Rowan Moore – författare

In an era of brash, expensive, provocative new buildings, a prominent critic argues that emotions—such as hope, power, sex, and our changing relationship to the idea of home—are the most powerful force behind architecture, yesterday and (especially) today.We are living in the most dramatic period in architectural history in more than half a century: a time when cityscapes are being redrawn on a yearly basis, architects are testing the very idea of what a building is, and whole cities are being invented overnight in exotic locales or here in the United States.Now, in a bold and wide-ranging new work, Rowan Moore—former director of the Architecture Foundation, now the architecture critic for The Observer—explores the reasons behind these changes in our built environment, and how they in turn are changing the way we live in the world. Taking as his starting point dramatic examples such as the High Line in New York City and the outrageous island experiment of Dubai, Moore then reaches far and wide: back in time to explore the Covent Garden brothels of eighteenth-century London and the fetishistic minimalism of Adolf Loos; across the world to assess a software magnate''s grandiose mansion in Atlanta and Daniel Libeskind''s failed design for the World Trade Center site; and finally to the deeply naturalistic work of Lina Bo Bardi, whom he celebrates as the most underrated architect of the modern era.

Buildings are driven by human emotions and desires; hope, power, money, sex, the idea of home.In Why We Build Rowan Moore explores the making of buildings from conception to inhabitation and reveals the paradoxical power of architecture: it looks fixed and solid, but is always changing in response to the lives around it.Moving across the globe and through history, through works of folly, beauty, spectacle, and subtlety, Moore gives a provocative and iconoclastic view of what makes architecture, why it matters, and why we find it fascinating. You will never look at a building in the same way again.

A powerful examination of how property shaped the modern world - and why it now threatens the freedoms and stability it was meant to sustain.Property carries a great promise: that it will make you rich and set you free. But it is also a weapon, an agent of displacement and exploitation, the currency of kleptocrats and oligarchs. In Britain, it has led to a new class division between those who own and those who don't.Property is a vivid, far-reaching analysis of our concept of property ownership, from 16th-century enclosures to the present day. It tells powerful stories - of life in the developer-led boomtown of Gurgaon in India, of the struggles to form Black communities in Missouri and Georgia, of a giant experiment in co-operative living in the Bronx, of the impacts of Margaret Thatcher's "property-owning democracy." Above all, Property asks how we have come to view our homes as investments - and it offers hope for how things could be better, with reform that might enable the social wealth of property to be returned to society.

'A rallying cry for a deep rethink of how we build, buy and manage homes.' ARCHITECTS' JOURNAL'A calm analysis of the concept of property ownership, its promises, successes and betrayals.' THE SPECTATOR'Moore situates property where it belongs - in the centre of virtually every aspect of our lives.' SUNDAY TIMESWherever you are on property's wheel of chance, you are likely to be powerfully affected by it. Perhaps you have changed your life in search of a place you can afford. Or maybe you are a homeowner who worries about a crash in prices. Or perhaps you have found you are shut out of the magic kingdom of ownership and forced into paying high rents to indifferent landlords. This is a powerful examination of how property came to shape the modern world - and why it now threatens the freedom and stability it was meant to sustain.

The Royal College of Physicians celebrates its 500th anniversary in 2018, and to observe this landmark is publishing this series of ten books. Each of the books focuses on fifty themed elements that have contributed to making the RCP what it is today, together adding up to 500 reflections on 500 years. Some of the people, ideas, objects and manuscripts featured are directly connected to the College, while others have had an influence that can still be felt in its work.Written exactly fifty years after the opening of the building in 1964, this first book in the series, Anatomy of a Building, is a meditation on the architecture of the college, focusing particularly on its current home, a Grade 1 listed building, designed by Denys Lasdun.

The Royal College of Physicians celebrates its 500th anniversary in 2018, and to observe this landmark is publishing this series of ten books. Each of the books focuses on fifty themed elements that have contributed to making the RCP what it is today, together adding up to 500 reflections on 500 years. Some of the people, ideas, objects and manuscripts featured are directly connected to the College, while others have had an influence that can still be felt in its work.Written exactly fifty years after the opening of the building in 1964, this first book in the series, Anatomy of a Building, is a meditation on the architecture of the college, focusing particularly on its current home, a Grade 1 listed building, designed by Denys Lasdun.

Buildings are driven by human emotions and desires; hope, power, money, sex, the idea of home.In Why We Build Rowan Moore explores the making of buildings from conception to inhabitation and reveals the paradoxical power of architecture: it looks fixed and solid, but is always changing in response to the lives around it.Moving across the globe and through history, through works of folly, beauty, spectacle, and subtlety, Moore gives a provocative and iconoclastic view of what makes architecture, why it matters, and why we find it fascinating. You will never look at a building in the same way again.

With a new introduction for the paperback.London is a supreme achievement of civilization. It offers fulfilments of body and soul, encourages discovery and invention. It is a place of freedom, multiplicity and co-existence. It is a Liberal city, which means it stands for values now in peril. London has also become its own worst enemy, testing to destruction the idea that the free market alone can build a city, a fantastical wealth machine that denies too many of its citizens a decent home or living. In this thought-provoking, fearless, funny and subversive book, Rowan Moore shows how London’s strength depends on the creative and mutual interplay of three forces: people, business and state. To find responses to the challenges of the twenty-first century, London must rediscover its genius for popular action and bold public intervention. The global city above all others, London is the best place to understand the way the world’s cities are changing. It could also be, in the shape of a living, churning city of more than eight million people, the most powerful counter-argument to the extremist politics of the present.