Do survival instincts have anything to do with our architectural choices―our liking for a certain room, a special stairway, a plaza in a particular city? In this engaging study Grant Hildebrand discusses ways in which architectural forms emulate some archetypal settings that humans have found appealing―and useful to survival―from ancient times to the present. Speculating that nature has "designed" us to prefer certain conditions and experiences, Hildebrand is interested in how the characteristics of our most satisfying built environments mesh with Darwinian selection. In examining the appeal of such survival-based characteristics he cites architectural examples spanning five continents and five millennia. Among those included are the Palace of Minos, the Alhambra, Wells cathedral, the Shinto shrine at Ise, the Piazza San Marco, Brunelleschi's Pazzi Chapel, Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, a Seattle condominium, and recent houses by Eric Owen Moss and Arne Bystrom. Just what characteristics bestow evolutionary benefits? "Refuge and prospect" offer a protective place of concealment close to a foraging and hunting ground. "Enticement" invites the safe exploration of an information-rich setting where worthwhile discoveries await. "Peril" elicits an emotion of pleasurable fear and so tests and increases our competence in the face of danger: thus the attraction of a skyscraper or a house poised over a vertiginous ravine. "Order and complexity" tease our intuitions for sorting complex information into survival-useful categories. Gracefully written, with excellent illustrations that complement the text, Origins of Architectural Pleasure will open the reader's eyes to new ways of seeing a home, a workplace, a vacation setting, even a particular table in a restaurant. It also suggests important design considerations for buildings with a more pressing mandate for human appeal, such as hospitals, retirement homes, and hospices. More like expanded essays than exhaustive studies, these brief pieces are take radically different approaches to the perception and experience of buildings. Hildebrand (architecture/art history, Univ. of Washington), author of The Wright Space: Pattern and Meaning in Frank Lloyd Wright's Houses (Univ. of Washington, 1991), applies his considerable descriptive skills to examples from the history of architecture before and after the domestic work of Wright. Examining the spatial rhythms of his selections with evident pleasure and helpful clarity, Hildebrand applies the intriguing classifications of refuge and prospectAromantic enclosure vs. classical opennessAto describe interior space. More illustrations would help concretize the original and important observations here. To the degree that Hildebrand's volume explores the materiality of his examples, Leach (architecture, Univ. of Nottingham) focuses on the abstract and philosophical implications of his choices. The editor of Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory (Routledge, 1997), Leach discusses the sometimes difficult theories of Walter Benjamin, Jean Baudrillard, and Guy Debord, among others, to make the point that the architectural preference for imagemaking, along with the sensory overload of our society, devalues, or anaesthetizes, our experience of their work. Leach expresses sharp indignation toward theories of post-Modernism; the writings of Robert Venturi, Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour; and the tendency in the style to dissociate form from content, though the offense he takes at a recruiting advertisement by the London firm of T.P. Bennett Associates seems insufficiently explained and remains puzzling. General academic collections will benefit from the addition of Hildebrand's study, while only highly specialized collections will require Leach's as well.APaul Glassman, New York Sch. of Interior Design Lib. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. "Hildebrand has committed the equivalent of heresy as far as the mandarins of architectural academia are concerned. . . But Hildebrand's book is too good to be ignored or seriously criticized. He not only pursues his premise without insisting on it as the sole means of understanding architecture, but he also provides some of the best analytical descriptions of buildings available."--"Times Literary Supplement "Grant Hildebrand gives a vivid and cogent analysis of the ingredients that have made beautiful places throughout history, explaining what in our nature makes us feel that way. The examples and illustrations are striking and provide a compelling argument for his thesis. Important reading for anyone interested in the theory and practice of inventing a new architecture."—Robert J. Frasca, NAIA "Hildebrand's notions of prospect and refuge, enticement, peril, and complex order open up views to an architectural thinking that is grounded in bio-cultural and ecological understandngs of spatial situations, thus complementing our quest for beauty. In fact, Grant Hild