Response to Stout Books Review of Nikos Salingaros Book, Anti-Architecture and Deconstruction

Friday, May 13, 2005

Stout Books in San Francisco reviewed Nikos Salingaros' Book, Anti-Architecture and Deconstruction, is a very negative, innacurate, politcally reactionary manner. Below is my email to them that I also sent to 2Blowhards' Blog:

"I have to tell you that your review of this book is not only reactionary but wrong. To quote from your review: "This book offers an hysterical right-wing analysis of post-modern architecture, warning us of the existence of the "Derrida Virus", and crowning Christoper Alexander the new Albert Speer." My very close reading of this book and my review found absolutely nothing politcal in any of the text. Please tell me what purpose this "off-the-charts" commentary serves?

If anyone on your editorial staff read this book, they would have to acknowledge that Salingaros and his co-authors subjected Decon architecture to scientific analysis, logic, carefully examining the historic and scientific references the Decons cite as justification for their claim of a “new paradigm”. The authors found that their science was wrong, their logic strained, their prose garbled and reasoning unintelligible, and the built result uncomfortable to people’s need for certain kinds of geometric space that provide peace and comfort in a building. If you have read any of Christopher Alexander’s works, you will find a scientist and architect who describes a system of analysis of all of the factors that bear on the architectural program of any building, regardless of style. His idea is that a building program evolves from human needs and connections to a civic community. Salingaros’ affiliation with and choice of Alexander as the architect who best provides an antidote to Decon’s strained reasoning and other-than-this-world architectural expressions do not, then, identify him  as a new Albert Speer. Alexander’s writings and his approach to architecture are anything but dictatorial and proscriptive, as was the case of Speer’s rules for Facist architecture. If anything, Salingaros’ book is a plea for good sense, intellectual credibility, and a concern for human needs and architectural context, a set of factors that the great cities of this world exhibit endlessly and timelessly. What, please tell me, is there anything right wing, left wing, centrist, communist, socialist, libertarian, Facist/Nazi about any of the content or inferences of this book? Or, does this incredibly negative review have something to do with the fact that a German publisher put out this book? I am Jewish and the political connection to Germany’s past never entered my mind.

I have looked at your current book list. These books seem to have in common scholarly intent and intellectual curiosity, the components of reason and apolitical analysis. How could you possibly offer a book, such as Anti-Architecture and Deconstruction, that doesn’t conform to the criteria of your other selections?

I would also like to know the name of the reviewer and his affiliations with universities and certain specific points of view on architecture. You can read my blog for a full understanding of my background and experience and my affiliations with the planning and architectural community. I would like the same information on the reviewer that I have given you as another reviewer."

Konrad J. Perlman