Why We Build: Power and Desire in Architecture

We are living in one of the most dramatic periods in modern architectural history: a time when cityscapes are being redrawn on a yearly basis, architects are testing the very idea of what a building is, and whole cities are invented overnight. In this bold and wide- ranging new work, Rowan Moore—former director of the Architecture Foundation, now a leading architecture critic—explores the reasons behind these changes in our built environment, and how they change the way we live in the world.

Provocative and personal, iconoclastic and transforming, Why We Build is that rarest of things: a book about architecture that is also, on every page, a book about people—those chosen few who design buildings, and the rest of us, who use them every day.

Rowan Moore is the architecture critic for The Observer (London); he previously held the same post for The Evening Standard. From 2002 to 2008 he was the director of the Architecture Foundation. In 2013, he was named Critic of the Year by the Society of Editors (UK). A trained architect himself, he lives in London.