Stories of Storeys
Art, Architecture and the City
- Gautam Bhatia - Delhi-based architect, writer and artist
A renowned architect and artist on how public architecture in our cities has lost contact with the lives of the common people.
Behind the seemingly ordinary life of a practising architect lies a whole host of non-professional impulses that give shape to buildings. Stories of Storeys: Art, Architecture and the City is about these impulses and conditions—social, literate, personal and political—which are expressed, but often ignored in architecture. Bhatia looks at the ordinary, physical, visible and tactile involvement of our urban environment and the way it affects, communicates with, or influences us. An all-inclusive sociology of architecture, the book draws on the social life of some of architecture’s role players, people whose peculiar demands on design have come to characterize the building environment of our times, and times that are characterized by this progressive isolation of architecture from the society of common people.
“He has stirred the landscape of architecture with a barrage of words …jarring inequalities that confront our urban lifestyles… describe the gross disparity that defines our divided cities.”
“Book is exceptionally well written and is backed with immense on-hand experience… expertise mixed with this artistic mindset lend a unique voice …an extremely interesting read.”