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How Architecture Tells: 9 Realities that will Change the Way You See
The general reading public is likely to think of architecture as buildings. But, with this book, Robert Steinberg would like to help readers understand that architecture shapes lives. Architecture can help communities integrate and thrive. Architecture can touch us, influencing how we feel, and how we interact with others. In short, architecture can fundamentally improve our quality of life.
As a young graduate architect fresh from Berkeley, Steinberg began to discover the potential of architecture to shape communities. Working with his father, an architect who had studied with Mies van der Roe (and whose father was also an architect), one of Steinberg’s first projects was to draft and redraft a parking garage in downtown Silicon Valley, CA. As he mediated between the two architects in charge of the project―his father and the city architect―he noticed that with each evolution, the garage became more beautiful and refined. And with each improvement, this garage became more able to succeed in the goal of reviving the dying downtown core of Silicon Valley.
As a young graduate architect fresh from Berkeley, Steinberg began to discover the potential of architecture to shape communities. Working with his father, an architect who had studied with Mies van der Roe (and whose father was also an architect), one of Steinberg’s first projects was to draft and redraft a parking garage in downtown Silicon Valley, CA. As he mediated between the two architects in charge of the project―his father and the city architect―he noticed that with each evolution, the garage became more beautiful and refined. And with each improvement, this garage became more able to succeed in the goal of reviving the dying downtown core of Silicon Valley.
- GenresNonfiction
296 pages, Hardcover
First published November 2, 2021
2164 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 22, 2022
More than just an architecture book, this is an architectural memoir.
Rob Steinberg says that he has a passion for story-telling that infuses his architectural work. And the book demonstrates that passion
He begins with an autobiographical introduction, titled “The Sublime Hazing.” A telling choice of words. Rob was raised for success, but in a pressure-cooker. He tells of his father’s dinner table “inquisitions” aimed at Rob, his brother and sister, and even guests if they happened into firing range. His father, Goodwin or Goody, was a successful architect, known throughout the burgeoning Silicon Valley of his time, and founder of the business that Rob would eventually take over. He speaks of his mother, Geraldine, as distant. It really sounds uncomfortable.
Let’s call the nurturing indirect.
Rob didn’t follow a straight path into architecture, going instead into film school (where he met his future wife, Alice) and a nascent career in documentary film-making.
Those details of growing up are relevant to the story that the book tells. It’s organized by nine “laws,” which I won’t list but will say that they are lessons of a lifetime, and a lifetime in architecture, learned over time and experience and demonstrated in the projects presented in the book.
The projects also represent architecture as viewed from different perspectives, facets of architecture as art, as business, as stimulus to life and community, and as storytelling itself. All of those things happen in architecture and, at least in Rob’s vision, are necessary to it.
My own lesson from the book, as a non-architect, is that to understand architecture you have to understand it as much more than just designing and building. It’s about designing a change in lives it affects, including generations much past the present.
Each chapter of the book tells a story of a project (or more than one) illustrating one of the nine laws or theses.
Most have a common structure. They begin with some conception, often an RFP or a challenge posed by a client. Then the architect must understand the project’s conception, the goals, the obstacles, the context in which it is to be carried out and go on living, and the effect that it will have in that context on into the future.
Each story has a narrative, but each is also told through pictures of design documents, models, and finished products. Most are community oriented — academic campus buildings, a Jewish Community Center, senior living complexes — all of these take into account how communities build themselves and what direction they grow in.
In one case, in a clever variation on storytelling, a question and answer format allows us to delve a little into the architect’s own thinking and see the rationale that builds up to design choices.
Then in the following chapter, in another variation, the pictures and the designs do the talking, allowing us to ask the questions that the designs answer.
By the end you have the architect’s life, his education as an architect, and a richer way of seeing what’s around you.
Given that I’ve lived much of my own life in Silicon Valley where so much of the work depicted also sits, I’ve got the advantage of revisiting some of these buildings, some of them already somewhat familiar, to see exactly what Rob is talking about. So I really do see them differently now.
I have to mention that I’m not an unbiased reviewer — I knew and became friends with Rob back in earlier days, actually before any of the work shown in the book was done. So reading the book is doubly revealing, tying together my perceptions of him as a person and the work he has done. I think that will be true to some extent of any reader, given how much Rob weaves his personal story into the story of his work.
I do have one complaint about the book. As I’m implying, so much of the book is told through pictures, and through the pictures’ captions. But the captions are printed in such a light tone of gray that they were pretty much impossible to read without perfect light. Kind of an irony for a book about design!
One thing I would have liked also is a little more on Rob’s mistakes. The book is, for the very greatest part, written in retrospect, from the standpoint of someone who has learned his lessons. But it would be great to also see how those lessons were learned. We all learn by mistakes.
I may be asking for too much. No one wants to own a building or a residence that is a “mistake.” Celebrating it in a book might not go over so well. But there are certainly mistakes around — buildings that didn’t work, that no one wanted to occupy, pedestrian areas and community centers that were somehow unwelcoming. Some mistakes may be obvious, but why did they seem like good ideas? What was missing? The projects that are presented in the book demonstrate successful executions of Rob’s nine laws — what do the failures look like?
Okay, I’m asking for a lot. There’s enough here already to enjoy and learn from.
Rob Steinberg says that he has a passion for story-telling that infuses his architectural work. And the book demonstrates that passion
He begins with an autobiographical introduction, titled “The Sublime Hazing.” A telling choice of words. Rob was raised for success, but in a pressure-cooker. He tells of his father’s dinner table “inquisitions” aimed at Rob, his brother and sister, and even guests if they happened into firing range. His father, Goodwin or Goody, was a successful architect, known throughout the burgeoning Silicon Valley of his time, and founder of the business that Rob would eventually take over. He speaks of his mother, Geraldine, as distant. It really sounds uncomfortable.
Let’s call the nurturing indirect.
Rob didn’t follow a straight path into architecture, going instead into film school (where he met his future wife, Alice) and a nascent career in documentary film-making.
Those details of growing up are relevant to the story that the book tells. It’s organized by nine “laws,” which I won’t list but will say that they are lessons of a lifetime, and a lifetime in architecture, learned over time and experience and demonstrated in the projects presented in the book.
The projects also represent architecture as viewed from different perspectives, facets of architecture as art, as business, as stimulus to life and community, and as storytelling itself. All of those things happen in architecture and, at least in Rob’s vision, are necessary to it.
My own lesson from the book, as a non-architect, is that to understand architecture you have to understand it as much more than just designing and building. It’s about designing a change in lives it affects, including generations much past the present.
Each chapter of the book tells a story of a project (or more than one) illustrating one of the nine laws or theses.
Most have a common structure. They begin with some conception, often an RFP or a challenge posed by a client. Then the architect must understand the project’s conception, the goals, the obstacles, the context in which it is to be carried out and go on living, and the effect that it will have in that context on into the future.
Each story has a narrative, but each is also told through pictures of design documents, models, and finished products. Most are community oriented — academic campus buildings, a Jewish Community Center, senior living complexes — all of these take into account how communities build themselves and what direction they grow in.
In one case, in a clever variation on storytelling, a question and answer format allows us to delve a little into the architect’s own thinking and see the rationale that builds up to design choices.
Then in the following chapter, in another variation, the pictures and the designs do the talking, allowing us to ask the questions that the designs answer.
By the end you have the architect’s life, his education as an architect, and a richer way of seeing what’s around you.
Given that I’ve lived much of my own life in Silicon Valley where so much of the work depicted also sits, I’ve got the advantage of revisiting some of these buildings, some of them already somewhat familiar, to see exactly what Rob is talking about. So I really do see them differently now.
I have to mention that I’m not an unbiased reviewer — I knew and became friends with Rob back in earlier days, actually before any of the work shown in the book was done. So reading the book is doubly revealing, tying together my perceptions of him as a person and the work he has done. I think that will be true to some extent of any reader, given how much Rob weaves his personal story into the story of his work.
I do have one complaint about the book. As I’m implying, so much of the book is told through pictures, and through the pictures’ captions. But the captions are printed in such a light tone of gray that they were pretty much impossible to read without perfect light. Kind of an irony for a book about design!
One thing I would have liked also is a little more on Rob’s mistakes. The book is, for the very greatest part, written in retrospect, from the standpoint of someone who has learned his lessons. But it would be great to also see how those lessons were learned. We all learn by mistakes.
I may be asking for too much. No one wants to own a building or a residence that is a “mistake.” Celebrating it in a book might not go over so well. But there are certainly mistakes around — buildings that didn’t work, that no one wanted to occupy, pedestrian areas and community centers that were somehow unwelcoming. Some mistakes may be obvious, but why did they seem like good ideas? What was missing? The projects that are presented in the book demonstrate successful executions of Rob’s nine laws — what do the failures look like?
Okay, I’m asking for a lot. There’s enough here already to enjoy and learn from.
March 6, 2022
I hesitated on whether to give this 4 stars or 5. I usually reserve five stars for books that enthrall me. This tome I found both interesting and educational, but it may not have been designed to enthrall as much as elucidate.
There was a real sense, though, of the author and his family, with personal anecdotes throughout.
But as the title shows, the subject is architecture. Centered around nine "realities" the author illustrates through projects he and his firm have designed, I learned much beyond what is likely taught in architecture courses. There is as much about art and life and business and the author's philosophy as there is about architecture.
While it is not a lightweight tome it is easy reading. Illustrations and photos take up the majority of the space (use of space being one thing I learned much about) and those illustrations require the book's size.
This is the first book I've read relating to architecture. I am not a student of it nor have I had any career experience with it. But I've appreciated archicture for its history, its art and creativity, and its beauty. And after reading this my appreciation has grown.
A very good read.
There was a real sense, though, of the author and his family, with personal anecdotes throughout.
But as the title shows, the subject is architecture. Centered around nine "realities" the author illustrates through projects he and his firm have designed, I learned much beyond what is likely taught in architecture courses. There is as much about art and life and business and the author's philosophy as there is about architecture.
While it is not a lightweight tome it is easy reading. Illustrations and photos take up the majority of the space (use of space being one thing I learned much about) and those illustrations require the book's size.
This is the first book I've read relating to architecture. I am not a student of it nor have I had any career experience with it. But I've appreciated archicture for its history, its art and creativity, and its beauty. And after reading this my appreciation has grown.
A very good read.
July 24, 2023
The main idea that I got from this book is: Architecture can help communities integrate and thrive.
We do works in architecture field, this book make us feel the meaning of our work. Thank you!
biệt thự 1 tầng tân cổ điển
We do works in architecture field, this book make us feel the meaning of our work. Thank you!
biệt thự 1 tầng tân cổ điển
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews