Architecture in Wood : A World History (Hardcover)

Some books are so beautifully produced and contain such superb images that even before one starts reading they have an entrancing quality that makes ownership essential. For anyone interested in design, architecture, cultures or travel [this book] is just such a volume . . . captivating." --TES Many of the world's greatest buildings are made of wood, yet it is undervalued or ignored in histories of architecture. However, leading designers around the world are increasingly drawn to it to satisfy social and environmental needs.

Will Pryce is an award-winning photographer who trained as an architect and photojournalist. Intensely dramatic but not overdramatized, technically flawless but not merely documentary, his internationally acclaimed photographs convey all the excitement of encountering these amazing structures firsthand.

He has traveled the world seeking the famous and the obscure. In the text he shows how the wooden heritage of Japan grew from its Buddhist history; how Russia's carpenters determined its iconic domes; how Norway's stave churches contain clues to her pagan past; how Turkic tribes brought the yali from Asia; how the settlers of New England employed a provincial English tradition on the new continent; and how, today, sophisticated architects such as Peter Zumthor and Renzo Piano are inventing an eloquent new wooden architecture.