Writing Architecture: A Practical Guide to Clear Communication about the Built Environment - Softcover

Wiseman, Carter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1595341498 ISBN 13: 9781595341495

Publisher: Trinity University Press, 2014

Synopsis

Architects expect to design buildings. But persuading clients to carry those designs into tangible form almost always involves writing as well as designing. Yet architects, and those who write about architecture, are often more comfortable with images than words. Presenting their visions in an articulate, accessible, and convincing written form can be difficult, and professionally hazardous. In Writing Architecture, Carter Wiseman provides an invaluable guide for students and practitioners on how to convey the importance of architecture to those who commission it, build it, and benefit from it. Drawing on a wide range of sources and citing examples from such authors as Frank Lloyd Wright, Ada Louise Huxtable, Vincent Scully, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and today’s leading designers, Wiseman analyzes basic principles of compositional structure to illustrate the most effective forms of architectural writing.

Free of professional and theoretical jargon, Writing Architecture considers the process, methods, and value of architecture writing based on Wiseman’s 30 years of experience in writing, editing, and teaching young architects how to write. It integrates historical references with current practice to help students and practitioners reach their professional goals.

About this title

About the Author:

Carter Wiseman is a graduate of Yale and Columbia Universities. He was the architecture critic and/or editor for a number of magazines including Newsweek, New York Magazine, Architectural Record, Interior Design, and ARTnews. He is a lecturer at the Yale School of Architecture, where he teaches courses focusing on architectural writing and criticism. His books include Twentieth-Century American Architecture: The Buildings and Their Makers and his biographical books on Louis I. Kahn and I. M Pei. He lives in Weston, Connecticut.

Review:

Argues that clear communication is integral for successful architecture, since words have an important part in expressing ideas, and because any architect will admit they write much more than they ever would have anticipated. —Archidose

A clear and concise manual for architectural students and practitioners who want to improve their writing, it provides relevant advise for the former on organizing ideas, expressing opinions, and defending arguments and, in the last two chapters, focuses on ways professionals can secure commissions and communicate with clients. —Constructs, Yale School of Architecture

Writing Architecture puts this genre of productive criticism in its wider context. —Harvard Magazine

A first-rate discussion of how to conduct the practice of architecture....Every student and virtually every practitioner could benefit from reading the book.—Robert Stern, Dean of the Yale School of Architecture

Would serve as a fine starting point to writing about anything. —Robert MacNeil, PBS Newshour

About this edition

• Publisher: Trinity University Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1595341498
• ISBN 13: 9781595341495
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240