Few man-made things seem as stable, as immutable, as a building. Yet the life of any structure is neither fixed nor timeless. Buildings are forced to adapt to each succeeding age. The Parthenon, that epitome of a ruined temple, was for centuries a working church and then a mosque; the cathedral of Notre Dame was “restored” to a design that none of its original makers would have recognized; remains of the Berlin Wall, once gleefully smashed, have become precious relics. Here Edward Hollis recounts the most enthralling of these metamorphoses and shows how buildings have come to embody the history of Western culture.“Hollis brings together an iconoclastic attitude and a lively writing style to create a kind of counter-history of architecture, one that starts where the original designers left off and narrates the subsequent biography of the ‘wonderful and chimeric monsters’ that buildings are.” — The Washington Post
“Engaging and erudite... Hollis is magical on the layers of myth and history in the classical world.” — Financial Times
Антонио Канова отказывается реставрировать статуи Парфенона, потому что не вправе использовать мрамор, которого касались пальцы Фидия; дворец и парк Сан-Суси возникают как воплощение фантазий Фридриха Великого о других странах и мирах; Берлинская стена построена четко по линии, которую провел белой краской по булыжной мостовой молодой офицер армии ГДР. Архитектура как мечта, как непрерывное сновидение наяву, в котором Парфенон и Берлинская стена оказываются связаны самим ходом человеческой истории. Афиша
Nominee for the Guardian’s First Book Award
