Why are Most Buildings Rectangular?: And Other Essays on Geometry and Architecture

This book brings together a dozen of Philip Steadman’s essays and papers on the geometry of architectural and urban form, written over the last 12 years. New introductions link the papers and set them in context. There are two large themes: a morphological approach to the history of architecture, and studies of possibility in built form. Within this framework the papers cover the geometrical character of the building stock as a whole; histories of selected building types; analyses of density and energy in relation to urban form; and systematic methods for enumerating building plans and built forms. They touch on a range of key topics of debate in architectural theory and building science. Illustrated with over 200 black and white images, this collection provides an accessible and coherent guide to this important work.

Philip Steadman is Emeritus Professor of Urban and Built Form Studies at the Bartlett School (Faculty of the Built Environment), University College London, UK. He studied Architecture at Cambridge University from 1960 to 1965, and after graduating joined the newly formed centre for Land Use and Built Form Studies at Cambridge (later the Martin Centre). In 1972 he was a visiting research fellow at Princeton University. In 1977 he went to the Open University to join the Centre for Configurational Studies, of which he was Director until 1998. He joined the Bartlett in 1999. Much of his research has been on the forms of buildings and cities, and their relationship to the use of energy.

He has published three previous books on geometry and architecture: The Geometry of Environment (with Lionel March, 1971), Architectural Morphology (1983), and Building Types and Built Forms (2014). His study of The Evolution of Designs: Biological Analogy in Architecture and the Applied Arts came out in 1979 and was republished in an updated edition in 2008. He has also written books on energy and the built environment, American cities, the effects of nuclear attack on Britain, and the painting technique of Johannes Vermeer (Vermeer’s Camera, 2001).