Richard Francis-Jones – författare

"‘Truth and Lies in Architecture’ delves deep into the soul of architects and their work." — Naser Nader Ibrahim, Amazing ArchitectureThis is a collection of provocative essays that journey into the vexed circumstance of contemporary architectural practice. The nature of the great cultural, social, political, environmental, and consumerist challenges facing the contemporary architect are explored, interpreted, and questioned, while drawing connections from architecture theory, philosophy, science, literature, and film sources in an attempt to negotiate the territory between the truth and lies in architecture.These essays written by a leading Australian architect represent a level of comprehensive critical awareness rarely found within the architectural profession and one would be hard pressed to find another comparable figure in contemporary architectural practice. The entire argumentation is impressive, challenging, intellectually at the highest level and beautifully written.

Architecture has never been more challenged than it is today. Addressing the sheer scale of the triple challenges of environmental sustainability, in the form of climate change; the social, in the form of class, gender, and racial inequality; and the cultural, in terms of identity, exclusion, and prejudice, in particular against First Nations Peoples, is a seemingly overwhelming task for architecture. At the same time, these great challenges come at a moment when architecture has never been so marginalised and diminished. The practice of architecture has been progressively desiccated, undermined, and commodified through the instrumental processes of the contemporary development industry and professional practice, together with the simplistic reductionism of media technology and market consumption demands. How could this happen? How can the true nature of architecture have been so undermined?