The New Yorker magazine architecture critic Paul Goldberger discusses two books, Why Architecture Matters (Yale University Press, November 2009) and Building Up and Tearing Down (Monacelli Press, a division of Random House, October 2009). Building Up and Tearing Down is a collection of pieces from The New Yorker.

Background on Why Architecture Matters

Why Architecture Matters is not a work of architectural history or a guide to the styles or an architectural dictionary, though it contains elements of all three. The purpose of Why Architecture Matters is to “come to grips with how things feel to us when we stand before them, with how architecture affects us emotionally as well as intellectually” with its impact on our lives. "Architecture begins to matter,” writes Paul Goldberger, “when it brings delight and sadness and perplexity and awe along with a roof over our heads." He shows us how that works in examples ranging from a small Cape Cod cottage to the “vast, flowing” Prairie houses of Frank Lloyd Wright, from the Lincoln Memorial to the highly sculptural Guggenheim Bilbao and the Church of Sant Ivo in Rome, where “simple geometries . . . create a work of architecture that embraces the deepest complexities of human imagination.” Based on decades of looking at buildings and thinking about how we experience them, the distinguished critic raises our awareness of fundamental things like proportion, scale, space, texture, materials, shapes, light, and memory. Upon completing this remarkable architectural journey, readers will enjoy a wonderfully rewarding new way of seeing and experiencing every aspect of the built world.