Twenty-Five+ Buildings Every Architect Should Understand

Revised and Extended Edition

Simon Unwin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN: 9781000970142
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

The underlying theme of Twenty-Five + Buildings Every Architect Should Understand is the relationship of architecture to the human being, how it frames our lives and orchestrates our experience; how it can help us make sense of the world and contribute to our sense of identity and place. Exploring these dimensions through a wide range of case studies that illustrate the rich diversity of twentieth- and twenty-first-century architecture, this book is essential reading for every architect. With the addition of numerous shorter analyses, this new edition covers an even greater range of architectural ideas, providing students and architects with further inspiration for exploration in their own design work.

Architects live by ideas. But where do they come from? And how do they shape buildings? There is no one right way to do architecture. This book illustrates many. Its aim is to explore the rich diversity of architectural creativity by analysing a wide range of examples to extract the ideas behind them.

Twenty-Five+ Buildings Every Architect Should Understand is a companion to Simon Unwin's Analysing Architecture: the Universal Language of Place-
Making (most recent edition, 2021), and part of the trilogy which also includes his Exercises in Architecture: Learning to Think as an Architect (second edition, 2022). Together the three books offer an introduction to the workings of architecture providing for the three aspects of learning: theory, examples and practice. Twenty-Five+ Buildings focusses on analysing examples using the methodology offered by Analysing Architecture, which operates primarily through the medium of drawing.

An underlying theme of Twenty-Five+ Buildings Every Architect Should Understand is the relationship of architecture to the human being, how it frames our lives and orchestrates our experiences; how it can help us give form to the world and contributes to our senses of identity and place. Exploring these dimensions through case studies that illustrate the rich diversity of twentieth- and twenty-first-century architecture, this book is essential reading, and hopefully an inspiration, for every architect.

In this new edition supplementary analysis and discussion has been added to each of the twenty-five case studies, drawing attention to their influences from and on other architects. A number of extra shorter analyses have been included too, following the practice of presenting extra small dishes interspersed among main courses in high-end restaurants. These additional short analyses account for the + sign after 'Twenty-Five' in the title of this edition, and double the number of buildings analysed to around fifty.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Reviews of Twenty-Five Buildings Every Architect Should Understand
• Some reviews of analysing ARCHITECTURE (all editions)
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Casa del Ojo de Agua: A weekend house in the Mexican jungle
• Neuendorf House: A holiday home on the island of Mallorca
• Barcelona Pavilion: Built as the German Pavilion at the Barcelona Universal Exposition
• Truss Wall House: A house in the Tsurukawa suburb of Machida-City, Japan
• Endless House: An unbuilt project for a house based in infinity
• Farnsworth House: On the banks of Fox River near Plano, Illinois, USA
• La Congiunta: A gallery for the sculpture of Hans Josephsohn, Giornico, Switzerland
• Cabanon: An architect's vacation cabin at Cap-Martin, on the south coast of France
• Esherick House: A house in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Maison à Bordeaux: A house for a man confined to a wheelchair
• Danteum: an unbuilt memorial to Dante Alighieri, intended for Mussolini's Rome
• Fallingwater: the house over a waterfall in rural Pennsylvania
• Villa Savoye: a house in the Poissy suburb of Paris, France
• Kempsey Guest Studio: a converted shed in New South Wales, Australia
• Sea Ranch: a settlement of ten residential units on California's north coast
• Villa E.1027: An architect's vacation house at Cap Martin, on the south coast of France
• Sankt Petri Kyrka: A Lutheran church in the southern Swedish town of Klippan
• Villa Busk: A musician's house south of Oslo, Norway
• Villa Mairea: A house in the woods of western Finland
• Thermal Baths, Vals: A bathing complex attached to a hotel in a Swiss valley
• Ramesh House: An environmentally responsive house in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala
• Bardi House: a house in the suburb of Morumbi, São Paulo, Brazil
• Vitra Fire Station: a fire station for a furniture factory estate in north Switzerland
• Mohrmann House: A family house in the Lichtenrade suburb of Berlin
• Bioscleave House: A house extension in East Hampton, New York
• Endword
• Acknowledgements
• Bibliographies
• Index