Architecture of Thought

Description

In Architecture of Thought, Andrzej Piotrowski maps and conceptually explores material practices of the past, showing how physical artifacts and visual environments manifest culturally rooted modes of thought and participate in the most nuanced processes of negotiations and ideological exchanges. According to Piotrowski, material structures enable people to think in new ways-distill emerging or alter existing worldviews-before words can stabilize them as conventional narratives.

Andrzej Piotrowski is associate professor in the School of Architecture, University of Minnesota. He is coeditor of The Discipline of Architecture (Minnesota, 2001).

"Ambitious in its historical and geographical scope, Architecture of Thought traces conflicting religious, political, and symbolic complexities in architecture that have been overlooked. Against the rational systems of Western thinking, with their emphasis on language, human intentionality, and forces of power, Andrzej Piotrowski probes places, buildings, and spatial practices that have eluded architectural history. This is timely and innovative analysis that will be of interest to historians and to practitioners of architecture and design." -Bronwen Wilson "Architecture of Thought is written with passion as well as learning. Andrzej Piotrowski draws material from amazingly diverse sources, in a refreshing approach to familiar and unfamiliar architecture alike." -Charles Burroughs