Winner of the 8th Annual AIA International Architecture Book Award for                  CriticismCan architecture help us find our place and way in today's complex world?                  Can it return individuals to a whole, to a world, to a community? Developing                  Giedion?s claim that contemporary architecture's main task is to interpret a way of                  life valid for our time, philosopher Karsten Harries answers that architecture                  should serve a common ethos. But if architecture is to meet that task, it first has                  to free itself from the dominant formalist approach, and get beyond the notion that                  its purpose is to produce endless variations of the decorated shed.In a series of                  cogent and balanced arguments, Harries questions the premises on which architects                  and theorists have long relied -- premises which have contributed to architecture's                  current identity crisis and marginalization. He first criticizes the aesthetic                  approach, focusing on the problems of decoration and ornament. He then turns to the                  language of architecture. If the main task of architecture is indeed interpretation,                  in just what sense can it be said to speak, and what should it be speaking about?                  Expanding upon suggestions made by Martin Heidegger, Harries also considers the                  relationship of building to the idea and meaning of dwelling.Architecture, Harries                  observes, has a responsibility to community; but its ethical function is inevitably                  also political, He concludes by examining these seemingly paradoxical                  functions.

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