John R. Silber (1926–2012)

President of Boston University for 25 years, the author surveys the miserable buildings foisted on the world by ego-driven architects. In 1951, as a faculty member at UT, he spoke on the topic of why their would never be an architecture of the absurd as in art and music, arguing that buildings were too expensive and structures had to meet the needs of the client. How wrong he was! This book is a treasure-trove of educated and often witty commentary on the reason why people run in terror from show more the idea of having an architect design their house or business building.
Who wants an ugly building with a leaky roof that costs millions and doesn't do what you need done?
On the plus side, Silber gives the client tools for dealing with idiot architects, and points out that most of the practitioners of the art of design DO want to build good buildings that work.
Read this in tandem with "How buildings learn" by Stewart Brand. show less

The tone of the book is similar to what I hear Republicans defending their position and denouncing the evil liberals. On the one hand he thought that most of the work from Frank Ghery was absurd, but loved the Sydney Opera House, form does not follow function in either of them. Overall it was a quick read and has a few interesting points to be made.

I didn't actually read all of the text of this book but what I did read was interesting. There are two buildings that I didn't find listed that I was surprised weren't included - Hundertwasser in Prague and a funky "marshmallow" building in Tel Aviv (I don't know who was the architect).

critique of architects, such as Gehry, who put artistic vision ahead of client needs