Architecture observed

Here is a collection of cartoons by a man who is universally recognized as America's funniest, most amiable and most incisive commentator on the foibles of American Architecture, its practitioners, and sometimes baffled public. Alan Dunn has the rare gift of both sensing the humor of a situation and conveying it in a spontaneous technique that leaves the reader chuckling and grinning -even when the reader's own idiosyncrasies are exposed or his foibles made fun of.
For thirty five years, in the pages of Architectural Record, Alan Dunn's cartoons have gently but cleverly documented latent absurdities in architectural environmental trends. One of the best times of each month for the editorial staff of Architectural Record is the arrival of Alan Dunn's idea sketches or "roughs" from among which a few are, with delighful difficulty, selected for publication; and it is from that published harvest that the editors have chosen 140 cartoons which they feel strike a timely note with humor that is timeless in its freshness.
Always in the avant garde of ideas and trends, Alan Dunn is one of the most knowledgeable and effective critics of architecture today. And in this role he consistently and wittily reminds us that architecture is for people and language is for communication; if he notes any tendency toward excesses in architectural fads, clichés or obscure jargon, he quickly brings us laughingly back to reality. As Lewis Mumford says in his foreword, "....it is the style of his mind that I would praise, and the wittiness of his draughtsmanship. Happily, the viewer of these pages needs no further help from me to find out how Dunn has cleared the air for us by his laughter."