51¹ú²úÊÓƵ

The aim of John Farmer (who died while preparing his book, which has been put together from fragments by his colleagues at Kingston 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ) was to wrest the history of western architecture from those concerned exclusively with form and style. He hoped to produce for architects and their clients a parallel or alternative history of those buildings which demonstrate a "green sensibility". The difficulties he encountered in the task are the same as for authors attempting, say, gay or feminist histories of the cinema: the author is left with a compendium of exceptions - the mainstream history still holds on to all the blockbusters. Farmer's list, which inclines to the domestic rather than the monumental, predictably starts in 1752 with the frontispiece to Laugier's Essai sur l'Architecture, the primitive hut. It continues with the cottage, ornee and plain; ruins and their appreciation; the writings of Ruskin and his involvement in the design and construction of Dean and Woodward's Oxford Museum; the English Arts and Crafts movement; the habitations of Beatrix Potter's protagonists; the visionary work of Paul Scheerbart and Bruno Taut; "homes for heroes"; and hippie self-build. The most curious inclusion is that of the Baroque architecture and rocaille decoration of Bavarian churches, which supposedly reconciled their peasant users to the passing of time and to the inevitability of death. The detailed treatments of these topics are linked by a potted history of the nongreen western architecture of the past 250 years. This is repetitious, of breathtaking banality and generality, and even where it is specific is frequently inaccurate or inconsistent. For example, the reader is left to decide whether the exhibition, the International Style, was held at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1929 or 1932; John Berger will be surprised to find that his Ways of Seeing has been retitled About Looking; the body of European modern architecture produced in the 1920s and 1930s is still described as "white" although one of the most obvious characteristics of, say, Le Corbusier's architecture was its colourfulness; and we are told that at some time in the 1930s Alvar Aalto "left" the International Style much as he might have flounced out of the Athenaeum.

The chief difficulty of the book, however, is one of focus. It never seems to have become clear to the author whether he really wished his alternative history to be that of a "green sensibility", in which case any domestic building made of un-processed materials or which appeared to "hug the earth" could be included, whatever its performance or energy consumption, or whether he wanted to describe only buildings which really functioned in a "green" way. While in the body of the book he inclines to the former, the final chapters contain the now commonplace plea for a "green audit" and a new sort of building which would support a lifestyle not inimical to the planet. Since no explicit prescription for such a building is provided, and it remains unclear whether the world needs more and cleverer technology or less and simpler, we are left with the strong impression that Scandinavian-style cottages might do the trick. This will be of no relevance to the large proportion of humanity who live in cities in old intractable buildings.

The editors say that in the course of writing the book the author moved from an academic to a more oral style: too right, squire. The unattractive English is that which architects and students use when talking among themselves, and it really will not do when written down. Farmer has been badly served by those who prepared the book for publication, and by his publishers, who do not appear to have employed an editor.

The book suffers from the same faults as much current "green" architecture where sincerity, good intentions and an endorsement from the World Wide Fund for Nature are seen as satisfactory substitutes for clear thinking and a sharp nose for style.

Christopher Woodward is an architect and co-author with Edward Jones of A Guide to The Architecture of London.