Why We Build

In Why We Build, architecture critic Rowan Moore shows how buildings are driven by human emotions and desires – such as hope, power, money, sex, and the idea of home – and how architecture shapes the human experience.

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, Why We Build provides a provocative and iconoclastic view of what makes architecture, why it matters, and why we find it fascinating.