Forty Ways to Think About Architecture: Architectural History and Theory Today

How do we think about architecture historically and theoretically? Forty Ways to Think about Architecture provides an introduction to some of the wide-ranging ways in which architectural history and theory are being approached today.

The inspiration for this project is the work of Adrian Forty, Professor of Architectural History at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UCL), who has been internationally renowned as the UK’s leading academic in the discipline for 40 years. Forty’s many publications, notably Objects of Desire (1986), Words and Buildings (2000) and Concrete and Culture (2012), have been crucial to opening up new approaches to architectural history and theory and have helped to establish entirely new areas of study. His teaching at The Bartlett has enthused a new generation about the exciting possibilities of architectural history and theory as a field.

This collection takes in a total of 40 essays covering key subjects, ranging from memory and heritage to everyday life, building materials and city spaces. As well as critical theory, philosophy, literature and experimental design, it refers to more immediate and topical issues in the built environment, such as globalisation, localism, regeneration and ecologies. Concise and engaging entries reflect on architecture from a range of perspectives.

Contributors include eminent historians and theorists from elsewhere – such as Jean-Louis Cohen, Briony Fer, Hilde Heynen, Mary McLeod, Griselda Pollock, Penny Sparke and Anthony Vidler – as well as Forty’s colleagues from the Bartlett School of Architecture including Iain Borden, Murray Fraser, Peter Hall, Barbara Penner, Jane Rendell and Andrew Saint. Forty Ways to Think about Architecture also features contributions from distinguished architects, such as Tony Fretton, Jeremy Till and Sarah Wigglesworth, and well-known critics and architectural writers, such as Tom Dyckhoff, William Menking and Thomas Weaver. Many of the contributors are former students of Adrian Forty.

Through these diverse essays, readers are encouraged to think about how architectural history and theory relates to their own research and design practices, thus using the work of Adrian Forty as a catalyst for fresh and innovative thinking about architecture as a subject.