Architecture, You, and Me

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Here, the famous author of Space, Time and Architecture and other books examines basic principles of architecture—as handmaiden to essential shelter and comfort, and as creative partner in the aspirations of the human arts.

Sigfried Giedion is a man with clear vision and proven ability to communicate his ideas on the interrelationship of architecture and society through the ages. He is able to explain what remains from the past in every city of today—how the Greeks, the Romans, and the later peoples still influence our life through principles of city planning. Equally, he is able to see how men like Le Corbusier, Sert, Mondrian, and Léger have transformed our living quarters so that they are increasingly useful, practical, and attractive.

Giedion discusses the constant need for and striving toward monumentality in the architecture and cultural development of today. Leading us through paths which all too often seem bewildering, he helps us to understand ourselves better through helping us to understand our entire cultural heritage.

One of the author’s most important contributions in this new book is his concern with imaginative development of space utilization in relation to the building of new theatre and institutional groups, to the Sydney Opera House, the Boston Back Bay Center Project, and to the new center designed for Marseille by Le Corbusier—in short to the climate of creative living in many parts of the world.