Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Why some architects fail to realize their ideal buildings, and what architecture critics can learn from novelists.

The usual history of architecture is a grand narrative of soaring monuments and heroic makers. But it is also a false narrative in many ways, rarely acknowledging the personal failures and disappointments of architects. In Bleak Houses , Timothy Brittain-Catlin investigates the underside of architecture, the stories of losers and unfulfillment often ignored by an architectural criticism that values novelty, fame, and virility over fallibility and rejection.

As architectural criticism promotes increasingly narrow values, dismissing certain styles wholesale and subjecting buildings to a Victorian litmus test of "real" versus "fake," Brittain-Catlin explains the effect this superficial criticality has had not only on architectural discourse but on the quality of buildings. The fact that most buildings receive no critical scrutiny at all has resulted in vast stretches of ugly modern housing and a pervasive public illiteracy about architecture.

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Library Journal Review

Brittain-Catlin (senior lecturer, Kent Sch. of Architecture) looks at lost, neglected, and modified designs of England's forgotten architects, referring to them as "losers" throughout. He postulates that most writing on architectural history is ineffective since it returns repeatedly to the best examples of successful architecture but fails to give critical attention to lesser-known buildings. Looking mainly at structures of the last century to the present the author describes how the lack of conversation about architecture has resulted in pervasive bad design. "Loser" architects cannot relate to the lofty ideals of conventional criticism so they go in their own directions, producing ugly constructs with undisciplined designs. Readers of this book may want to consider Douglas Murphy's Architecture of Failure, which references Victorian glass and iron design as an archetype for the recurring faults of architects to produce lasting innovation. This title is difficult to follow because of the author's wordiness and use of run-on sentences; nevertheless, Brittain-Catlin makes a good case for reevaluating the quality of architectural criticism. VERDICT Architecture faculty and practicing architects will find this book to be a valuable source of professional discussion.-Eric G. Linderman, Euclid P.L., OH (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.