers ... Recommended
Laurel Bliss
Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries
There is something Sebaldian about The Secret Lives of Buildings: a digressive pleasure in the sheer strangeness of architecture and the mortal intrigues by which it was wrought ... Hollis is particularly good on the history of architectural reconstruction
Brian Dillon
Independent
An impressive debut ... Beautifully written and produced
Alice Wyllie
Scotsman
Tremendous ... It's unusual for a nonfiction book to match a neat conceit with elegant execution, but Hollis has achieved it. The stories are actually stories, not mere scrolls of fact. It helps that he has a beautifully wry tone ... Hollis experiments with structure, chronology, leitmotifs, and repetitions, and makes his book a rare thing: nonfiction you can reread
Stuart Kelly
Scotland on Sunday
A fascinating tale, a fairy-tale journey that shifts seamlessly between edification and revelation ... Quite unlike any other recent book on architecture, and a worthy nominee for the Guardian's First Book Award
Mark Cousins
Building Design
Edward Hollis rewrites architectural history in this beautiful and unsettling study of how the masterpieces of Western architecture have changed over time. Temples become mosques; monuments become ruins; deserts become cities, and deserts again. After reading this book, no building will seem quite the same
Christopher Woodward, author of IN RUINS: A JOURNEY THROUGH HISTORY, ART, AND LITERATURE Show Less
