The Language of Houses

Now in paperback from the Pulitzer-Prize-winning author who the Wall Street journal pronounces to be “bracingly subversive” and whose “adroit observations” bring a new resonance to the appreciation of the buildings where we live and work and celebrate and pray. In 1981 Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Alison Lurie published The Language of Clothes, a meditation on costume and fashion as an expression of history, social status and individual psychology. Amusing, enlightening and full of literary allusion, the book was highly praised and widely anthologized.

Now Lurie has returned with a companion book, The Language of Houses, a lucid, provocative and entertaining look at how the architecture of buildings and the spaces within them both reflect and affect the people who inhabit them. Schools, churches, government buildings, museums, prisons, hospitals, restaurants, and of course, houses and apartments, all of them speak to human experience in vital and varied ways. The Language of Houses discusses historical and regional styles and the use of materials such as stone and wood and concrete, as well as contemplating the roles of stairs and mirrors, windows and doors, tiny rooms and cathedral-like expanses, illustrating its conclusions with illuminating literary references as well as the comments of experts in the field.

This book, which is accompanied by light-hearted original drawings by Karen Sung, is an essential and highly entertaining new contribution to the literature of modern architecture.