The Secret Lives of Buildings

From the Ruins of the Parthenon to the Vegas Strip in Thirteen Stories

Edward Hollis

• Publisher: Metropolitan Books
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9780805087857
• eBook ISBN: 9781429982108
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

A strikingly original, beautifully narrated history of Western architecture and the cultural transformations that it represents.
Concrete, marble, steel, brick: little else made by human hands seems as stable, as immutable, as a building. Yet the life of any structure is neither fixed nor timeless. Outliving their original contexts and purposes, buildings are forced to adapt to each succeeding age. To survive, they must become shape-shifters.
In an inspired refashioning of architectural history, Edward Hollis recounts more than a dozen stories of such metamorphosis, highlighting the way in which even the most familiar structures all change over time into "something rich and strange." The Parthenon, that epitome of a ruined temple, was for centuries a working church and then a mosque; the cathedral of Notre Dame was "restored" to a design that none of its original makers would have recognized. Remains of the Berlin Wall, meanwhile, which was once gleefully smashed and bulldozed, are now treated as precious relics.
With The Secret Lives of Buildings, Edward Hollis recounts the most enthralling of these metamorphoses and shows how buildings have come to embody the history of Western culture.

"Hollis exposes the surprisingly motley histories of some of the world's great landmarks . . . The chapter on the Parthenon actually brought me to tears." —Jenna Russell,  The Boston Globe

"What a happy tingle of discovery to come across a book that differs sharply from all the others in its field! . . . Hollis thinks with such originality and writes with such flair that he is a pleasure to read." —Stanley Abercrombie,  The American Scholar  

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: The Architect’s Dream
• The Parthenon, Athens: In Which a Virgin Is Ruined
• The Basilica of San Marco, Venice: In Which a Prince Steals Four Horses and an Empire
• Ayasofya, Istanbul: In Which a Sultan Casts a Spell and Moves the Center of the World
• The Santa Casa of Loreto: The Wondrous Flitting of the Holy House
• Gloucester Cathedral: In Which a Dead Body Brings a Building to Life
• The Alhambra, Granada: In Which Two Cousins Marry Each Other
• The Tempio Malatestiano, Rimini: In Which a Scholar Translates a Temple
• Sans Souci, Potsdam: In Which Nothing Happens at All
• Notre Dame de Paris.: In Which the Temple of Reason Is Restored
• The Hulme Crescents, Manchester: In Which the Prophecies of the Future Are Fulfilled
• The Berlin Wall: In Which History Comes to an End
• The Venetian, Las Vegas: In Which History Is So, Like, Over
• The Western Wall, Jerusalem: In Which Nothing, and Everything, Has Changed
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgments
• Index