On Intricacy: The Work of John Meunier, Architect is a collaborative portrait of a career — neither monograph nor hagiography — that situates one architect's practice within a broader argument about the inseparability of ethics and aesthetics in architecture.
About This Book
Edited by Patrick Lynch, On Intricacy traces the thinking and built work of architect and educator John Meunier across careers in both the UK and USA. The book grows from conversations between Meunier and Lynch first published in the Journal of Civic Architecture, expanded here with essays by Meunier, Lynch, and architect Simon Henley, alongside new photography of the Meunier House at Cambridge by David Grandorge. What distinguishes this volume is its register: it is a written and visual polemic, not a catalogue. It asks what architecture means when pursued with sustained intellectual conviction, and documents the collaborative projects and teaching relationships through which that conviction took built form. For practitioners and historians alike, it reframes the question of what an architectural life is for.
Key Features
- 288 pages of essays, conversations, project documentation, and new architectural photography
- Edited by Patrick Lynch; essays by Patrick Lynch, John Meunier, and Simon Henley; photography by David Grandorge
- Notable projects include the Burrell Collection, Glasgow (with Barry Gasson and Brit Andresen); Wendon House and Edington House, Cambridge; sports pavilion at Essex University (with Barry Gasson); student housing at New Hall Cambridge (with David Handlin); and the Gordon House, Cincinnati
- Published by Canalside Press
What You'll Discover
- How Meunier's collaborative practice — spanning multiple institutions and partners — generated a consistent architectural argument rather than a recognisable style
- The relationship between teaching and making, traced through Meunier's roles at Cambridge University and as head of the architecture school at the University of Cincinnati
- A sustained polemic on the deep reciprocity between ethics and aesthetics, presented through built work rather than theory alone
- An account of a mid-twentieth-century architectural culture — its optimism, its intellectual ambitions, and its institutional contexts — told from the inside
About the Author
[Details available upon request]
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 288
- Dimensions: 220 x 180 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781527240506
- Publisher: Canalside Press
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Architects and architecture students interested in the ethics of practice, historians of twentieth-century British and American architecture, and readers drawn to the intersection of pedagogy, collaboration, and built form.