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Totems: Selected Essays on Architecture by Irénée Scalbert at Abbey's Bookshop,
Totems: Selected Essays on Architecture
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Irénée Scalbert

Totems

Selected Essays on Architecture

Irénée Scalbert

$65

Paperback

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English
Park Books
01 May 2026
Theory of architecture; Architecture: professional practice
A collection of essays by London-based architect Irénée Scalbert.

Totems and Other Essays brings together 14 texts by architect, historian, and critic Irénée Scalbert. Written between 1998 and 2025, they reflect nearly three decades of critical engagement with architecture and its cultural contexts. Ranging in length and register-from concise meditations to extended analytical essays-the collection captures the evolution of Scalbert's thinking as a critic, teacher, and participant in architectural discourse. Organised thematically into sections on buildings, cities, lectures, and theory, Totems and Other Essays traces a loosely autobiographical arc.

Earlier pieces echo Scalbert's formative years in London during a period of architectural ferment marked by the work of James Stirling, Norman Foster, and Richard Rogers, as well as his close association with a generation of contemporaries including Tony Fretton, Adam Caruso and Peter St John, and Tom Emerson and Stephanie Macdonald (6a architects). Later texts expand outward, both geographically and conceptually, as Scalbert brings a speculative and at times personal lens to questions of urbanism, nature, and meaning in contemporary architecture. The book culminates in Lives of a Critic, a postscript that offers candid thoughts on the vocation of architectural criticism in the 21st century.

AUTHOR: Irénée Scalbert is a French-born architect, historian, and critic based in London. His work critically examines post war European architecture and its intersections with landscape, ornament, and social meaning.

SELLING POINTS: .

New collection of essays by French-British architectural historian and critic Irénée Scalbert .

Reflects nearly three decades of critical engagement with architecture and its cultural contexts .

Irénée Scalbert engages with questions of urbanism, nature, and meaning in contemporary architecture through a speculative and at times personal lens

25 colour, 15 b/w illustrations
By:  
Imprint:   Park Books
Country of Publication:   Switzerland
Dimensions:   Height: 225mm,  Width: 115mm,  Spine: 13mm
Weight:   240g
ISBN:   9783038604624
ISBN 10:   3038604623
Pages:   184
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Unspecified

Irénée Scalbert is a French-born architect, historian, and critic based in London. His work critically examines post war European architecture and its intersections with landscape, ornament, and social meaning.

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