Abstract

In Travels in the History of Architecture, renowned architectural writer Robert Harbison provides an engaging and concise companion to the great themes and aesthetic movements in architecture from antiquity to the present day. The book begins its journey with the great temples of the Egyptians and the shrines of Classical Greece and Rome and then provides a complete survey of architecture through the present day. Each chapter of this dynamic and approachable volume focuses on a movement in architectural history, including Byzantine, Baroque, Mannerism, Historicism, Functionalism, and Deconstruction. Unique to this work is Harbison’s wide-ranging approach, which draws on references and examples outside of architecture—from literature, art, sculpture, and history—to further illustrate and contextualize the themes and ideas of each period. Travels in the History of Architecture is an indispensable guide to the world’s most famous structures.

"Robert Harbison is not one of those historians who tries to blast you out of the water with his authority--his is a gentle voice, full of knowledge and wit, thoughtful and contemplative. As you read this book you feel not that you are being lectured at, but, as the title suggests, that you are travelling in time; and Harbison makes a fine traveling companion. Whatever you are doing with old buildings, whether visiting them, reading about them, looking at pictures of them or even just remembering them, you will want to have this book near at hand."

— Paul Shepheard, author of Artificial Love , The Cultivated Wilderness and What is Architecture ?

"On its broadly chronological journey from the Egyptians to Modernists, via Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Romanesque and Historicist architecture, this book is filled with acute perceptions and fine descriptions . . . its insights make you want to travel and see."

— History Today
"This book could serve as a secondary survey of Western architecture for architecture students, professionals, and devotees. . . . Harbison's expression of his personal and professional views is unbelievably shattering and breathtaking; he has the capacity to alter the entire history of Western architecture for 100 years to come." — Library Journal
"Robert Harbison [is] a prolific author of quirky, smallish books on the interplay of architectural history and wider cultural theory." — Keith Miller, Times Literary Supplement
Robert Harbison isprofessor of architecture at London Metropolitan University. He is a regular contributor to Architects’ Journal, Architectural Review, Building Design, and the Times Literary Supplement. He is also the author of many books, including Eccentric Spaces; The Built, the Unbuilt and the Unbuildable;and Reflections on the Baroque.