This book explores the connection between architecture and history, presenting a rich variety of examples from different cultures that have made human settlements, architecture, and cities. It demonstrates that histories of settlement patterns conserve natural and human sources and symbiotic living with nature, animals, vegetation, and communities that are on the move and explores how the knowledge of materials and techniques of making are integral to architecture.
The book discusses the social, ecological, textual, philosophical, material, and interpretative processes that are reflected in the making of architecture and cities through history. It emphasises how the traditions of making buildings and human habitats involve people of all social strata. It also argues that the histories of architecture cannot be of durable and fixed structures alone but should also closely examine how buildings are extended, sustained, and the processes of their dissolution.
This book is a must-read for students of architecture, urban design, and landscape architecture. It will also be a valuable resource for students of other disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, history, environment and ecology and cultural studies. Additionally, it would be helpful for engineers, administrators, decision makers, and economists involved in deciding growth priorities for cities to balance the dependence on technology with the concern for sustainable human habitats.