Maintenance, here, is intended as part of a spectrum of operations from cleaning (more domestic and everyday) to preservation (the intention, often legally inscribed, of conserving a building in perpetuity). More than that, the nomenclature works as an alibi for Sample to examine the forgotten contributors to architectural history—not just the window washers and custodians, but the women architects whose names were written out, like SOM’s Natalie de Blois. Sample also includes Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s conceptual and performance art that for decades has highlighted the work of sanitation workers, custodians, and others who ceaselessly beat back the entropic forces that smear, clutter, and obscure the urban environment.

At its core, however, this book is about our ambiguous, perhaps inexplicable desire for order and cleanliness. What is it that motivates us to drive back the effects of time, gravity, or nature on our pristine constructions? While Sample provides no single answer to this, she clearly outlines the complex stakes of the question. Washing away the accretions of time tends to also cleanse buildings of evidence of the social, political, and economic structures that sustain their existence. Maintenance in these terms is another word for power, when you consider who performs the work and who receives the benefit.

Equally interesting is something missing: Sample’s own work. We often expect architects’ treatises, stretching back to Andrea Palladio, to be illustrated with their authors’ designs. While its short, punchy texts and compelling images mark the book as the work of an architect, this is no straightforward manifesto. It could, however, have an effect on design, if others consider Sample’s timely meditations that underscore the ethical, political, and social entanglements standing behind the spotless image of architecture.