Reader's Comments

Posted 01/03/02
Tom Stoppard

One of the central characters of this Tom Stoppard Play is an idealistic architect who begins a housing project in London with a Jane Jacobs approach. In complying with a myriad of codes and bureaucratic obstacles, he compromises his original plans to the point that the end result is a monolithic high-rise.

At the London production I saw ten years ago, I had the satisfaction of being the only one to laugh at the "Lettreset" joke, which of course dates the play.

The Real Thing a very accurate rendition of the architectural process.

Posted 11/14/02
"The Maple Stories"
(short stories)
by John Updike

Includes the famous advice from the main character's lawyer (when Richard the Architect is considering how to financially survive a divorce): "just design a few more buildings"

Thomas F. Brown
tbrown@architekton.com

Posted 11/12/02
I commend to you 'The Nebuly Coat' by John Meade Falkner, out of print alas. Look it up on Amazon. Wonderful Edwardian murder mystery set in a Dorset town. The protagonist is a restoration architect, unless you say that it is the magnificent church....a perfectly possible view.

Patricia Morison, married to architect John Robins, London

Posted 07/09/02
I'm surprised to see that Ken Follett's 'The Pillars of the Earth' is left off the list. Through almost 1,000 pages, the story intertwines the struggles of civil war in 12th-century England with the enlightenment of the transition from Romanesque to Gothic cathedral design. Surely, this is a must read for architects, historians, and fans of epic novels.

Steve Dray

Posted 05/09/02
Regarding the list of publications featuring architects by Thompson E. Penney, FAIA , why not Carol Shields' "Larry's Party". Larry is a maze designer who also occasionally designs landscapes.

Howard Shubert
Associate Curator
Prints and Drawings Collection
Centre Canadien d'Architecture
cca.qc.ca