Paul Shepheard’s What Is Architecture?

In this wonderfully unorthodox quasi novelistic essay, complete with characters and dialogue (but no plot), Shepheard draws a boundary around the subject of architecture, describing its place in art and technology, its place in history, and its place in our lives now.

This is from the publisher’s description of British architect and critic Paul Shepheard’s book What Is Architecture? An Essay on Landscapes, Buildings, and Machines, which I found when googling for definitions of (built) architecture. Brad Katz’s review made me interested, as well as one of the reviews at Amazon.com:

[T]he author [reminds] one that architecture is not about buildings alone, but about the structuring of three things, all strangely intangible and formless: landscapes, buildings, machines. Desires, really, rather than things. He cites Vitruvius as evidence that that’s the way architecture was conceived from the beginning.

Added to the wish list.