Spiro Kostof – författare

With the architectural profession in a state of crisis over the nature - and even the necessity - of its role in society, this book is especially welcome, as it puts the debate into a historical perspective. The Architect is the first book in English in fifty years to survey the profession's history from its beginnings in ancient Egypt to the present. Without claiming to cover every period in every country, it is nevertheless the most complete synthesis to date of what is known about one of the oldest professions in the world.

When the late Spiro Kostof's A History of Architecture appeared in 1985, it was universally hailed as a masterpiece--one of the finest books on architecture ever written. Now, updated and expanded, this classic reference continues to bring to readers the full array of civilization's architectural achievements. Insightful, engagingly written, and graced with close to a thousand superb illustrations, the International Second Edition of this extraordinary volume offers a sweeping narrative that examines architecture as it reflects the social, economic, and technological aspects of human history. The scope of the book is astonishing. No mere survey of famous buildings, Kostof's History examines a surprisingly wide variety of man-made structures: prehistoric huts and the TVA, the pyramids of Giza and the Rome railway station, the ziggurat and the department store. Kostof considered every building worthy of attention, every structure a potential source of insight, whether it be prehistoric hunting camps at Terra Amata, or the caves at Lascaux with their magnificent paintings, or a twenty-story hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.

The Architectwas the first book in fifty years to survey the role of the profession from its beginnings in ancient Egypt to the present. Without claiming to cover every period in every country, it is nonetheless the most complete synthesis available of what is known about one of the oldest professions in the world. Dana Cuff considers the continuing relevance of the book and evaluates changes in architectural practice and the profession since 1965, most particularly digital technology, globalization, and environmental concerns.

Spanning the entire history of the city of Rome from Iron Age village to modern metropolis, this is the first book to take the long view of the Eternal City as an urban organism. Three thousand years old and counting, Rome has thrived almost from the start on self-reference, supplementing the everyday concerns of urban management and planning by projecting its own past onto the city of the moment. This is a study of the urban processes by which Rome's people and leaders, both as custodians of its illustrious past and as agents of its expansive power, have shaped and conditioned its urban fabric by manipulating geography and organizing space; planning infrastructure; designing and presiding over mythmaking, ritual, and stagecraft; controlling resident and transient populations; and exploiting Rome's standing as a seat of global power and a religious capital.