Common Sense

"Using the theatre and space for performance as a tool to crack the understanding of architecture as a common ground for humanity, this is almost a primer. Humane, opinionated and frequently very funny, it's a rare architecture book that both provokes and entertains." Financial Times This book is about how and why we construct the world, from individual rooms to social space to cities to the very planet itself. It argues that a failure of empathy -a lack of common sense- has limited our ability to build in harmony with each other and the environment. This failure now threatens our survival. Taking the theatre as a broad paradigm of common life -from antiquity to today's concert halls- the book explores exemplary and deadly spaces, digging under the surface of architecture to bring to light the human energy seeking -at the best- a profound communion with our context. Drawing on encounters with Bruno Latour, Peter Brook, Queen Elizabeth II, Kevin Spacey, Ariane Mnouchkine, Keith Jarrett, and a giant mechanical elephant, Common Sense is a confessional and polemical journey taking in mud huts, uninhabitable modernist houses, living utopias, emotive astronauts, wind tunnels, mountain eyries, Sillicon Valley public transport, Roman and space-age theatres, contemporary and historical cities -and a tiny, mysterious bookshop in Delhi.