Books : review : "On the ruins of Babel : architectural metaphor in German thought"

Reviews "On the ruins of Babel : architectural metaphor in German thought," by Daniel Purdy (Cornell University Press, 2011). In contemporary industry, technology, and science, it is common to encounter the word "architecture" used in contexts outside of building design or constr...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 2012-12, Vol.71 (4), p.560-561
Main Author: Schwarzer, Mitchell
Format: Article
Language:English
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Reviews "On the ruins of Babel : architectural metaphor in German thought," by Daniel Purdy (Cornell University Press, 2011). In contemporary industry, technology, and science, it is common to encounter the word "architecture" used in contexts outside of building design or construction. Most often, architecture refers to an overview or big picture of an enterprise, machine, or organism. Thus business architecture encompasses a company's interoperability and responses to the external environment. These and other instances of the word "architecture" to describe systemic operations outside of the architectural discipline raise the importance of studying architectural knowledge in an expanded field. In this regard, Daniel Purdy's book is an ambitious attempt to chart some of the ways philosophers and writers have developed ideas about the world through architectural analogies. [Revised Publication Abstract]
ISSN:0037-9808