A Global History of Architecture by Francis D.K. Ching, Mark M. Jarzombek, and Vikramaditya Prakash, Wiley '06, $75, 800 pages, ISBN #0-471-26892-5. Index, photo credits, bibliography, glossary. Oversized book with scores of b&w and color images.
This is a resource that an architecture or art history student or a curious layperson could pick up in his youth and use productively for a lifetime. Spanning the period from 3,500 B.C. to the present, it is organized chronologically, touching on such subjects as the beginning of China's civilization in 3,500 B.C. to Classical Greece in 400 B.C., to the Maya of the Yucatan in 600 A.D., to railroad stations and world's fairs of the 1800s, to Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater in the last century and, finally, the implications of globalization.
To put together this monumental history, the authors have enlisted architectural experts from many fields, who bring to the task an understanding of connections across time and discipline, contrasts between schools of architecture and how architectural movements havei influenced history. Sixteen pages of stunning, full-color plates transport the reader to such venues as the Temple of Luxor in Egypt, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, England's Gloucester Cathedral, Mexico's Chichen Itza, the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto, the Duomo in Florence, the Grand Palace in Bangkok, and Terminal 4 of the Madrid Barajas Airport.
