“This book should be required reading in every institution concerned with the teaching of architecture, planning, and all other aspects of the built environment. It should also be read by every person claiming to be an architect.”
— James Stevens Curl.
“I have just finished reading this long-awaited book. It’s worth reading, even if you do not need convincing that Decon is a fraud. The revelation is the depth and extent of the fraud.”
— AndrĂ©s Duany.
“Less than twenty pages of text is enough to deprive Deconstruction of the complex scientific arguments that offer its exponents scientific authority and social approval. It is astonishing that while architecture abandons the principles that made civilizations reach the highest building achievements, at the same time scientific knowledge that results from a drastically improved understanding of Nature rediscovers the quality of those traditional principles.”
— Nikos Karydis.
“Salingaros reveals the truth hidden underneath the meandering rhetoric of deconstruction. He decodes the esoteric terminology and the unintelligible explanations used to justify deconstruction in general, and its architectonic offspring in particular.”
— Isaac A. Meir.
“Nothing in recent years beats the latest from Nikos Salingaros, Anti-Architecture and Deconstruction … a remarkable book. Nikos writes architecture criticism of the highest order. His genius lies in his ability to build from the specific to the general, which is the opposite of the tendency of academic theorists of architecture. His commentary on Libeskind, on Tschumi, on Derrida, on Charles Jencks is definitive.”
— Francis Morrone.
“This book is the clearest description of the state of architecture and the destructiveness of the Decon movement. We ourselves, and our understanding of basic human needs for peace and comfort, have been stolen by a non-culture.”
— Konrad Perlman.
“Undoubtedly, this manuscript is a voice of logic and reason against anti-architecture norms, and the destructive attitudes of their followers. I would add my voice to other reviewers of this manuscript: that it must be a mandatory reading in schools of architecture worldwide.”
— Ashraf Salama.
“What are the ideas and aims of the current architectural elite? And what might explain why these flawed ideas have such a powerful hold on so many people? This is a stunning and deep book, as interesting for its analyses of psychology and politics as it is for its discussion of architecture.”
— Ray Sawhill.
“In [this] series of learned and moving critical essays, Salingaros and various close associates argue that we understand life in architecture as the background to human community — the preparation for our dwelling place… One day, perhaps, Salingaros will be required reading for architects. If that happens it could just be that a new orthodoxy will emerge, in which humility, order, and public spirit — the virtues which have been chased from the discipline by the starchitects — will be the norm.”
— Roger Scruton.
Nikos A. Salingaros is an internationally known urbanist and architectural theorist who has studied the scientific bases underlying architecture for thirty years. Utne Reader ranked him as “One of 50 visionaries who are changing your world”, and Planetizen as 11th among “The top 100 urban thinkers of all time”. He is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
