The Epic of Architectural Elements: When Details Became Language

Architecture is shown to begin with small elements that gather until they make a place: a window that sees, a door that welcomes, a stair that rises, a dome that embraces and a corridor that guides. The window is followed from the old Damascene house and the mashrabiya to Gothic and modern glass, and the door from the threshold and the alleys of Damascus and Aleppo to the doors of mosques. The stair climbs from the Damascene house to Michelangelo's Laurentian Library and the rituals of Tadao Ando, the dome from the Pantheon and Hagia Sophia to Brunelleschi's Florence, and the corridor from al-Andalus to the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. In the closing pages the elements speak to one another, and the book asks what they mean for the body, the contemporary person and artificial intelligence.