Chambers for a Memory Palace

Offers as good an introduction to the way architects look at, and think about, the world as any I have read…. There are treasures enough in this chamber to delight anyone interested in architecture.
– Richard Weston, The Architects’ Journal

This collaboration between two distinguished architects and former colleagues is a joyous celebration of admired places and a thoughtful consideration of the role that design has played in giving these places their memorable qualities. It is also an invitation to readers to inhabit the chambers of the book with their own imaginations to join in the making of the Memory Palace proposed. The authors’ informal, witty, and anecdotal style extends to the illustrations - the freehand travel sketches, line drawings, and watercolors of places they have remembered and enjoyed.

Chambers for a Memory Palace consists of an exchange of letters in which one author recalls and the other responds to the elements considered essential to the art of successful place-making. Each of the book’s chapters forms a chamber, and each chamber is inscribed with personal observations on the composition of places and the architectural elements central to each building, garden, court, monument, or open space described. The examples considered in these dialogues range from classic Western tradition to Asian temples and Islamic tombs, from ancient ruins to modern cities.