Architecture York

Book excerpt: You live in York UK, you’re thinking of paying a visit, or you just like buildings? Then this new work from John Brooke Fieldhouse is a must have! It’s a guide book. But it’s completely different, it’s not what you’d expect from the city of Vikings, Romans, the medieval, the Civil War, the Georgians, and the Victorians. It’s about the twentieth century and later – right up to 2018. Its buildings – public and private - how they’re designed, engineered, lit, heated, ventilated...and not just buildings, there are 130 plus items, including bridges, a flood barrier, details like windows, seating, handrails, landscaping, paving, all the things we touch when we move through a city, the things that make us feel good or bad. It’s 260 pages, 360 colour photographs, fifteen pages of indexes and an introduction, consisting of unsentimental and unvarnished answers by the author to over 30 questions on the book and York. Answering questions and always asking more. It’s not just the past, it’s all about the present and the future. We spend most of our lives in buildings, they are art, science, psychology and politics so it’s essential we all have our own view about them.