Nesmith, Eleanor Lynn. Instant Architecture. Fawcett Columbine: New York, 1995.

An interesting book deserving a small mention. Nesmith's book is exactly what it claims to be, a crash course in a very traditionalist overview of architecture. Which is to say that the fact that it fails to diverge from the Western tradition is to be expected. Given its light and jaunty air as it flies through a history of architecture from ancient Egypt to whatever it is that we have reached after postmoderism, it makes an excellent book to consider the prejudices of what a professional architect would consider essential knowledge to the lay person. Although in addressing the lay person, the book probably should have been more generous with pictures of the building being talked about. Those unfamiliar with architecture will find the list of historical structures a slog without adequate visual representation.

Unfortunately, in skipping the technical details, the book becomes nothing but a list of historic structures. In order to maintain the historicity of this flow, numerous worthwhile topics of discussion are passed over. All cultures that do not lay in the direct path between ancient Greece and Post-Modern architecture get relegated to three chapters (out of eighteen) toward the beginning of the book. Apparently, non-western cultures only made significant architectural landmarks in ancient history, and the similarities are such that Shinto temples, Angkor Wat, and the Taj Mahal can all be lumped together as more or less the same. Even within the Western tradition, the book fails to address any issues that are not within the realm of the monumental. The Victorian and Georgian styles earn little more than a footnote. Queen Anne and Colonial are glossed over entirely. Presumably, the lack of application to monumentality make them too trivial to discuss.

It is, admittedly, a fun read, and, as I said, it is useful to consider it as a study in preconceptions of some portions of the architectural profession in the United States. Eleanor Lynn Nesmith does succeed in making an easily accessible book that doesn't impose too many preconceptions beyond the standard rote of Western supremacy. The wisecracks can weary at times, but the ocassional, opinionated anecdotes are nice counterpoints to the surface veneer of traditional histories. But one must be prepared for a bleeding chunks overview of the history of Western architecture, similar to those operatic aria collections that seize on what fits the motif, regardless of the context it was torn out of.

Some salient quotes:

Two months later the coffee table books are still occuping the same prominent spot on your coffee table, where you deposited them, unread. It's not that you didn't try. You can't help it if you got bogged down in the latent neosuprematism, tactile palette of materials, the dynamic plasticity of the initial parti, cacophonous disjunctive, volumetric fluidity, taxonomic-spatial elision, and fragmentary esthetics. [p.x]

Although Vitrivius lived nearly four hundred years after the glory days of Greek architecture, he documented the Greek style and manner of building. Research was tougher back then, so when he couldn't confirm facts he just made up explanations. [p.54]

While much nineteenth century architecture was grossly sentimental, the Industrial Revolution brought real changes in the development of new building materials and construction techniques. Structural systems that had existed only in theory became reality. Yet many architects of the day viewed the Industrial Revolution as a dangerous movement that threatened civilization as they knew it. The most innovative buildings were oftentimes the fruits of engineers. [p.162]