Totems - Selected Essays on Architecture

Totems brings together ten texts by architect, historian, and critic Irénée Scalbert, written between 2001 and 2025. Spanning nearly three decades, they reflect his sustained engagement with architecture and its cultural contexts. Varying in form—from brief reflections to extended essays—the collection traces the evolution of his thinking as critic, teacher, and participant in architectural discourse.

Organized around buildings, cities, and the environment, the book follows a loosely autobiographical path. Early texts evoke Scalbert’s formative years in London, shaped by figures such as James Stirling, Norman Foster, and Aldo Rossi, as well as contemporaries including Peter St John, Tom Emerson, and Stephanie Macdonald. Later pieces broaden both geographically and conceptually, adopting a more speculative and personal approach to questions of urbanism, nature, and meaning in contemporary architecture.

ISBN : 978-3-03860-462-4