Dictionary of Architecture.

By James Stevens Curl. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1999. [pounds]25 (hb)

Curl's Dictionary of Architecture is splendid. Product of vast research (the bibliography alone is 70 pages long), it catalogues the whole culture of Western architecture from the Egyptians to Deconstruction.

In many ways it is more like an encyclopaedia than a dictionary. For instance, it does not explain, as conventional dictionaries do, that the word 'window' comes from old Norse 'vindauga', the 'eye of the wind'. But it does give a brief comprehensive history of wall openings that offer light and air, ranging from Roman times to the nineteenth century, explaining how technology changed the nature and proportions of windows from the days of varnished parchment to nineteenth-century rolled glass. The dictionary is made much more perceptive than its recent predecessors (for instance the Penguin Dictionary of Architecture by Pevsner and others) because Curl is architect as well as historian, so he can understand technology and construction. He thinks of buildings as products of multi-dimensional human culture which ranges from plumbing to Plato, carpentry to Callicrates.

Drawings by Curl and John Sambrook (and sometimes others), illustrate tricky points of physicality. The Orders are, as you would expect in a book of this kind, properly demonstrated in all their detail 'after Normand' (Charles Normand's canonical mid nineteenth century Nouveau Paralele des Ordres d'Architecture des Grecs, des Romains ...). But the multiple complexities of brick bonding, from Monk to Rat-trap, are as concisely drawn by Sambrook, whose very clear work will surely be soon copied by other authors as 'after Sambrook in Curl'.

Like all proper encyclopaedias of architecture, Curl's starts with 'Aalto, Hugo Alvar Henrik'. It has lots of potted architectural biographies. Almost everyone I can think of seems to be there, from Isidorus of Miletus, who designed the Hagia Sophia with Anthemios of Tralles (for whom there is a separate entry), to the unfortunate (in more senses than one) Ivanov-Shits, a Russian Wagnerschuler. My only quibble about people is that quite a lot of rather dim twentieth-century British architects are included, for instance Basil Spence and Robert Matthew (apologies to my professor but, whatever else, he was never a great architect). And really rather silly Prince Charles-ish folk like John Simpson and Quinlan Terry are given as much space as Renzo Piano or Frank Gehry. But, to be fair, the range is very wide both in history and geography: Glenn Murcutt is there, and so are Behnisch, Borromini, Bindesboll, Belcher and Behrens.

In the twentieth century, the scan opens out to include architects from all over the world as architecture became international: Ando as well as Asplund. Technology does not quite keep up with time: there is a very good description of Roman opus pseudisodomum for instance, but none of low-E glass or photovoltaics. Cultures other than those of Europe and North America are sketchily treated: 'minaret' but not 'mihrab'.

These are for a second edition. Curl's first one is a smasher. From Door Case to Doric Revival, Doshi to Dotti, Paradise to Parapet, you can't have a more concise, entertaining and informative guide to the words of architecture. Annoyingly (for a reviewer), I have to buy one myself, for this copy will have to be kept in the office, and I need another one at home.