If anyone stands out today as a translator between the architectural profession and the general reading public, it is the Canadian-American writer, architect, and educator Witold Rybczynski. In eighteen books and hundreds of articles, Rybczynski has elucidated the practice, context, and value of the design of buildings and cities in prose that is eloquent as well as accessible to a broad audience. In his new book, How Architecture Works: A Humanist’s Toolkit, he walks us through the process of getting to know a building. We start big, with the ideas and the setting, and progressively zero in on the structure and the details before considering the touchy matter of taste.

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