‘This book is a thought-provoking discourse on what, why and how our built environment could, and maybe should, be.’
Architects’ Journal, August 2016

In this book, drawn from a lecture of the same name, Simon Allford, co-founder of Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, sets out his thoughts on architecture and the theatre of everyday life. Cities are social condensers, places of collective memory patterned by systems of infrastructure, governance and use. To allow for the continual growth and renewal of the city, urban buildings should be ‘extra ordinary’: stage sets permitting a multitude of future uses, memorable in their construction and respectful of the public spaces in between them where the real life of the city takes place.

‘If our briefs are irrelevant, and buildings are more important for what they define without than how they work within, why are architects still making buildings?’