Timothy Hyde is associate professor in the history and theory of architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of Constitutional Modernism: Architecture and Civil Society in Cuba, 1933-1959. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Twitter @hyde_timothy
Using selected episodes from English architectural history since the early eighteenth century, Hyde examines the ways in which architecture, as both a product and practice, has been evaluated against judgments of ugliness within wider external structures: in law, governance, the architectural profession, and the Church of England. In its aim and scope, Ugliness and Judgment represents a strikingly original contribution to the field. -Christine Stevenson, author of The City and the King: Architecture and Politics in Restoration London Wholly original in its approach, this book explores the roles of the judgment of ugliness in British architectural discourse and social debates from the eighteenth through twentieth centuries. Ugliness and Judgment is a superb piece of scholarship, opening up new ways, through the lens of ugliness, to understand and connect a whole range of canonical figures, buildings, and themes. -Daniel M. Abramson, author of Obsolescence: An Architectural History To call out ugliness, then, is a call to arms. While beauty basks lazily ad uselessly in its own perfection, ugliness spurs us into action. ---Igor Toronyi-Lalic, The Spectator Hyde's book confronts ugliness head on, using it as a way to interrogate British architectural discourse. . . . [His] research on the individual case studies is impeccable. ---Richard J. Williams, Times Higher Education