Buildings are driven by human emotions and desires; hope, power, money, sex, the idea of home.In Why We Build Rowan Moore explores the making of buildings from conception to inhabitation and reveals the paradoxical power of architecture: it looks fixed and solid, but is always changing in response to the lives around it.Moving across the globe and through history, through works of folly, beauty, spectacle, and subtlety, Moore gives a provocative and iconoclastic vi...

A powerful examination of how property shaped the modern world - and why it now threatens the freedoms and stability it was meant to sustain.Property carries a great promise: that it will make you rich and set you free. But it is also a weapon, an agent of displacement and exploitation, the currency of kleptocrats and oligarchs. In Britain, it has led to a new class division between those who own and those who don't.Property is a vivid, far-reachin...

With a new introduction for the paperback.London is a supreme achievement of civilization. It offers fulfilments of body and soul, encourages discovery and invention. It is a place of freedom, multiplicity and co-existence. It is a Liberal city, which means it stands for values now in peril.London has also become its own worst enemy, testing to destruction the idea that the free market alone can build a city, a fantastical wealth machine that denies too man...

In an era of brash, expensive, provocative new buildings, a prominent critic argues that emotions—such as hope, power, sex, and our changing relationship to the idea of home—are the most powerful force behind architecture, yesterday and (especially) today.We are living in the most dramatic period in architectural history in more than half a century: a time when cityscapes are being redrawn on a yearly basis, architects are testing the very idea of what a building is, and whole citi...

The Royal College of Physicians celebrates its 500th anniversary in 2018, and to observe this landmark is publishing this series of ten books. Each of the books focuses on fifty themed elements that have contributed to making the RCP what it is today, together adding up to 500 reflections on 500 years. Some of the people, ideas, objects and manuscripts featured are directly connected to the College, while others have had an influence that can still be felt in its work.Written exact...

In the tradition of Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers, an unforgettable exploration of the trials of daily life in Mozambique, long heralded as Africa's "rising star"Over the past twenty-five years, Mozambique has charted a path of dizzying economic growth nearly as steep as China's, making it among the fastest-growing economies on the planet. But most Mozambicans have little to show for the long boom; to travel in Mozambique is to see much of ...

In the tradition of Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers, an unforgettable exploration of the trials of daily life in Mozambique, long heralded as Africa's "rising star"Over the past twenty-five years, Mozambique has charted a path of dizzying economic growth nearly as steep as China's, making it among the fastest-growing economies on the planet. But most Mozambicans have little to show for the long boom; to travel in Mozambique is to see much of ...