Meaning in Western Architecture is one of the most important and influential studies of the history of architecture published in the 20th-century. The author, Christian Norberg-Schulz (1926–2012), was a Norwegian architect, Professor and a scholar of architectural history and the key proponent of the so-called phenomenological approach towards architecture. Meaning in Western Architecture was originally published in 1974; the copy in our stock is the 1983 impression.
Norberg-Schulz discusses the history of architecture from a philosophical viewpoint and as the history of culture. For him, architecture translates existential meanings into spatial forms. Understanding architecture means understanding the language of meaningful, symbolic forms.
Architectural history shows a development from an initial concretization of diffuse totalities to a precise symbolization of natural and human characters. This development took place mainly in antiquity and was accompanied by the introduction of geometrical means of organization which posess a higher capacity than the topological forms of primitive symbolization. Here architectural history parallels the psychological development of the individual. During the Middle Ages a new ‘spiritual’ dimension came to the fore, whereas the humanist architecture of the Renaissance and the Baroque aimed at a synthesis of natural, human and spiritual characters.
– Christian Norberg-Schulz, Meaning in Western Architecture, p. 227
The copy currently in our stock is in very good condition. The covers show some shelf wear, but the glued binding is fine and the pages are clean.