The aim of this book is to expose readers to architecture’s pretexts that include literary narratives, film, theatre, painting, music, and ritual, as a bridge between diverse intellectual territories and architecture. It introduces a selection of seminal modern and contemporary architectural projects, their situation within the built environment, and their intellectual and formal situation/context as pretexts and design paradigms. Connections between diverse bodies of information will be cultivated along with the ability to posit consequential relationships for the production of architecture. Architecture’s Pretexts seeks to cultivate a vision for architecture that sponsors operative links between the discipline of architecture and those outside of architecture.

Exploring the works of various architects including Guiseppe Terragni, Peter Eisenman, Peter Zumthor, Perry Kulper and Smout Allen, and Rem Koolhaas, this book provides the framework to understanding architecture through the lens of art. Key concepts discussed are: allegories, diagrams, form, material, montage, movement, musical ratios, narrative sequence and representation. A valuable tool, with over 75 black and white illustrations, for students and professionals interested in interdisciplinary methods of design thinking.

Acknowledgments. 1. Introduction. On Translation and Spatial Construction of Meaning 2. Space of Poetic Allegory. Translating The Divine Comedy: Terragni’s Danteum as a Projection of Meaning Across Symbolic Forms 3. Space of Narrative Structure. The Shaping of Romeo and Juliet: Eisenman’s Moving Arrows Eros and Other Errors 4. Space of Sound & Music. Architecture as a Performative Instrument: Zumthor’s Soundbox 5. Space of Representation. The Generative Maps of Perry Kulper and Smout Allen 6. Space of Montage. Movement, Assemblage, and Appropriation in Koolhaas’ Kunsthal. Bibliography