The Tower of Babel looms large in the history of art and architecture, whether as the subject of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s 1565 painting or as the main tower at the heart of the hyperindustrial city in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). It also takes center stage in modern and contemporary literature: Jorge Luis Borges’s enigmatic (and architectonic) short story “The Library of Babel” (1941), Juan Benet’s The Construction of the Tower of Babel (1990), as well as “Tower of Babylon,” the opening story in Ted Chiang’s anthology Stories of Your Life and Others (2002). In all these examples, the architectural conventions of structure and form become metaphors for the limits of language and knowledge. The Tower’s significance to contemporary architectural audiences is implied, perhaps even understood. We may not picture Bruegel’s or Borges’s monumental and unfathomable buildings whenever we encounter architectural writing that is dense and prolix, but it does make one wonder whether capital-A architecture is a kind of Babel tower torn apart by conflicting views about who designs buildings and for whom.

Architecture After God: Babel Resurgent, by Kyle Dugdale. Birkhäuser, 440 pages, $92.