I learned more about artchitecture from this book than during my 4 years at the University of Minn. I would highly recommend this book to anyone that is new to the field and working on becoming an Architect. I called Stephen Kieran at his frim and he even answered some questions for me.

The guy is a true professional.

I read this book and I was amazed. These guys are very talented to the level of Frank Lloyd Wright. If you share a love for architecture buy this book.

It also makes a great coffee table book and a good gift.

Perez-Gomez wrote a very important book, the research on thearchitectural representation, and its roots, is enlightning, anddisturbing, in the sense that he pushes us to rethink our reflexes of perceptions and representation of architecture.

Perez-Gomez, professor of architecture at McGill University in Montreal, based his book of an ancient renaissance text entitled Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. It is still in debate who wrote this text, but it is of Italian origin. The fullness of this story is mind numbing, and engages the blood in its verse. I have joined the ranks of many authors in attempting an analysis of this piece of writing, but it seduces then defeats this urge. Through the medium of the verse, this art-piece uses words to touch below our cognitive level, accessing our emotions quite effectively. A brief study into Eros has been very necessary in respect to Perez-Gomez's book, which captures the same story in modern settings.

From the very title Alberto Pérez-Goméz 's remarkable study refers to Edmond Husserl's phenomenolgy. Using Husserl and Heidegger's thought Pérez-Goméz analyses the crisis of the methaphorical role of architecture. The advent of Cartesianism is for him the starting point of a process that has, from that time, developed until our contemporary epoch. Scientific thinking has instrumentalized architectural thinking changing architecture into a merely purposeful activity. Architecture has; in this way; losen its role of metaphor of universal meaning and it has more and more become a pragmatic and non-representational culture. At the very beginning of this crisis the author places Claude Perrault's theories on architectural orders. They reveal quite clearly that orders have become only guidelines for design rather than portrayers of a divine, poetic reality as they were in the Classical tradition. Pérez-Goméz very profoundly analysises theories of architecture from that time until the end of 19th century, focusing on the central role played by Durand, the French theorist who more than any other stigmatized this trend. The book, firstly written as a doctoral thesis, focuses upon geometry and the changed use of it within architecture. To this regard very insightful are those parts where Guarino Guarini and Girard Desargues are dealt with. The book constitues one of the best reflections on the modern condition in architecture and it manages to suggest a path for a correct rethinking of architecture within modern culture.