By analyzing this poetry - the tropes founded on the Greek terms for ornamental detail - he reconstructs a classical theory about the origin and meaning of the orders, one that links them to ancient sacrificial ritual and myth.

This well-illustrated book describes the fundamental principles and various aspects of classical architecture, including a detailed, illustrated glossary that is almost a dictionary of classical architecture in itself. Professor James Stevens Curl discusses in clear, straightforward language the origins of classical architecture in Greek and Roman antiquity and outlines its continuous development, through its various manifestations during the Renaissance, its transformations in Baroque and Rococo phases, its reemergence in eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century Neoclassicism, and its survival into the modern era. The text and illustrations celebrate the richness of the classical architectural vocabulary, grammar, and language, and demonstrate the enormous range of themes and motifs found in the subject. All those who wish to look at buildings old and new with an informed eye will find in this book a rich fund of material, and the basis for an understanding of a fecund source of architectural design that has been at the heart of western culture for over two and a half millennia.

Marco Frascari believed that architects should design thoughtful buildings capable of inspiring their inhabitants to have pleasurable and happy lives. A visionary Italian architect, academic and theorist, Frascari is best-known for his extraordinary texts, which explore the intellectual, theoretical and practical substance of the architectural discipline. As a student in Venice during the late 1960s, Frascari was taught and mentored by Carlo Scarpa. Later he moved to North America with his family, where he became a fulltime academic. Throughout his academic career, he continued to work on numerous architectural projects, including exhibitions, competition entries, and designs for approximately 35 buildings, a small number of which were built. As a means of (re)constructing the theatre of imaginative theory within which these buildings were created, Sam Ridgway draws on a wide selection of Frascari’s texts, including his richly poetic book Monsters of Architecture, to explore the themes of representation, demonstration, and anthropomorphism. Three of Frascari’s delightful buildings are then brought to light and interpreted, revealing a sophisticated and interwoven relationship between texts and buildings.

The architects of ancient Rome developed a vibrant and enduring tradition, inspiring those who followed in their profession even to this day. This book explores how Roman architects went about the creative process.

German Classicism is a powerful architectural force that is only now being fully studied. As this extensively illustrated book shows, palaces, private houses, public buildings, and urban planning all received patronage on a scale that could not be paralleled in other countries. Of the host of architects whose genius was given such superb opportunities in the years 1740 to 1840, only Karl Freidrich Schinkel's name has become widely known; yet this book points out, all over Germany rulers were dramatically transforming their capitals, and the achievements of Weinbrenner at Karlsruhe, Moller at Darmstadt, or Klenze at Munich are by any standards astonishing. The first part of the book is by David Watkin, a leading British authority on the Classical Revival. He provides a historical account that sets German Neoclassicism in its regional and political context, and notes the impact of France and England and the Franco-Prussian style before Schinkel. He discusses Schinkel's own work, that of Leo von Klenze, and Neoclassicism in North and South Germany. The book's second part consists of an index of buildings prepared by Tilman Mellinghoff. Here every important Neoclassical building (both existing and destroyed) is listed and described under its location. The index is an invaluable source of information available nowhere else in English. David Watkin is a Fellow of Peterhouse and a University Lecturer in History of Art at Cambridge University. Tilman Mellinghoff is an Assistant Lecturer at the Universities of Cologne and Bonn.

If architectural judgment were a city, a city of ideas and forms, then it is a very imperfect city. When architects judge the success or failure of a building, the range of ways and criteria which can be used for this evaluation causes many contentious and discordant arguments. Proposing that the increase in number and intensity of such arguments threatens to destabilize the very grounds upon which judgment is supposed to rest, this book examines architectural judgment in its historical, cultural, political, and psychological dimensions and their convergence on that most expressive part of architecture, namely: architectural character. It stresses the value of reasoned judgment in justifying architectural form -a judgment based on three sets of criteria: those criteria that are external to architecture, those that are internal to architecture, and those that pertain to the psychology of the architect as image-maker. External criteria include, philosophies of history or theories of modernity; internal criteria include architectural character and architectural composition; while the psychological criteria pertain to 'mimetic rivalry', or rivaling desires for the same architectural forms. Yet, although architectural conflicts can adversely influence judgment, they can at the same time, contribute to the advancement of architectural culture.