A Critical History of Contemporary Architecture

Excellent, readable essays on important topics of last decades.

This is the best book I've found on recent architectural history and I use it in my survey course to introduce architecture students to the foundation of contemporary ideas in our profession. The essays are thoughtful and readable, not simply tracking 'style' but building the intellectual foundation that drove movements such as Postmodernism and Deconstruction. They consider each movement in its context as a set of ideas that addressed real issues in design and contributed to the profession moving forward. Essays, for example on sustainability lay out the development of specific ideas that continue to underlie ongoing architectural thought. This book frames history not as past and gone, but simultaneously present in the current design discussion.