Bringing together leading writers and practicing architects including Jean Dethier, David Mayernik, Massimo Scolari, Robert Adam, David Watkin and Leon Krier, this volume provides a kaleidoscopic, multilayered exploration of the Architectural Capriccio. It not only explains the phenomena within a historical context, but moreover, demonstrates its contemporary validity and appropriateness as a holistic design methodology, an inspiring pictorial strategy, an efficient rendering technique and an optimal didactic tool. The book shows and comments on a wide range of historic masterworks and highlights contemporary artists and architects excelling in a modern updated, refreshed and original tradition of the Capriccio. The capacity of the Capriccio to create an imaginary, imagined or 'analogue' reality by combining and relocating existing or invented buildings and places in uniquely suggestive drawings and paintings offers unprecedented insights in the 'Architectural Mind'. Unlike what the word Capriccio might suggest, it is not 'capricious' but indeed follows complex rules of realism and figuration, as well as coherent narratives and semantics. It is a playful reflection of the dialectics of the real and the ideal. The Capriccio does not challenge the mechanism of reality, but questions the mechanic and linear reading of the real, of life and of art and offers a large palette of threads, figures, tones and nuances to illustrate and contribute creatively to the complexity of a sustainable built and living architectural environment.

About the Author
Lucien Steil is an Associate Professor in Architecture at the University of Notre Dame, USA and Rome.

Reviews
' ... nearly encyclopedic ... lavishly illustrated ... this collaborative discourse seeks to elevate a once-trivialized art form to noble genre status by polemically redefining its purpose as that of antidote to a modern world impoverished by lifeless, functionalist architectural forms. Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.' Choice 'This tome is a significant contribution to the understanding of the concept of the architectural capriccio, offering a broad discussion and examination of many facets of the phenomenon.' Follies



Book Information
ISBN 9781138246447
Author Lucien Steil
Format Paperback
Page Count 548
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 1010g