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Book

The secret lives of buildings : from the ruins of the Parthenon to the Vegas Strip in thirteen stories

Call Number

  • 720.9 H742 (CEN)

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Edition

1st ed.

Publication Information

New York : Metropolitan Books, 2009.

Physical Description

x, 338 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.

Summary

A history of Western architecture and the cultural transformations that it represents. Little else made by human hands seems as stable as a building--yet the life of any structure is neither fixed nor timeless. Outliving their original contexts and purposes, buildings are forced to adapt to each succeeding age. To survive, they must become shape-shifters. In a refashioning of architectural history, Edward Hollis recounts more than a dozen stories of such metamorphosis, highlighting the way in which even the most familiar structures all change over time into "something rich and strange." The Parthenon, that epitome of a ruined temple, was for centuries a working church and then a mosque; the cathedral of Notre Dame was "restored" to a design that none of its original makers would have recognized. Altered layer by layer, buildings become eloquent chroniclers of the civilizations they've witnessed. Their stories span the gulf of history.

Contents

  • Introduction: the architect's dream
  • The Parthenon, Athens: in which a virgin is ruined
  • The Basilica of San Marco, Venice: in which a prince steals four horses and an empire
  • Ayasofya, Istanbul: in which a sultan casts a spell and moves the center of the world
  • The Santa Casa of Loreto: the wondrous flitting of the Holy House
  • Gloucester Cathedral: in which a dead body brings a building to life
  • The Alhambra, Granada: in which two cousins marry each other
  • The Tempio Malatestiano, Rimini: in which a scholar translates a temple
  • Sans Souci, Potsdam : in which nothing happens at all
  • Notre Dame de Paris: in which the temple of reason is restored
  • The Hulme Crescents, Manchester: in which the prophecies of the future are fulfilled
  • The Berlin Wall: in which history comes to an end --The Venetian, Las Vegas: in which history is so, like, over
  • The Western Wall, Jerusalem: in which nothing, and everything, has changed.

Subjects