Buildings are so much part of the literal as well as figurative fabric of our existence that it is easy never to think about them at all. Even for those who do think about them, it is more likely that they can date a building by the shape of its windows than, say, who commissioned it, or why.
Deyan Sudjic, in this wide-ranging if somewhat diffuse book, performs a service by reminding us that buildings have not only physical dimensions, but also political ones: why they exist is as important as how they exist. Sudjic wants to explore why men and societies build the way they do, what the resulting buildings mean, and to what uses the buildings are put. That he fails to achieve this overwhelming brief is not to his detriment.
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