La vida secreta de los edificios: Del Partenón a Las Vegas en trece historias

Hollis provocatively opens with his interpretation of Thomas Cole’s famous 1840 painting, The Architect’s Dream, a fantastical imagining of styles from the classical to the gothic. Viewing Cole’s beguiling mirage, Hollis explains its intoxicating allure, especially for those engaged in historical restoration. He then relates Cole’s ideas about architectural perfection to particular buildings and their original and subsequent purposes. He begins with the Parthenon. A temple to Athena and a gunpowder warehouse, it has been many things, as have the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Notre Dame in Paris, Gloucester Cathedral in Britain, and the Alhambra in Spain. Hollis chronicles these “secret lives” over centuries of construction, ruination, and restoration in a dreamy manner, curving the intentions of conquerors or architects around the structural or decorative attributes of the buildings. Not confined to world-famous monuments, Hollis’ attractive approach attends to vernacular structures as well: the Holy House (a focus of Catholicism’s Marian devotion); a public housing complex in Manchester, England; the confections of Las Vegas; and the Berlin Wall. An architect by occupation, Hollis writes history eclectically, informatively, and entertainingly. –Gilbert Taylor –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.