In a media-saturated world, humour stands out as a form of social
communication that is especially effective in re-appropriating and
questioning architectural and urban culture. Whether illuminating the
ambivalences of metropolitan life or exposing the shock of
modernisation, cartoons, caricature, and parody have long been potent
agents of architectural criticism, protest and opposition.
In a novel contribution to the field of architectural history, this book
outlines a survey of visual and textual humour as applied to
architecture, its artefacts and leading professionals. Employing a wide
variety of visual and literary sources (prints, the illustrated press,
advertisements, theatrical representations, cinema and TV), thirteen
essays explore an array of historical subjects concerning the critical
reception of projects, buildings and cities through the means of
caricature and parody. Subjects range from 1750 to the present, and from
Europe and the USA to contemporary China. From William Hogarth and
George Cruikshank to Osbert Lancaster, Adolf Loos' satire, and Saul
Steinberg's celebrated cartoons of New York City, graphic and
descriptive humour is shown to be an enormously fruitful, yet largely
unexplored terrain of investigation for the architectural and urban
historian.
