Architectural Press An imprint of Elsevier
Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP
200 Wheeler Road, Burlington, MA 01803
First published 1998
Second edition 2003
Reprinted 2003
Copyright#1998, 2003, Peter Fawcett. All rights reserved
The right of Peter Fawcett to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

As we enter the twenty-first century, it has become fashionable to consider architecture through a veil of literature. Such was not always the case; indeed, it could be argued that the practice of architecture has rarely
been underpinned by a close correspondence with theory, and that designers have been drawnmore to precedent, to seminal buildings and projects rather than to texts for a creative
springboard to their fertile imaginations. This is merely an observation and not an argument against fledgling building designers adopting even the simplest of theoretical positions; nor does it deny the profound influence of a small number of seminal texts upon the development of twentieth-century architecture, for there has
been a close correspondence between some of those texts and icons which emerged as the built outcome.