Thirteen ways

In his latest book, Robert Harbison offers a novel interpretation of what architectural theory might look like. The title, like everything Harbison selects, is not what it seems at first glance. It is neither a misnomer for the book's ten chapters nor a reference to the investigation it contains, but rather an echo of Wallace Stevens's poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." Like the poem, Harbison's work is a composite structure built of oblique meanings and astonishing shifts that add up to an engaging portrait - in this case a portrait of architecture in which use, symbol, and metaphor coexist. The chapter titles indicate Harbison's themes, all of which bear parallel, implied, or tangential relations to architecture: Sculpture, Machines, the Body, Landscape, Models, Ideas, Politics, the Sacred, Subjectivity, and Memory. The journey through the chapters is roughly a journey from the physical to the metaphysical, a journey that is at once poetic, technical, and philosophical. As in his previous books, Harbison examines his subjects with as few preconceptions as possible, taking familiar concepts and stripping away all associations until they become strange, producing ideas