The influential American architect Philip Johnson is famously quoted as having opined that “Architecture is the art of how to waste space”. Certainly, architecture is about the use of space, but whether it is an art or not has been the subject of much debate. The great architect, of whom there are surprisingly few, has the task of making a building that is safe, functional and beautiful, but that is also required of the best vehicle designers, furniture manufacturers and ship builders. The vast majority, faced with the complexities of matching technical requirements, safety regulations, structural demands, contractor management and financial concerns, give up and remain satisfied with whatever external and internal designs result from their studio. Landscape architecture, although practised for centuries, only became a distinct discipline in the nineteenth century with the publication of Humphry Repton's Collected Works (1840), the term being adopted by the great Frederick Law Olmsted in his plans for New York's Central Park in the 1850s. The profession grew during the twentieth century, fuelled in the UK by the Royal Horticultural Society and the foundation of the British Association of Garden Architects in 1929 and institutionally by the growth of urban parks and garden cities in the inter‐war years.
James Stevens Curl, the author of ten or so other works on the subject, first published the Dictionary of Architecture in 1999 and has now come up with a second edition. It contains over 6,000 entries, now including landscape terms, biographies of important current architects and over 50 new illustrations, having been expanded by more than 200 pages. Each entry, the longest of which is about 1,200 words, the shortest a few lines, is followed by a brief list of suggested further readings. However, the triumph of this volume is Curl's compositions, especially those for the biographical entries. He is not afraid to criticise; Wren's Chapel for Pembroke College, Cambridge is assessed as “pleasant, if unstartling” and Norman Foster's Sage Music Centre in Gateshead is said to have been “found disappointing in relation to its site”. This is an ambitious work and a successful one, which will find a place in most general and specialist collections.
