How Architecture Speaks and Fashions Our Lives

James A. Love is an associate professor of environmental design at the
University of

Calgary.

Although billed as a primer, this book assumes on the part of the
layperson an unrealistically high level of architectural knowledge. It
also gives undue emphasis to the author’s cartoons while relegating
some very useful photographic comparisons to an appendix. The
relationship between text and graphical material is not always clear,
and the book is further marred by typographical errors and a reversal in
the appendix’s comparison of facade features. (The latter mistake will
result in confusion for laypersons.) Mayerovitch’s tendency to put
architects on a pedestal is another unfortunate feature of this poorly
executed primer.