Architecture in Wood: A World History

Wood has unique qualities, yet is undervalued or ignored in histories of architecture. However, leading designers around the world are increasingly drawn to it to satisfy social and environmental needs.

Will Pryce is an award-winning photographer who trained as an architect and photojournalist. His pictures have made him the most admired architectural photographer in Britain. Intensely dramatic but not over-dramatized, technically flawless, but not merely documentary, they convey all the excitement of encountering these amazing structures first-hand. He has travelled the world seeking the famous and the obscure.

In the substantial text he shows how the wooden heritage of Japan grew from its Buddhist history; how Russia’s carpenters determined its iconic domes; how Norway’s stave churches contain clues to her pagan past; how Turkic tribes brought the yali from Asia; how the settlers of New England would use a provincial English tradition on the new continent; and how, today, sophisticated architects such as Peter Zumthor and Renzo Piano are inventing an eloquent new wooden architecture.